Time: 11:30 pm
Location: Comm. Street signal (seems to be a jinxfully eventful place for me)
I'm on my bike w/family. Cops doing their drunken-driving-check routine. I was clean, so didn't have much to worry about. One cop stops us, comes near. Of course he doesn't have the breathalyzer. Gets kissing distance to my face, and asks
'Alcohol?'
My bravado of having nothing to fear turns to adventuresome. Mustering up all of the 3 and a half Kannada words I have learnt, I decide to give it a shot. And utter one of them.
'Beda.'
Cop sniffs; grins a bit, shakes his head, and walks away.
I immediately realize what I just said. And ride away without telling the wife what (really) happened.
-----------
Kannada speaking readers have got it. For the rest, here's what it is.
In Hindi, the word for "No" and "Don't want" is effectively the same - "Nahi"
XYZ liya? Nahi.
XYZ chahiye? Nahi.
Same with Gujarati. "Na" does it both.
Kannada, however is more like Marathi
'No' is 'Illa' and 'Don't want' is 'Beda'
Just like 'Naahi' and 'Nako' in Marathi.
Now, when I (try to) speak a few words of Kannada, I always try to overlap what I know with a language I really know. The decrypting language I used to use was Hindi. Since that night, I changed it to Marathi.
4 comments:
Really funny! Cheers to that!
@Deepanker: Which reminds me, we haven't 'cheered' for a while. High time! Let's meet up with ACE man. I won't take 'beda' for an answer.
ROFL! *snort snort! funny-funny man strikes again!
would it make you happy if i said a bunch of people had a hearty laugh @ today's breakfast thanks to you? :D
PS: whats with today's work verifier.
earlier on another blog it lecherously said "whinksi" at me, and now its saying "barrf"
@Meg. Glad to make your breakfast entertaining.:)
PS: your post script footnote really confused me until i realized you meant 'word' verifier.
Post a Comment