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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Patience Little one

Grandma is back. Tamizh comes back with Grandma because she insists on talking with the kids in Tamizh. They usually reply to her in Tamizh.

The five month grandma absence has turned the Little one to almost 100% English.

A conversation between Grandma and the Little One earlier today:

LO : This is my bow bow doggie. (the toy pooping doggie)
GM : Tamizhla sollu! (say it in Tamizh)Say "idhu ennoda poo poo doggie"
LO : This is my poo poo doggie.
GM : say it "in Tamizh"!
LO : Gives her one frustated look and goes "This is my poo poo doggie in Tamizh!"

We pretty much saw Grandma's middle stick uproot. Clean bold!

The score : Grandma out for a duck and Little one has figures of 0.1-0-0-1

Let us see how Grandma does in her second innings!


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We all fall down..

The little one is in the rapid volcabulary increase phase.

Her baby talk is almost falling off and she is now responding in sentences, very expressive sentences.

She says "Damaal Vizhundutten" or Damaal fell down.. the Damaal is a Tamizh word for the sound of the crash (like boom , bang etc.)

Today she was reciting nursery rhymes with her grandma..

Grandma opens the page with Humpty Dumpty and she goes

Humpty Dumpty sat on a Waaaa
Humpty Dumpty had a Damaaaaal

That is the new Tamlish version of the rhyme for you!

Who knows, she might become a famous Tamlish rap star, write lyrics for Tamizh movie songs and I wouldn't have to worry about her college tuition in the late 2010's!


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Counting in Tamlish

Most of you have read this post from a year ago!

Since then Jr.'s grandpa taught her how to count 1 to 10 in Tamizh on the last India trip. She remembered it for almost three to four weeks. Then things disappeared from her memory and now she is back to square one!



Funny thing is, she did this once, did not even realize what she was saying was wrong and counted again for the video, and still did not realize her mistake! So innocent! Finally we had to remind her of Onnu, rendu , moonu!!


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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!