Talk! Parlate! Parlez!

As I sit here at work struggling to translate some adverts I wrote into Chinese (Why! Oh Why do 1.5 billion people in this world speak Chinese! Makes so much more work for me), I'm left laughing at all the fun translations of simple sentences that Babelfish and Google Translator come up with...And then I wonder what I sound like when I talk to people in a language other than English (though the less charitable among my friends will claim I sound just as horrendous in English).

Well, my mother tongue is Konkani. Apparently, I was some sort of child prodigy who at age 3 could recite the Ramayana and Mahabharata in chaste Konkani and would spend my time correcting assorted great grand mothers as to the purity of their language (Then, like now, I guess I had nothing better to do) Note: These great grand mothers were all about 2 *hours* removed from a village..so this 3 year old Bombay boy correcting them when they say "kalingan" instead of the more orthodox "bacchang" for watermelon didn't go down too well with them.
Ah well...they're dead now. I'm still alive. Though my Konkani (after it's usual meanderings through life at Catholic school where we were told we spoke the language of the devil...apparently God speaks English .. that too Bandra-aunty English) has now been sadly corrupted into a Bombay mishmash, I can still look upon with happiness those days of superiority over old, semi-paralyzed women as one of the triumphs of my sad sad life.

I also speak English. Well, I don't think so. I used to be far better when I was in school. I read my old English composition ("compo") books today and don't know what half those words mean. And my handwriting? Wow! I'd give myself an award for it (Then again, I'd award myself for pretty much anything...You got up this morning? Congrats! Here's your medal!). Though my accent has gone all over the place..Went from "Generic Bombay school kid" to "I'm not vernie" at college to "Keeping up with the Peddar Roadites" in Engg school to "Desi FOBulous" in Virginia to "middle-class Bostonian" in Boston to "Bandra aunty" today.

Hindi? That was my strong point in school. Imagine! A kid who never even spoke a word or even heard anyone in the family speak it till he was in the 5th grade...suddenly I'm up for the Highest marks in Hindi award in 10th grade! Ages 12 to about 16 had me speak Hindi like I was some sorta pundit from the Ganga belt (probably around Varanasi)..without the annoying bhaiyya accent but with the flowery-showery lingo and vocab that the cis and trans Ganga folk have. NOw? I sound like a Punjabi aunty who lived in Goa for a while. Hello-shello men, aaj kaise ho dude?

As for Marathi, I refuse to talk it ever since the Shiv Sena made such a big deal about people like me not being Maharashtrians..like it matters. My people were in Bombay while their's were still starving to death in some god-forsaken village in Amravati and they have the balls to call me a foreigner in my own city? No more Marathi for me, thankyouverymuch.

Gujarati I learnt thanks to my group in Engg. school..all Bawas and GTHs (Gujju'turned'hep..I mean "hayyp"). I haven't had the chance to use it yet seeing as the ones I know are all the HS Juhu-Lokhandwalla/Peddar Road types...refuse to speak in Gujju to anyone..and if they have to it's in a nice America-ni-accent.

I learnt French in school and polished it (off?) at Alliance Francaise in Bombay..the one on Homji Mody street. Somehow I fell in love with the language and how it sounded. The tenses were a killer though but saying the list of "etre" verbs every night before bed helped me out a lot. Of course my accent is somewhere between Mauritian Creole (my teacher was one) and Montreal immigrant. S. thinks I sound funny when I speak it. Well, D'uh! It's hard to sound sane when you're mouthing things like "The rain, it falls today" and "My mother short puts the book thick on the shelf"

Italian I picked up at the Boston Center for Adult Education..because there as here, I was bored all evening with not much to do. Read somewhere (Probably "Lonely Planet"...*not* the travel book..I mean the Bible for singles..) that it's a good hobby and a nice place to meet other people. So I decided to pick Italian for Beginners (alos a very nice Danish movie) along with "How to make the perfect lasagna". At the end of six months, I could make a perfect spinach lasagna and order a 4 course meal at a posh Italian resto. The downside? My married Italian instructor (a woman I might add) fell in love with me. And since I didn't know the words for "your husband will kill me" ("Il vostro marito ucciderà io" as I found out later), I was forced to come out to her during a very weird meal at Legal Sea Foods..("No no, non è voi, esso è io, sono omosessuale!")

The less said about my forays into Arabic (sounds hot..a bitch to read though) and Hebrew (sounds like me gargling and spitting), the better. My forays into Finnish, Russian and Yiddish remain confined to the basic vocabularies and learning wildly inappropriate songs..

And now back to translating into Chinese. How does one say "Java script modulator" in Chinese? I wish I were dead!

Current music:
Hai Hai - The Punjabi Hit Squad

Please don't judge me..but I love this song.