The homework assignment for Photo school this week..
Commute!
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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 small but wonderful heart
Was putting Jr. and the little one to bed last night.
It was a long day for me and they both knew I was dead tired. Also mom and grandma were out watching a movie.
So Jr. decides to break out of our usual Ragam quiz routine and sings "Giridhara gopala" for me. My eyes almost closed and I dozed off and they nudged me back.
Me : someday when I am old and lying in a hospital bed, will you two sing giridhara gopala for me just like you did now?
LO : why are you going to go back to the hospital?
Me : No. I am not talking about now. this is a lot of years from now when I am older and you are also older and you probably have kids of your own. Then?
Jr.: what if we forget this song?
Me: we have your youtube video right? just bring it to my ears and play it for me if you forget the song
LO: We won't forget the song. maybe we can have our kids sing to you just like we sing to Grandma right now on videochat?
Me : (this girl correlates things just like I do.. this is truly amazing to see how she connects things).. Yes. you can do that.
Jr. : But what if we have boys instead of girls?
Me : You have a boy in your music class don't you? you can teach boys to sing. Daddy is a boy and he is teaching you, no?
Jr. : But what if they are not interested?
Me : you can get them interested. keep singing to them and encourage them. tell them they are doing good. really good.
LO : Daddy, I love you. I really don't want you to go to a hospital when you are older.
Me : okay, enough of this topic. just remember we talked about you singing for me okay. let's all go to bed and sleep for now.
The little one's face when she said it made me so guilty for even bringing this up. Sometimes we say things without thinking through the consequences, especially when we are tired.
With little kids, you are never sure how far they understand what concepts at what age.
For now, the conversation is forgotten or is being made light of and the girls are back to being their giggly selves.
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