A friend of mine related this hilarious story the other day. Her charming and social mother-in-law, quite the lynchpin of their family’s business enterprises, while talking to her about an error made by one of their managers, said “..and when I learnt about what happened, I went to his room and banged him!” Stunned silence from my friend B., before she realised that her MIL was using the term as a synonym for ‘reprimand’. Suppressing a giggling fit with some difficulty, she then explained to her MIL that not only was the usage incorrect, it could also be completely misinterpreted – and how! The MIL, a formidable lady, is fortunately not without a sense of humour. She burst into laughter and said “Now I understand why, a few weeks ago, I got a few strange looks from the (mostly young) sales team when I told them that whoever did not meet their targets would be banged by me!”
I desisted from asking if the sales went through the roof that month.
*
B’s story reminded me of an incident involving my friends K and M. K’s been brought up in the US, and after she and M got married, moved to Mumbai with him. A few days later, they were both at the butcher’s, and K, watching the mutton being cut into pieces for her, told the butcher “Arre Chutiya, thoda liver bhi dena”. The butcher’s hand – tightly gripping a bloody cleaver – froze in mid-air as he fixed her with a stare, unsure of how to react. M, for all his portliness, turned a sharp 90˚, not quite believing his ears. With one wary eye on the butcher, he furiously hissed “What did you just call him? Do you even know the meaning of that word?”
Long story short, apparently K was under the impression that the C-word was a synonym for ‘bhau, bhai, bhaiyya, brother’. She’d apparently used it earlier with some rickshaw-drivers, with no adverse reactions. (I can’t figure out why….were they deaf?) Anyway, M apologised profusely to the butcher, citing K’s unfamiliarity with the language as the reason for the gaffe, and they both retreated. With the cut of meat (and some liver), of course. Gaali or no gaali, lunch is lunch and dhanda is dhanda!
The Quirky Indian 
November 17, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Pliss, I want a rubber. two rupees?
November 17, 2008 at 6:08 pm
When I was a school going kid I remember going to my teacher very enthusiastically and telling her that my fren needed urgent medical attention as she was having an headache in her stomach….I still squirm when I think about this incident he he he…
Having stayed in Gujarat for 5 years I now can take English in any form and I seriously I have stopped making face when people say ‘Excuse’ instead of ‘Excuse Me’
November 17, 2008 at 7:12 pm
My son said the boys in his class call each other ‘bhai’ in fun. I thought it was dumb, and said so. Then daughter says, she was glad I didn’t know what the boys in her class call each other, maybe K in this post heard them 🙂 I had no idea my daughter’s innocent ears had ever been polluted by such words …
Jokes aside I really wasn’t plissed.
Smita’s comment above reminds me of ‘Rap Dance’ and ‘West side’ pronounced in Gujrati accent 🙂
November 17, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Makes my Phys Ed teacher’s : Stop loffin, headmaster is rotating in the corridor : quite tame
November 18, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hi QI – In moving to the UK, I embarrassed myself a few times in the early days as I struggled to get to grips with the UK English. In fact, my colleagues found themselves blushing often enough at my gaffes that they started apologising ‘Sorry. He no speakey the English.’ We laugh about it now, but it did cause some embarrassment at the time.
November 18, 2008 at 2:20 am
🙂
November 18, 2008 at 6:17 am
There was this girl in our office who addressed every guy as “Hey Brother”. Till a guy replied back, “I dont think my father did anything to your mother”.
That was the last time we ever heard her use that word 😉
August 24, 2009 at 8:50 pm
girl could have replied,”.. ya, but you don’t what my father had been doing..”
November 18, 2008 at 10:55 am
It’s absolutely amazing the kind of things that people come up with while trying out new languages! 😀
My Hindi is mediocre at best, and I once asked a storekeeper in Kolhapur, “Bhayya, aapke sabse bada chaddi dhikaao!”
You can imagine the looks I got! 😀
November 18, 2008 at 12:43 pm
imagine a MIL type aunty banging the living day lights out of a young-ish man, this is so not desi…
November 18, 2008 at 1:51 pm
India Trivia Time:
What does chutiya mean? Literally, that is.
You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t know what it means but use it nonetheless.
For the record, almost all of us are chutiyas, literally. I know for a fact that I am. No offense meant of course
Similiar case with saala, except that this one is quite workoutable. 😛
Hades,
The Times of Bullshit
November 18, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I actually have heard quite a few people from the older generation use “banged” in the sense of reprimand. Do you thin it could have been slang in quite a different sense during the 60s/70s?
November 18, 2008 at 6:28 pm
lol bang is an acceptable slip..but the other one..and that too of all the places in Mumbai!! and worse to a person who had a cleaver in his hand! Shes damn lucky to have escaped with a stare ;P
November 19, 2008 at 5:20 am
rofl.. Ages ago, My 10 yr old sister used chinar instead of anar in Delhi. We didnt know the difference, it was a slip of tongue for her. but people at that fruit stand were shocked,
November 19, 2008 at 10:34 am
@Priyank: welcome to my blog….I had completely forgotten about how we misuse the word ‘rubber’… 🙂 …..but I am all for kids learning about rubbers and sex in general….
@Smita: well, you remembered this…so I guess your memory is not that bad, is it? 🙂
@Indianhomemaker: I think schooldays today make our schooldays look like Sunday school…..and don’t tell me you’ve never heard ‘gift-wrap’ in Gujarat!
@Ritu: Or ‘rats are jumping in my stomach’! 🙂
@Liam – that’s interesting….what kind of gaffes could one make….or are you talking about the ‘schedule-route-missile’ bit?
@Kartikey – glad you enjoyed it!
@Liju – LOL! That’s hilarious…..yup, I’m sure that would have made her stop calling men ‘brother’!
@Nikhil – ha ha….but did you manage to buy the chaddis?
@Tazeen: those are really disturbing visuals! 🙂 Not desi at all…
@Hades – you’re right, we’re all literally chutiyas….but the literal meaning is not what is implied in popular usage…..and the tone and intonation used make it an affectionate term, a mild rebuke, a strong gaali and so on….
@Apu – welcome to my blog. Thanks for the comment. I am not aware of the usage you mention…..perhaps some other reader may have some views?
@verbivorehere: 🙂 I think the butcher was just stunned to hear the term from a woman who, in his eyes, seemed ‘prim and proper’…..and the unfamiliar accent must have also thrown him…
@sraikh: Welcome to my blog and thanks for commenting. I wonder how they would have reacted if it were a young man who had made that mistake?
November 19, 2008 at 12:23 pm
@QI and @Apu:
‘Bang’ as used with an object and meaning to pound or hit violently comes from Old Norse ‘banga’ which means to beat or to hammer. In Low German, ‘bangen’ means to strike. The use goes back 5 or 6 centuries.
Many old people often use words in their original sense. It is a shame that new generations only seem to know slang.
Some words make a come-back. Indians use the word ‘tiffin’ (Old English) which some old British people seem to know. Now a business called Tiffin Bites does brisk business supplying Indian lunches in the Banking district of London.
Another one – British people normally use the expression ‘wee wee’ to suggest urinating for children. My neighbour tells me that her mother, who was born in India and is a formidable English lady, uses the term ‘su su’ like Indians do, and as do many old English people.
November 19, 2008 at 12:32 pm
@Shefaly: ‘bang’ used for ‘hit’ or ‘strike’ is something most of us are familiar with…I am not sure about ‘bang’ being used for ‘rebuke’, ‘scold’ or ‘reprimand”….in fact, I am pretty sure that the usage – as mentioned in my post – is not prevalent, even as slang.
November 19, 2008 at 4:42 pm
ROFL! I want to know whether anyone in the sales team did not perform!! 😉
Student enters class to make announcement. Makes announcement and thanks the teacher. Teacher turns and says, No mensun.
‘Keeds… silence now. Take out beelogy textbook. Finish your job now’
We were not polite kids. The beelogy ticher went out of the class crying. And I thanked the teacher again & again just to hear no mensun!
Great blog btw 🙂
November 19, 2008 at 5:40 pm
@Shefaly
Calling ‘tiffin’ a word from Old English would perhaps be a bit incorrect. It is very much a word from Modern English.
The word was introduced into India by the British in the 19th century and was in use by the British till into the 20th century.
Old English had all but died out by the 13th century. I doubt the language (Old English) ever had any contact with India.
Yours Didactically,
Hades,
The Times of Bullshit.
November 19, 2008 at 11:22 pm
@QI:
Can’t say I’ve heard the use of “bang” to mean “reprimand”. But you never know. Very often errors and slips of the tongue get passed on/handed down and pretty soon the wrong usage becomes accepted usage. But I’d wager the slang meaning is not well known either in this part of the world!
@ Hades:
I wonder what you mean by “Old English had all but died out by the 13th century”. The base vocabulary of English is Anglo-Saxon (Old English) – animal names, body parts, names of days, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs … Roughly half the words in English are Anglo-Saxon in origin. Even back then during the Middle English period, Chaucer promoted Anglo-Saxon words over Norman French borrowings.
Also, Shefaly is correct. The word “tiffin” derives from “tiffing”, an Old English dialect word for ‘taking a little drink or sip’. The British in India adopted this word to refer to the Indian practice of taking a light mid-day meal before dinner. The word was fashioned in British India (19th century) but has origins in OE.
November 20, 2008 at 1:54 am
Heard last week, when one of the Indian Passengers on my flight was arguing with the steward – “We departed 30 minutes late from the destination” (our flight had took off after a delay of 30 minutes).
November 20, 2008 at 2:08 am
Well, language used improperly becomes funny. Language used properly too often can become irritating: http://blog.gadodia.net/top-10-irritating-expressions-which-ones-do-you-use/
November 20, 2008 at 3:01 am
QI–Thanks for the funny post. The first one made me laugh a lot.
November 20, 2008 at 12:33 pm
@ QI – Perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe happened on my second or third day on the job. I was talking over some marketing copy with my female colleague and my female boss. We were discussing the correct punctuation for the piece. Still new to the UK, I did not realise the British word for the American word ‘period’ was ‘full stop’. You can imagine how well received my grammatical advise was received.
November 20, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Smoke Screen,
Of course in the strictest sense of the term most languages never “die out”. Case in point: Sanskrit. Modern Bengali and Hindi use many words which are either derived from Sanskrit or lifted from it. But that doesn’t mean we speak Sanskrit or Sanskrit hasn’t died out.
Old English, as a language in its own right, was all but gone by the 13th century.
“The base vocabulary of English is Anglo-Saxon (Old English) – animal names, body parts, names of days, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs … Roughly half the words in English are Anglo-Saxon in origin. Even back then during the Middle English period, Chaucer promoted Anglo-Saxon words over Norman French borrowings.”
True, true. I’m unsure about the measure (half) that you use but no doubt Old English has had a tremendous influence on Modern English. However, I again reiterate that the two languages were, well, two very different languages, the former having ceased to exist by the 13th century.
“Also, Shefaly is correct. The word “tiffin” derives from “tiffing”, an Old English dialect word for ‘taking a little drink or sip’.”
Ah, yes! If Sheffaly meant the word tiffin has its origins in Old English, then she might be right. I assumed she meant the word tiffin was a word from Old English.
Also, I’m afraid the word tiffing was also in use into the 19th century. Later on I could provide you references but now I’m (supposed?) to be working. 😛
Hades,
The Times Of Bullshit
P.S: Apologies QI for making a very funny post extremely boring with my comments. But its a horrible habit of mine-most probably, the reason why I’m single.
November 20, 2008 at 1:19 pm
We have a habit of referring to projects we are working on with acronyms. So, Information Management System becomes IMS. And then this acronyms is the only one that is used in meetings, communications, workspaces, etc.
Well, one oblivious project manager (male) didn’t thing too much about naming Profile Management System as PMS. Imagine:
1. How’s PMS doing?
2. What is the status of PMS.
3. Is PMS going to finish on time.
4. How many resources are on PMS?
The list is endless.
November 20, 2008 at 4:49 pm
@ Hades:
(If I may QI?)
Of course I’m not suggesting that we still speak OE! Modern English grammar, spelling and pronunciation are vastly different from OE. The point is OE vocab is a major part of English even today. (And this despite the fact that 85% of OE words went out of use in the 13th century itself.) That was why I asked what you meant by “died out”
The analogy with Hindi/Bengali and Sanskrit does not really hold I think, because
Sanskrit is not an earlier phase of Hindi/Bengali, whereas OE is an earlier
period of English. OE did not “influence” Modern English the way Sanskrit did
Indian languages; it evolved into Modern English. There is an essential difference isn’t there? All languages have such phases of growth.
You spoke of OE dying out by the 13th century. Let me just quote A.C. Baugh: “The
language which the Normans and their successors finally adopted was English, and while it was an English changed in many important particulars from the language of King Alfred, its predominant features were those inherited from the Teutonic tribes that settled England in the 5th century.”
English reasserted itself over French by the end of the 14th century precisely because
writers like Chaucer, and the common English man and woman, chose to use Anglo-Saxon words. It was English recognizably different from OE but with features carried over from it. That’s my point.
Your point that “tiffin” is 19th century is well-taken. Like I said its source is OE.
(My reference for English etymology is always OED.)
November 21, 2008 at 12:39 pm
😀
thanks for the laughs QI!
my bro when he was really small sent a story to Tinkle. in that he wrote the lion clumb the tree. and i STILL tease him about that!!
and bangalore has this unique expression of co-brother and co-sister. for eg your wife’s sister’s hubby will be your co-brother and NOT brother in law! :p
cheers!
November 21, 2008 at 5:00 pm
@ Smokescreen – Thanks for resolving Hades’s question eloquently. 🙂
@ Hades – I am known to be fairly (ok, extremely) pedantic so while I am guilty of a short-cut in this case, my import has been made clear by Smokescreen.
Hope that helps.
@ QI – How I love communities!
November 21, 2008 at 5:48 pm
“The analogy with Hindi/Bengali and Sanskrit does not really hold I think, because
Sanskrit is not an earlier phase of Hindi/Bengali, whereas OE is an earlier
period of English. OE did not “influence” Modern English the way Sanskrit did
Indian languages; it evolved into Modern English. There is an essential difference isn’t there? All languages have such phases of growth”
This, I must say, is an interesting point.
Actually, even I’d agree with you that the analogy was imperfect but my reasons are antithetically different from yours, I’m afraid.
When you say that OE evolved into ME (Modern English) and Bengali did not evolve from Sanskrit, what does that mean? I’m given to understand that OE influenced ME more than Sanskrit did Bengali. Thus the use of the word “evolved”.
Actually as far as ME goes, OE is just one of the languages to have influenced it. I would actually disagree with you that ME evolved from any one language. In fact this is precisely why English is such a messed up language with silent letters, wierd spelling and what not.
In fact here’s the break-up of word origins for Modern English from an OED website:
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.03%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages contributed less than 1%
As can be seen, as far as vocabulary goes, the Oil languages have influenced ME more than OE!
Now we come to Bengali (I’ll skip over Hindi due to its complex origins and multiplicity of very distinct dialects-imagine grappling with Urdu).
Bengali is mainly influenced by Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit. I, though, doubt that numbers would be easily available for Bengali as they were for English. However the huge influence of Sanskrit can be seen in Sadhubhasha where totshom (tatsam in Hindi) words dominate. For the record our National Song and Anthem are written in the Sadhubhasha style of Bengali.
So if anything, it would be more accurate to say that Bengali evolved from Sanskrit (not totally correct though) rather than ME evolving from OE.
Hades.
The Times of Bullshit
November 21, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Sheffaly,
” I am known to be fairly (ok, extremely) pedantic so while I am guilty of a short-cut in this case, my import has been made clear by Smokescreen.
Hope that helps”
🙂
I said: “Ah, yes! If Sheffaly meant the word tiffin has its origins in Old English, then she might be right. I assumed she meant the word tiffin was a word from Old English.”
Let’s simplify things here a bit. Here’s an analogous situation: the ME word pork is derived from the French word porc. But when you say, “I love pork”, pork is a ME word, not a French one since it has been comprehensively adopted by ME.
Replace pork with tiffin, French with OE and we have our current situation.
If you’re interested you get also check out this excellent site-it’s got a digitised version of the Hobson-Jobson. Instances of use of the words, tiffin and tiffing, in the 19th century can be found there.
Hades.
The Times of Bullshit
November 21, 2008 at 6:28 pm
@ Hades
Thanks for all the links but since you are mis-spelling my name consistently, and this being a discussion about details, I am not going to read any of them 🙂
November 21, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Ha ha!
I apologise profusely Shefaly and implore you to read what I’ve written.
Hades.
The Times of Bullshit
November 21, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Smoke Screen,
“English reasserted itself over French by the end of the 14th century precisely because
writers like Chaucer, and the common English man and woman, chose to use Anglo-Saxon words. It was English recognizably different from OE but with features carried over from it. That’s my point.”
A statement such as “English reasserted itself over French by the end of the 14th century” is a bit incorrect, I’m afraid.
Firstly, there was no “English” to speak of then.
Secondly, if by English, you mean the languages spoken by the Anglo-Saxons and other related Germanic dialects, I don’t think that’s too correct either. Words of French origin are almost as numerous or according to some sources (the OED link above) even more numerous than words that have originated from OE.
With English’s eclectic origins it’s best not to view English as having “evolved” from any one language or assume any language is an “earlier period of English”.
Hades.
The Times of Bullshit
P.S: I apologise if I have inadvertently made any errors in spelling.
November 26, 2008 at 6:56 pm
LOL indeed how various people decide to use other languages can lead to hilarious situations… One thing I couldn’t get over is how some people (mostly girls) use the expression “to freak out”… and when I tried imagining what they meant by it, I got disappointed finding out that they were referring to “going to cafe coffee day to meet a few friends, but only before dark because good girls don’t go out in the evening”.. Silly foreign me, thinking they’re out partying all night.
June 25, 2009 at 3:11 pm
[…] https://quirkyindian.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/pliss-to-be-minding-your-english-ok/ […]
July 15, 2009 at 7:04 am
Hahahahahahahaha! That’s all I can say. Both stories are too good. And in the second one, I don’t have a clue what the word mean BUT i do know it’s a swear word. 😕 😉
May 10, 2010 at 12:29 pm
HAHAHA! The 2nd one cracked me up!
You know, earlier I used to call every other person ‘uncle’. So, once this guy came to fix our computer and I was like “uncle, problem kya hain” and he stared back and he was like “main sirf bees saal ka hoon!” ..it was so embarrassing coz even I was 16 or something and after that ‘bhaiyya’ it is 😛
June 29, 2013 at 7:50 am
Also, using the word, “rubber” to mean eraser is not a misuse of the word. It’s still used in British English today.