Appa, she is kusu vutting!

Now that translates word for word from Tamlish to:

Daddy, she is farting!

When you have a household that speaks a mixed tongue, where words that are neither here nor there make up more than 30% of the vocabulary, life gets to be interesting.

The English speaking folks can only understand part of the conversation. The grand parents and relatives in India look puzzled in the video chats over the weekend because they are not sure if they heard things right. The only people who understand the kids and the parents in conversations are other kids raised in America or parents raising their kids in America who have the exact same mother tongue.

Yes. A tamlish kid speaks a different dialect than a Kannadlish or Telugish kid.

Much like a North Indian will perceive all south Indian languages to be similar sounding and lump them all as one, a Hindlish parent or kid might lump all these dialects as one.

That said, it is really funny when the parents also start talking like the kids!

Why we do it is beyond me. Maybe we think it will be easier to get through to them? We think it is cute? It makes sense being Tamil speaking people in America and somehow optimizes the total number of words that have to be spoken to convey the meaning in both languages simultaneously?!

We speak sentences like

"Appa, can you come pal thEch me?" = Daddy, can you come teeth brush me?

"Appa, the meen is kutty pOtting!" = Daddy, the fish is baby dropping!

etc.

Nakking (licking), kudiching (drinking), thodaching (wiping dry), etc. are one set of variants where the verb starts of in Tamil but ends up as some kind of gerund with the "ing" ending.

Then there are the variations like "doneaa?" which gets a response "donnu!" where the english word gets the Tamil ending added to it to convey question vs. answer, active or passive voice, or tense!

doneaa = are you done ?
Donnu = yes I am!

This is how a tamizh concept gets ported over to Tamlish

There is one more variant.

"Daddy, can you kadichy saap my tummy?" which kind of translates to :
"Daddy, can you bite eat my tummy?" which is their way of saying
"Daddy, can you blow raspberries on my tummy?"

Note that Kadichy is close to Kadichu (or bitten), but saap is shortened for Saaptu (eaten). Now when two action words are chained back to back, the second one gets chopped. An English concept now gets carried over to Tamlish!

Sometimes, we are misunderstood, but mostly we get the best of both worlds!

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A for Apple, B for boy, C for...

The little one came back from school. As usual she had a couple of sheets of her workbook exercises in her bag.

One of them had four pictures on each page and a row of three alphabets next to the pictures. She had to circle the starting alphabet for what was in the picture.

She had circled the 'c' for carrot etc. etc. and there was one mistake..

There was a picture of a bunch of potatos and she circled 'a' instead of the small 'p'.

Me : Why did you circle 'a' for this one?
LO : I circled 'a' for AALOO silly! but they said it was wrong.

the way she said "it was wrong", shaking her head from side to side was just amazing! Have seen kids who refuse to call a Tomato a "thakkali" at home, because it is not what their school teachers call it.

The little one is different.

A for aaloooo!

What can I say...

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Same Same but different

Conversation overheard:

Little One : What mammu (food) are you going to make?
Grandma : Rasam
Jr. : What about More (More in Tamizh is buttermilk!)
Grandma : A little confused because she thought Jr. is mentioning the english word "more" for more Rasam rice..

then while I feed the kids, Grandma decides to start a game..

Kids, lets find out other words that say the same thing, but mean different things in English and Tamizh!

Jr. : Poo !
Grandma : How? (me looking puzzled as well, How?)
Jr. : Poo Poo means two flowers in Tamizh (saying the word twice apparently counts as two flowers!) and Poo Poo means what we go in the bathroom!

we started laughing out loud and that is when the little one chipped in with

"I have another word.. I have another word"

As the equal opportunity daddy, I ask Jr. to keep quiet and say

"Okay LO, your turn now! Tell us." and the response?

Potty! It means grandma in Tamizh and bathroom in english!

Jr.'s mention of Poo Poo led the little one to think Potty and she made a connection with Paati vs. Potti!

Slight pronunciation difference.. but she gets points for being creative!

Now the question for the readers.

Is there a single word for this in the english dictionary? Same phonetically sounding word, that means different things in different languages?!

Let me know. In the meantime we will explore more such words and hopefully we will move away from the bathroom to living room related words!

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Why two sets? (updated)

Jr. was having some fun with an english workbook she got as a gift. This is now our usual routine in the evenings.

Today she had to answer a question which was :

_______ went to swim.

the three choices were

Him
I
i

She figured out that Him was wrong as soon as she read that option.

Then she looked at me and asked me a very profound question.

"Daddy, why do we need two set of letters with all this uppercase and lowercase stuff? Why can't we have just all uppercase or all lowercase?"

I really do not have an answer for that one! Why? Why?

Now, I have a question for my parents!

Was I smart or lazy enough to ask that question when I was learning english? and if I did, were you proud of me?

Why do we need two sets of letters people? Answer me!

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Anon commenter... Just a thought!

THIS IS SHOUTING

THIS IS NOT SHOUTING

i rest my case

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now I have another question.. Does Tamizh have ! in the alphabet, punctuation.. I have to go and read about the history of punctuation marks. Tonight's homework..

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Do you still hold on to your..

Big, Fat, Red...

"Wren and Martin" English Grammar book?

Do you go to sleep happy in the knowledge that this book that created something close to a Stockholm syndrome inside you, is tucked away in a loft somewhere, halfway across the globe?

Do you know in the bottom of your heart, that in spite of going through this book from cover to cover over a three year period in middle school, you somehow thank those dudes who came up with this book for helping you grasp a language that has opened many a door for you, and continues to do so?

Do you get flashbacks of this book on a chapter to chapter basis starting from "The Articles", to "Gerunds, participles" to Precis writing? Are they flashbacks that evoke mixed emotions and you start tossing and turning?

If you are going, Yeah, Me too, that's right!, it is high time you join the Wren and Martin Anonymous club that I plan to start..

We can discuss about our middleschool english grammar experiences..

Do they still use this book in CBSE schools today?

Has this book now changed in thicknes, color, addded authors..let me know! Sometimes, google doesn't tell everything!

Going to have some sweet dreams of subjects and predicates.

Now stop counting the number of mistakes on this post, will you?

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