November 24, 2011

The rape of the whore and language

Language is a very very strange thing. Especially Indian languages. Some of the words of a language will be similar to a word that means something else in another language.

I hadn’t really understood the full extent of this until I came to Hyderabad. I got to hear so many words here that would mean something very different, and sometimes scandalous, in another language. Like:-

Reppu- It means ‘tomorrow’ in Telugu. The word of often gets shortened to a very simple and plain ‘rape’. You can imagine my shock when I first reached here and heard everyone says ‘Rape rape’, right? :/

Randi- Hold your dirty mind. Let me first translate. ‘Ra’ in Telugu means ‘Come’. ‘Andi’ is used as a term of respect. So ‘Randi’ loosely translates to ‘Please come’.

Now put (1) and (2) together. Say it out loud.

You get what I’m saying about ‘scandalous’? The first time my friend Arun heard this, “Reppu randi”, he was so shocked, he couldn’t speak for a while, which is a record in itself. Then he thought, “What a disgusting place! They discuss so openly about raping! I have GOT to get to know these people better!” Ok, maybe that last bit is not true.

(In case you haven’t got it yet, ‘Randi’ in Hindi means ‘whore’)

But it didn’t stop there. There were some other gems too.

Palli’ (with the ‘ll’ pronounced like the sound in ‘love’. Malayalam has two different sounds for l, if not more) in Malayalam means ‘lizard’. So I was sitting at the Necklace road station one night, waiting for the MMTS back home. This old man comes with a basket, calling out ‘Palli palli’. For a minute, I thought I had heard him wrong. But no, he was saying ‘Palli’. I was wondering why he was selling lizards. Was it like a popular snack here? When he came closer, I peeped into the basket and saw that it contained groundnuts, because, well, ‘Palli’ in Telugu means ‘groundnuts’. :/

We had all gone for a field trip to Medak from HCU once. We were at this organic restaurant to have dinner. Some of the boys had finished their first round and were calling for the second round. That’s when my friend S, a Jammu ki kudi, heard one of the boys call out “Pappu pappu!” And she was like, “Arre waah, yeh tho waiter ka naam bhi jaanta hai!” (Oh wow, he knows the waiter’s name also!). Oh it was so much fun to explain to her later that ‘Pappu’ in Telugu means ‘Dal’! :D

I still remember the first time I heard my Punjabi neighbour Aunty’s mom ask “Beta kundi lagaya?” and I cringed. You guys know what ‘kundi’ in Malayalam means, right? It means one’s private parts, or as Russell Peters would say it- Punaani. :P I still laugh whenever anyone uses that word in its Hindi context!

I was also very confused the first time I heard people here use the word ‘Gaali’ for no apparent reason in their conversation. It also turned up in songs. And I genuinely couldn’t understand why ‘Abuse’ would be a part of romantic songs! I later learnt that ‘Galli’ means ‘Air’ or ‘Wind’. :/

There’s this song in Telugu that starts with ‘Kuthire Kuthire’ (‘th’ like the sound in ’the’). And I thought, "Oh nice! A song dedicated to horses." Because that’s what it means in Malayalam. I hadn’t seen the video of the song, so I asked a friend whether the video has horses in it as a backdrop or something. With a pained expression, he explained that ‘Kuthire’ in Telugu means ‘Set ho gaya’, or ‘It’s all set’.

Equally confusing was when I heard “Kallu baagundhi” for the first time in Telugu, which translates into “Eyes are nice”. Kallu in malayalam, with the heavy ‘l’ sound and not the one in ‘love’, means toddy. :/

There are so many more such language mishaps that I can’t recollect right now. But let me tell you, each one of them has left me flummoxed and wondering at those people who were just too lazy to create words for each language, so they threw words from one language to another, and expected us to be ok with it.

Have you had any such experiences with languages?

P.S:- I guest-posted for Keirthana. Please do drop in and have a look. :)

34 comments:

  1. I absolutely know about the mishaps with Telugu language..when I was living in bangalore...Most of my co-workers spoke Telugu and I was the hindi speaking one...imagine ..when randi word was being used so many times...when they wanted me to come... :P

    And also 'pappu'...but I got used to it..when I went a few times to have lunch at Andhra mess :D

    Languages are intriguing...sometimes..even there are two words in different languages which sound same and means same too.. :)

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  2. hehehe!! :P :P i've had the 'palli' experience a milliooonnn times!! :P :P
    hehe.. and in my mother tongue 'Karpu' means cockroach and once when i had been to a friend's place, we were deciding which coloue saree to wear and I see a small cockroach peeping out from the cupboard and shriek 'Karpp!! Karpppppu'! and she was like. ok chalo we'll wear the black saree.. apparently in her MT Karp means black.. :P

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  3. Omg, the same thing happens to me whenever I hear 'kundi' used in Hindi- just cannot stop laughing! My favorite language mix up is the Malayalam 'patti' and the Tamil 'paati'. Just a small emphasis on the 'aa' and you get a world of difference in meaning. :D

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  4. Oh ya, language has its moments - I remember our language trainer telling us that when we speak speak with Americans, we needed to roll our arse n enunciate our butts. :)

    Similarly they say that if a person frm north Kerala talks with one frm south, they'll most likely end up fighting :)

    Nice one, Spiff.. welcum back :)

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  5. Sooper Dooper Post :) Thank god, I had watched some Telugu movies (Of course, with subtitles) before coming here :) Still I had some trivial mishaps like,

    During one of the informal outings, my friend was yelling "dhandam ekkada?" Dhandam in Tamil means "Waste fellow" and I was wondering about whom he is referring. Then I came to know that he was asking "Where is the rope?" in Telugu :D

    Then, one day, my hostel owner asked me "Reppu selava neeku?" Selavu in Tamil meant expense. I was wondering why is she asking if I had any expense the day after. Seeing my confusion, she managed to tell me in Hindi that Selavu in Telugu is holiday :D

    And then again, I was talking to a Tamil friend of mine. I was persuading her to tell me something and hence used the word "Sollu" often which meant "tell" All my Telugu friends were looking at us strangely and when inquired, I came to know "sollu" in Telugu meant useless words/boring (Till now, I am not sure of the exact meaning, but they said it was slang for something like this) :D

    Any many more are there :) :)

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  6. Ha Ha, Awesome one. Super hilarious it becomes when we know its and bits of a language and still relate the words to a language we know well.

    Highlight was the 'Kundi', laughed my hind off when I once heard someone say Dekho Zara, 'Kundi' band nahi ho raha hai.

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  7. I can relate to these misunderstanding :P
    Gaali means wind or air in my mother tongue too and people in mumbai often get confused when I use this word while talking to elders in my language :D :D

    And yes kundi also means "plant pots" in Marathi..so I dint know what it meant in my mother tongue and I used it at my native to the horror of my cousins :D :D

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  8. ROFL! One more to the list ..Thuri means drizzling in tamil.. and in Malayalam .. hee hee!

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  9. I am a Bong/Hindi speaker and have stayed in Kerala for 3 years, have had many such fun/scary/scandolous experiences.

    First day at work in the elevator. I overheard this cute girl speaking loudly to a guy standing beside her:
    "Something..Something.....CHUMMA CHUMMA !!! Something..Something...."

    My first reaction: Woww.. Kerela is not the Conservative place I had imagined it to be.

    Chumma in Hindi means a Kiss

    After a few weeks, a new lady joinee joined my team and another guy in my team was talking to her:
    "Something..Something.....Swathi Kutty Something..Something...."

    This led to the dormant Chivalry gene in me rear its head while I started lecturing my team mate as to how he needs to learn to talk to ladies... BLAH..BLAH..... Company Policies..BLAH..BLAH...

    Found out later that Kutty is something you affectionately call a lil girl or a small sister... while in Hindi it means a Bitch

    Have tried to learn Malayalam with the help of my friends and colleagues many a times since then , but they all gave up on me and threatned me on listening to my pronounciation of the words and how I murder the Language that if I tried to speak any more Malayalam, they will end up murdering me.

    Cheers,
    Shrijeet

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  10. ha ha .. hilarious. I haven't been to andhra pradesh, so most of the words were new. But I have heard of the reppu one as a joke from one of my friends. I have also been realy confused when I hear thural in tamil songs as it means totally something else in malayalam.

    When I was working in chennai, my roommate was from north kerala (kannur) and her language was a lot different from mine. We wer walking in the rains one day when we came near a puddle , she suddenly said thullu thullu.. I thought sh went crazy as in normal malayalam, it means to do a kind of dance. But she was referring to jumping across the puddle.

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  11. hahah this is so hilarious! I speak telugu at home everyday but this is the first time am looking at it from a different angle!
    LOL.. Palli means lizard? Eww!
    Kallu means toddy even in telugu. But kallu (with a heavy l) means eyes.
    But yeah there were many such incidents with my north indian friends..They mix up all the words and genders and what not! Its so fun to teach them telugu!

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  12. hehehehehehh awesome yaar
    REPPU RANDI!! Now i will piss of some people aorund me :P
    Thankyou for this

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  13. how did u miss ANDA???
    hindi 'anda' is EGG-u (kola veri effect) and tamil/malayalam 'anda' means huge vessel

    ANDAVULA ANDA cheyya mudiyumo???

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  14. @Kunal: Oh this 'randi' thing was like a big shock to me! :O

    @Viya: Karappu means black in my mother tongue as well! :D

    @Krishna: :D Ayyo paavam paatti!!:D

    @R-A-J: tell me about it! I'm from North Kerala, and I know exactly how we talk! :/

    @Keirthana: Oh this 'selavu' thing had me confused too. I was wondering why people were asking about 'tomorrow's expense'. :/

    @AS: Hahaha! :D "Kundi bandh nahi ho raha!!" :D

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  15. @maithili: Oh kundi has such a meaning also?! :O

    @Bhargavi: Stop!! I know what it means in Malayalam! :D Ayyo!

    @Shrijeet: Most non-malayalam speakers face the 'Chumma dilemma' the first time they hear it. :D
    Thanks for dropping by. :)

    @Sunitha: I'm from North Kerala, so I would know. :D We also say 'chaadu', which normally means 'jump', for 'throw'. Having lived mostly in South Kerala, the first time I heard this in my native place, I thought somebody took the rotten vegetables and jumped! :D

    @Chandamna: Hehe. the next time you eat palli, I know what you're think of! :D

    @Red: My pleasure. Please go scandalize people. :P

    @Akila: :D We don't use that word for big vessel in Malayalam much, so I didn't think of it till you pointed it out. :D

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  16. Haha, lovely post. Very well written.

    I have both telugu and tamil relatives, and I'm used to such language misunderstandings on both sides. Often, I'm the only one that gets it and I have to do the explaining. But it is hillarious!

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  17. "People were just too lazy to create words for each language, so they threw words from one language to another, and expected us to be ok with it."- haha exactly man... they were so weird man... reppu randi :P .. lol this was hilarious :D

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  18. My friend cum roomie is a cheppandi, but born and brought up in Kerala. Last night she was telling us an experience her mom had the first time she landed in Kerala.
    It seems in Telugu "Kappa" means frog. And when she heard the vegetable vendor going around telling "Kappa, kappa", she thought he was selling frogs :P!!!
    Really interesting are the linguistic differences!!!

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  19. a very interestin post miss namibia :)

    reppu randi had me laughing hard

    im sure the recent kolaveri is the inspiration behind this post, eh?!

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  20. I never knew about all this! The only fact I knew about Randi was Randy Zuckerberg....

    When I was in hyderabad, the only word I noticed was, cheppendi :) and choos....they say choos a lot and it for some reason made me very uncomfortable :(

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  21. When my dad got posted to a cantonment in Maharashtra from Delhi, my mother once sent someone out to get a kilo of meat. He came back with a kilo of salt.
    'What is this?'
    'Meath, one kilo'
    'But this is salt. I had asked for a kilo of goat meat'
    'Aaah, mutton....'
    So now we know 'meath' in marathi means salt.

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  22. I have thousands of comments on the reppu randi :D making it almost my favourite telugu worlds. :D heheheh.

    lovely post. made me crave for my beautiful city.

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  23. I almost fell over when I read the title wondering how you're going to explain THAT away:D

    And I actually DID fall over laughing about the kundi bit:P

    Kuthire:P I was imagining a field of horses and the hero and heroine on them, does that make me a true-blue Mallu with a wild imagination?:P

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  24. :-) Hell!!!!!Now how come so many words in Telegu and Malayali simply have not so pleasant meanings in Hindi???:-P Does it work the other way around too....????

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  25. LOL! you have captured the flavor of the post just so perfectly!

    The bengali words are hilarious cz of their accent. Well, I just blank out whenever any south-indian language is spoken, so i can say little about the words that scared me to the death..

    :)

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  26. So true spiff and so hilarious. My cousins used to laugh at me every time I used to tell my mother, 'Amma njan kundi ittu' :D, when we were at Kerala during summer vacations. I stopped used the word when we permanently shifted to Kerala...;)

    One of the professors at college told us about her experience. She told her Tamilian servant boy when he was talking too loudly, 'Ninte samsaram sheriyalla' and that guy got violent it seems. Later, the Professor discovered, Samsaram means wife! :D

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  27. HAahhahha loved th ereppu randi bit, and esp the 'kundi lagaya' one, am a mallu, and could never hold my laughter when i use to hear them frommy neighbours (They considered me slightly retard, till i told them wha it menas)

    I was teaching a friend mallu, and the only word he remembers is RANDU ... cz it apparently rhymes with a word, and well it has semblance to randi :D ..

    LAnguages are super cool, embarassing and fun, am i glad i was born in India or wat...

    Yuck imagine eating groundnut now :P ...

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  28. @Sumitra: :D Good luck with that!

    @Confused soul: :P

    @Deepthi: Ah! That's one more word I've learnt in Telugu.

    @kalpak: No no, not at all. This has been going on in my mind for some time. Kolaveri song doesn't really have anything to do with misunderstanding in a language, right? It's basically just bad Tamil and English. :)

    @TheBluntBlogger: 'Choos' basically means'see'. And yes, I agree, it's wuite a weird word. :D

    @Subroto: Didn't know that! Thanks for the info. :)

    @Srinidhi: Arre, come back here no then. We'll party together. ;)

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  29. @PeeVee: That was exactly the effect I wanted the title to have! :D

    @Rahul: The other way round, let me do some more research. :P

    @Express: I like listening to Bengali. It sounds lovely! It's as though everyone's put a rasagulla in their mouth and is speaking. :)

    @Destiny's Child: Seriously?? Samsaram in Tamil means wife??

    @Menachery: Oh I have no qualms about eating groundnuts still. I'm used to it by now. :P

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  30. Ha Ha very funny.
    I am a Bengali girl married to a Malayali guy. Here are few more funny translations I came across..
    Chor- Thief in Hindi/bengali, but rice in Malayalam.
    Mundu- Funny way to say 'Head' in Bengali, dhoti in Malayalam.
    Poti- Granddaughter in hindi, a potli type of bag in Malayalam

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  31. Mujhe aapke post pe bada 'fukr' hai... ;-)

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  32. Really rib tickling post :-). Reminded me of my school days.

    Our Marathi teacher would read from one of our lessons: "Shaam...kundit maati tak" (Shaam, put mud in the plant pot)...and all the mallu and tamilian kids would go into a giggling frenzy. It was a long time later when one of the parents explained the mallu meaning to the teacher.

    I wonder how she must have handled students in her future classes after coming to know this.

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  33. Hehe.. lol thats a good one. Even i speak telugu, toddy means 'kallu' in telugu as well. Kanulu or kanllu means eyes (there is 'n' sound here). OMG.. palli means Lizard?? Yakk!!

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  34. i used to wonder what munda means in hindi...in telugu it translates as bitch(randi) lol

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