The Art of Desifying English

There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks all.



“Chuchyu!” the girls at work would yell, and throw the negative back at us for a “re-kar”. If you didn’t understand, neither did they ... at first. While working at the One Hour Photo we owned, my husband and I would often slip in and out of two languages. Speaking macaronic English had the girls baffled till we taught them a few relevant Gujarati words. The English word ‘fluff’ just doesn’t cut it when you are explaining a bit of lint on the negative, which caused a white blur on the print. “Re-kar” was a Re-do.

I hear the Hispanics also have their own lingo or code-switching as it is officially called. An example: Since there was no place to parquear at the marketa, the nerdo and his amiga just went to hanguear out at his casa to studiar. However, Spanglish is easier to understand because of the cognates.

Not so with my language. Call it hybridization, bastardization, gujjufication or just plain Gujlish. It is not just a matter of anglicizing it and interspersing a word now and again. We are adept at conjugating Gujarati words à la anglais. We are good at shekofying jeera, bafoing daal, chalofying lot, talofying puris and vanofying rotlis, and can turn leftover rice into a vagharofied culinary masterpiece. The more time we expend in cooking, the less we spend manjoing the pots and pans and ghasoing the bathtub.

On the way home from a party, my young nephew Dhaval would ask plaintively, “Did I paj, Mom?” And his father would answer grimly, “I will let you know at home whether you pajjed or not.” What is the bet he got a thappad or two at home? I don’t know whether he had chadowed his younger brother or chavi-marowed him into doing something mischievous.

As I fold the clothes, I ask aloud “Whose chaddies are these?” My husband cringes. Why can’t you say ‘underwear’, he pleads. It’s too generic, I answer. Besides, would you rather I ask you and your son “Whose panties are these?” He cringes again, blushes and leaves the room.

We also tend to Gujjufy everything. Yosemite becomes Yashomati, tortillas become rotlis, chicken nuggets become bhajias, ouzo becomes valyari no liquor, tsatziki becomes raita. And don’t tell the French that we call crepes dhosas.

It doesn’t stop at Gujarati. All languages in India are fair game. If you can have Gujlish, Hinglish is not far behind. It is not uncommon to hear Bombayites bitch about stuff: “So I masca-maroed him a bit, gave him some chai-pani ka paisa and then only he did some proper bandobast.” We could give the Navajo Code Talkers a run for their money.

The Bombay patois includes butchering Hindi, thokoing Bollywood dialog and the liberal use of profanity - mc and bc, harami and halkat, sala and kamina. (My husband’s probably going to make me wash my pen with soap for using these words). And then you have the desi’s all-time favorite word ‘bloody’ - used as an adjective (‘He’s so bloody bindas!’), as a prefix (as in ‘bloodyidiot’ and ‘bloodyswine’), and as a tmesis (abso-bloody-lute gaddha). Gappa-maro-ing and doing altu-faltu talk wouldn’t get you into too much trouble with the local lafanga, but do enough fandagiri and dadagiri and it will evoke a menacing “I’ll give you one dhaap now, yaar!” or worse: “Abbey, Haramzade! Mere saath fuck mat kar!” If I were in this situation, I wouldn’t fafamaro, but hightail it out of there fatafut.

And speaking of Bollywood movie titles, they’ve got in the game as well: “Jab We Met”, “Love Aaj Kal” and “Love Khichdi”, “Aage Se Right’ and “Ao Wish Karein”. Even the song lyrics now switch back and forth between English and Hindi with ease, or even Spanish as in the case of the popular Jai Ho song from Slumdog.

Being bilingual comes extremely handy when you do not want to be understood by the goras. Unless of course you are dumb enough to say something like “Yeh waiter ekdum slow hai!” or dumber when exclaiming, “Abhi mat dekho. Bahut famous actor hai,” which is what happened when I saw one in a store in New York. Naturally, my friends whipped around immediately to gawk... and then got mad at me, because apparently Jeff Goldblum is not considered ‘a famous actor’ in their book. So sue me if I do not shop in the same stores as George Clooney.

The English language, in this case, is pretty much useless. As the official language in 53 countries and a third of the world’s population speaking it, you would probably have to go to some remote island (Palau?) if you wanted to use English as a secret code in one of your khitchdee blends. Which is why my kids and I use a mix of German and Gujarati. Try that on for size. Koi no phone avay, to kahe, ich bin nicht zu Hause. Would that make it Germarati or Gujarman?

Apparently everyone has gotten the hang of code-switching. Mix Spanish and Portugese and you get Portuñol; French and Japanese - weird as it sounds - gives you Franponais. I have heard a Japanese speak French and I swear I thought it was Swahili. Throw any two languages you want in a blender and you can come up with a salmagundi of strange combinations, some identifiable, some not. Finglish is obviously Finnish and English, and Serblish is Serbian and English, but Telegu and English gives you Tenglish and Tagalog and English gives you Englog.

As if 6800+ languages in the world were not enough.