The radio jingle blares in my ear, informing me that Emami cooking Oils are heldi and testy. The great Indian English is made SO MUCH worse by the horrid Bengali mispronunciation. This has been a pet peeve for a long time, and it continues to set my teeth on edge. The heldi I can sort of ignore with a giggle and a smirk, but I keep getting tripped up by the testy oils. What, I wonder does a testy (khitkhite) oil sound like? Like, every time you reach for the bottle, to start cooking your favourite dish, does the oil go “what the hell do you want now, eh? More of me? Eh eh? Butter and ghee not enough for you? What is it with you people?” etc etc.
The very next
ad to come up is about “drink driving”. He was caught frink driving and charged
a fine of five thousand rupees. All the while, I am wondering what “drink driving”
is. Driving alcohol trucks? Taking barrels of drink from one place to another?
Another favourite
of mine used to be the ad for some kind of wall/home waterproofing product
which promised to make your home dump proof (damp proof), lick proof (leak
proof), etc.
Then there
is the retirement home near my place called “the piss” (as written in bangla,
using the smaller I symbol/matra) as opposed to the peace. Or my ex student,
who at a job interview, told the panel his favourite hobby was slipping. (that last one is wrong on so many levels,
never mind the horrible pronunciation, WHY would you tell a potential employer
that your fav thing to do in the world was sleeping?).
This is an
old problem with Bengalis…. Sheet/shit, sleep/slip, keep/kip, heart/hurt …
there is no difference in the way they pronounce it, and hence are perpetually
messing up the way they transcribe it in Bangla and spell it in English.
And then,
of course, are the universal and ubiquitous errors like “mas edje” – not message
(which is what they mean), not massage (which they cannot pronounce at all) but
some weird hodge podge bastardisation that EVERY ONE seems to use!
and they
seem quite happy with the way it is…. Making no effort to correct these errors
or learn the correct pronunciation, usage or spelling!
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