tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87149482024-03-13T13:08:26.146+05:30Dick & GarlickNotes on Indian English,
Hinglish, slang & pop cultureUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-31896739434747838752019-06-23T10:00:00.001+05:302019-06-23T10:22:04.585+05:30Pardon My FarsiHimadri Roy on 'Farsi', a lost gay argot used in Delhi:
Nouns like panthi, koti, niharan, dhurani, jogta, danga were used with simplicity to mean the ‘man’ in a gay relationship, the ‘woman’ in a gay relationship, the girl friend of the gay partner, the gay partner who has a girlfriend, the ‘female’ in a lesbian relationship, and the ‘man’ in a lesbian relationship, respectively. The first two Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-85855498306775896862018-11-27T12:22:00.002+05:302018-11-27T12:22:54.222+05:30Who's Afraid of Urdish?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-9664142286068650862017-07-09T17:06:00.000+05:302017-07-09T17:12:07.041+05:30Life Has Become Ladies' FingerIn 'Word of the Day', a daily column that ran in the Bangalore Mirror through the latter half of 2015, writer Sriram Aravamudan, who describes himself as a 'gardener, baker, comedian and all-round Bengalurean', compiles many entertaining examples of the city's street lingo. Some of these may be familiar from other online glossaries of Kannada slang (bombat, pigar, one thara), but I found a great Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-6904908252023888292017-07-06T03:48:00.000+05:302017-07-06T11:04:36.369+05:30Forty Names of CloudsIn a land where rainfall is scarce, the act of reading the skies and attempting to name the unattainable becomes unbearably poignant. Arati-Kumar Rao on the language of the Thar:
The act of naming — chhinto for a drizzle of rain or ghuTyo for the asphyxiating stillness of un-raining clouds — is a way of paying homage, recognizing worth, according importance of these events that are vital to theirUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-7080035956855656292017-07-04T10:35:00.004+05:302017-07-04T10:47:02.432+05:30Periya EmdenOn the night of 22nd September 1914, a lone German cruiser slipped unnoticed into the waters off Chennai. Once the ship was in range, its commander Karl von Müller gave his crew the order to attack the city. The powerful beam of a lighthouse revealed a potential target: three fuel tanks belonging to the Burma Oil Company. For half an hour, the German gunners bombarded over 130 shells at the city,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-45133280675347921362017-06-18T15:32:00.003+05:302017-06-18T15:49:02.223+05:30The War on Misguided YouthAditya Sinha's amusing New York Times piece on the Indian bureaucracy's love of euphemism:
If the “War on Terror” had been undertaken by the government of India, it probably would have been called the “War on Misguided Youth.” That’s because in the 1980s and ’90s, when New Delhi was trying to suppress separatist movements in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam, each official speech and classified documentUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-17956417724361574672017-06-18T15:22:00.000+05:302017-07-04T11:05:12.040+05:30Slang Sighting: 2×2 TalkiesVia the city guide Mumbai Boss, now defunct:
Gaysi, the chaps behind LGBT open mic night Dirty Talk, return this Sunday, April 6 with 2×2 Talkies, a series of film screenings that borrows its name from the street lingo that denotes a place where gay men meet covertly. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-18023611353341491962017-06-18T15:10:00.001+05:302017-06-18T15:10:59.607+05:30Slang Sighting: DowntwoThis was described to me as a slang term for testicles, used at St Andrew's School in Bandra, Mumbai. 'Bugger, I'll kick you in your downtwo, you'll go crying for your mama'.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-27037670312931821982017-06-18T14:44:00.001+05:302017-06-19T14:19:55.102+05:30भाखा बहता नीर: language is like flowing waterI'm not too sure where I came first across this line of Kabir's, which describes his views on language in a pithy epigrammatic style, contrasting the dead Sanskrit of ancient religious texts with bhakha or bhasha (literally 'language'), the colloquial living language of his time which he used in his own verse.'संस्करित है कूप जल, भाखा बहता नीर' it reads: Sanskrit is like stagnant water in a wellUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-81432309445473462732017-04-16T13:02:00.001+05:302017-06-19T14:54:20.046+05:30Preponing 'prepone'For those who haven't come across the word, prepone means to move something to an earlier date or time: quite simply, it is the opposite of postpone. Prepone is widely regarded as an Indian English expression and is often cited as an example of Indian bureaucratese, a clunky babuism like 'do the needful'. Nevertheless, a lot of people find the word reasonably useful and it is gradually being Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-10875779208315633672017-04-12T04:05:00.001+05:302017-04-18T13:01:44.943+05:30Dipping into Fallon - 2“I am glad, sir” said a lady to Dr. Johnson, “that you have omitted all improper words from your dictionary.” “I hope I have, madam,” answered the surly sage, “but I see you have been looking for them.”
One test of a dictionary's usefulness is the number of rude words it contains, its stock of everyday slang and coarse language. The lexicographer's approach to these words matters a great deal tooUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-56967228973948393432017-04-12T02:14:00.001+05:302017-04-18T13:31:07.398+05:30Hi-Hello Friend
Hi-hello friend Colloquial term for a casual acquaintance, fairly common in online forums. Most of the examples I've found seem to confirm my hunch this is primarily an Indian English expression (apart from the odd example from Africa).
Once I happened to meet a guy who was just a HI HELLO friend at that time, we used to come in same shifts, chit chat and just say BYE. (Tech Mahindra Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-61241737583456980132017-04-02T12:42:00.003+05:302017-04-03T02:05:44.991+05:30Dipping into Fallon's Dictionary
S W Fallon’s A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (1879) is regarded as one of the most remarkable works of Indian lexicography. With its illustrations from folklore, proverbs, songs, and literature, it is a lot more than a mere dictionary: like that other great glossary of the colonial era, Hobson-Jobson, it carves up an entire culture and serves it up in tasty, chewable bits. Fallon took up Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-91580825357350734182017-03-26T12:00:00.001+05:302017-03-27T19:47:40.872+05:30The Libtard's Indian Cousins
Anyone who's observed or participated in a political discussion in recent times is probably familiar with the word libtard, a derogatory term for anyone with liberal or left-wing political views. It's a portmanteau word, formed by grafting 'liberal' and 'retard' together, which should tell you that this is a fairly offensive slur. I can't find anything online that establishes definitively who Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-58650988633693166312017-03-19T09:50:00.001+05:302017-04-03T01:58:26.053+05:30Shroffage
The South China Morning Post runs a language column titled Language Matters by Lisa Lim, which occasionally picks up Indian words that have been adopted in Hong Kong English. Many of these words are the legacy of a shared colonial past, borrowed by the English in India and taken by them to the other colonies they ruled in Asia. A recent column deals with one such word, which is now rarely used Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-87343373746049167492017-03-12T09:44:00.001+05:302017-04-03T01:54:03.271+05:30Catty Christs in Kolkata
Since I haven’t posted here in a while, I have a backlog of links to share. For starters, here’s a Caravan essay by Chitralekha Basu on how English turns Bengali in Kolkata. The passage I’m quoting here provides some some examples of Hobson-Jobsonism from the 19th century Bengali satire Hutom Pyanchar Naksha:
Plenty of instances of tweaking and twisting English may be found in Hootum Pyanchar Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-11202188998469018542017-03-02T10:27:00.002+05:302017-04-03T02:00:53.041+05:30'A Nose like a Pontiac'
Parsi Bol 2 is an updated edition of Sooni Taraporevala and Meher Marfatia's very entertaining book on Parsi insults, endearments and other Parsi Gujarati phrases (see below). This one adds over 300 idioms, illustrations and a CD of phrases voiced by theatre actors Dolly and Bomi Dotiwala, as well as film actor Boman Irani.
A selection of colourful, eccentric phrases from reviews of the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-49147767018752864622014-01-16T10:18:00.003+05:302014-01-27T10:42:42.457+05:30Bawalogy
Parsi Bol, a Gujarati-English phrasebook which catalogues the caustic insults and salty lingo of the Parsi community. From Time Out :
Photographer-filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala and writer Meher Marfatia have come up with a book called Parsi Bol: Insults, Endearments and other Parsi Gujarati Phrases. The book is a collection of 730 phrases, which the writers believe are as much Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-26901741693230003242013-05-23T19:47:00.001+05:302013-05-23T19:47:25.708+05:30Mumbai glossaryThe current issue of Time Out Mumbai has a glossary of "city slang, lingo and khali pili faltu giri". A few random selections that range from old favourites (ghanta) to recent coinages (raita phalana) to the mystifying (gajkaran, where does that come from?):
aand mat chaba Same as paka mat, although “aand” means the skin on the scrotum. Variation: aandwa. “Wear your Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-77004585465474243582013-05-05T10:42:00.001+05:302013-05-05T10:42:52.116+05:30David Crystal on Indian EnglishUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-37673388221072262702013-05-05T10:28:00.001+05:302013-05-05T10:30:24.494+05:30Daal gosht
A Mumbai Mirror report on street vendors of mobile phone porn includes some of their jargon. Read about kaand videos, staged to resemble amateur MMS scandal clips, and code words like daal gosht and pelampaal.
It's hardly a secret that several of the city's cell phone repair shops and SIM card kiosks that flaunt a computer, stock smut in secret folders marked by gibberish Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-54464857071316005962013-01-12T11:33:00.001+05:302013-01-12T11:33:39.880+05:30Your fadder-in-law's awlas and other ball curry talk
A crash course in the Bandra dialect from Jose Covaco
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-206981662387279882012-02-26T10:51:00.000+05:302012-02-26T10:51:26.560+05:30Anglo-IndianismsUnique words and phrases used by Anglo-Indians, via Dialect BlogUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-25393773499090313942012-02-13T09:58:00.001+05:302012-02-13T10:03:55.113+05:30Goat dressed as mutton dressed as lamb
Some day I'll write an essay about misnaming in Indian English: the many tangled reasons which lead people in this country to use the word swan for a goose, autumn for the rainy season, and so on. Meanwhile, here's food critic Vir Sanghvi on why mutton stands for goat meat in Indian restaurant menus.
Just as every MP begins his or her career with a lie – by saying thatUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8714948.post-3336005965959626952012-02-11T10:30:00.002+05:302012-02-11T10:39:25.709+05:30Vote BanksWith assembly elections coming up, the newspapers are full of the jargon of India's electoral politics. 'Vote Bank' is one such phrase, which refers to a bloc of voters from a social group - a caste or community or religious minority, say - which can be counted on to back a specific party or candidate consistently. But who coined the term, and how did it come into use? This column by Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0