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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Translating in your head

The kids have caught on to "vaadaa maaplai" a song from the movie Villu (which was played repeatedly on Vijay TV as part of singing, dancing competitions). They have also watched this song a gazillion times now on youtube and amused themselves with Vadivelu saying "bad girl" in his Tamlish accent.

Jr. even sings the song out loud and they both jump up and down in an attempt to dance to her singing (they have eluded the secret video so far. They stop dancing when they see me have the iPhone in the horizontal position.

So I just gave up and sat down to watch them sing and dance.

There is a line in that song which says "ratham varaadhu" which translates to "you won't bleed" or "no blood will come"..

Jr. actually sang "bloodtham varaadhu"!

I laughed and asked her why she sang that and she said "I know what the tamil words mean, but I go from the meaning in english to remember the Tamil song!"

It was amazing to see a six year old clearly understand what was going on in her head. What is really interesting here is that when it comes to English or Spanish songs, I would internally guide myself with Tamil for english songs and english for spanish songs.

Looks like speaking Tamlish in the house is not enough. It is very obvious that the primary language in our kid's head is English. Not that we expected anything different, but we know that Jr. thinks in english and then answers in Tamil.

Hopefully, a secret video will follow....



ps. the whole song is full of double meaning and the kids don't have a clue what they are singing.. while it is amusing to watch, it is also sad to see how a TV in the middle of your living room can influence your kids and how it is just not in your control .. then again, I have a reputation as a control freak dad already!




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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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Elementary, my dear reader

TV Reviews

No wonder, Jr. reads this blog every evening!


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The little devil

What does it mean, when a married couple who have Tamizh and English as their default languages, are seen speaking in Hindi? This from a couple who were recently seen talking to each other in "Spell"!

If you do not know spell, here is an example.

Dad : Do I G-I-V-E her I-C-E C-R-E-A-M today ?
Mom : A L-I-T-T-L-E

or

Dad : have to G-O T-O O-F-F-I-C-E soon etc.

There are two reasons..

1. Jr. has now figured out the English language in its totality. She can speak, write and read! That means, she KNOWS spell. That also means she is privy to information that we try to keep from the little one when we talk in Spell and promptly goes and tells the little one. This makes it look like we are conspiring against baby and Jr. is her guardian angel!

2. The little one now understands Tamizh and English to a point where she can embarass us in public. Here is a conversation from our trip to the east coast over the last weekend:

Mom : enga pora ? (where are you going?)
Me : Bathroom (in hushed tone). Watch them for a few minutes.
When I come back towards the stroller...
Me : lets go
Little one : (with a big smile on her face on seeing me walk towards her)

Daddy? Pooh-pooh DONE ?

I have no idea how she heard or caught on to the fact that I was visiting the restroom. She announced the question, in a tone that would put the airport public address system to shame. Everyone in Terminals A through C would have looked up and thought "Good for you Daddy. But why tell everyone at the airport?", and continued on with their business.

Now the adults in the family only speak in Hindi.

We are also planning to enroll in Chinese classes starting next quarter at the local community college as a backup plan.


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Little-ita!!

Jr. has learnt from daycare that when you add "ita" to something it means "little one". I do not know exactly which spanish words were used to teach that.

Armed with this newfound knowledge she has been ita-ing everyone and everything.

She ita'ed her name, her sisters name, said things like tableita, umbrellita etc., and then realized that Sangeetha was already a "ita". Of course she did not realize the spelling difference between "ita" and "eetha", but that is not surprising since a lot of people here in the US mispell my wife's name as Sangita!

Then she came up with a brilliant one.

Daddy, I am going to call myself "Sundareetha" because I am Sundar and Sangeetha's baby!

I was so impressed.


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Language transitions.

This morning Jr. is watching PBS kids and they show a small elephant.

Jr. tells her grandma:

"I think this is just a baby elephant!"

Just then, they show a bigger elephant.

Jr. : "I think this is the mommy and I think the grand elephant lives in Bombay !"

I guess the baby elephants grandmother could be called a "grand elephant".

Jr. is always creative (guess kids are creative by default) in expressing herself. The India trip has caused an upheaval of sorts on her English, err Tamlish!

We feel that Major Sundararajan's ghost is somehow circling our house! (FYI, Major was a Tamizh movie actor who used to repeat every dialogue in Tamizh first and then in English.. He would pick up the phone and say "Hello, who is calling? Yaar pesaradhu ?". Dont think the guy had a military background. Think he acted as a military guy in his first movie and got the Major title.. but I digress as usual and that is another post!).

Just to give you some examples of how her language has changed since the trip:

Before : I ate the apple pazham (pazham is fruit in Tamizh)
After : Naan apple pazhaththa eat pannitten ( I apple fruit eat did it)

Before : I am shy
After : I am feeling shy-aa irukken! (I am feeling shy I am)

After I put the lights for her in the bathroom and wait near the door :

Before : Go away! Stand outside the hallway
After : Go away pannu. Velila poi stand pannu. (go away do it. outside go stand do it)

She even says things like "naan read panni pannaren" which translates to something ilke "I read do am doing"!

Guess the message is being conveyed. No issues with that. But she has now one upped Major ! Major used to repeat dialogues in Tamil and English. Jr. does it in Tamlish and Engil. Yes, I have coined the term Engil to complement Tamlish. It is Jr.'s second language.

Yesterday I told her :

Either say "I am shy" or "shyaa irukken"!!, and I realized that I talk in Tamlish! I should have taught her to say "vetkamaa irukku".. but I have to hit middleground with the kids who respond in Tamlish when questioned in Tamizh.

Maybe after our next India trip she will talk 30% Engtamlishil and 70% Tamengilish.

Who knows!