A little bit lost in translation
on Roundabouts in Delhi (India), 08/Feb/2011 18:52, 34 days ago
How not to make friends in HindiFor eight weeks now I’ve been greeting our landlady with the standard greeting of, “Namaste Aunty G,” feeling relieved that if the rest of my Hindi fails me I’m at least greeting her in a respectful way.  It wasn’t until tonight I found out that her name isn’t Aunty G at all. In fact when Zoe had said to me on moving into the flat, “you must greet the landlady as Aunty G because it’s respectful,” she had been saying Auntyji. “ji” the prefix to greet someone respectfully.I was grateful that my mistake was probably easily disguised on this occasion but I was also a little disappointed to be honest. I hadn’t really questioned where the G came from I just thought that her name must begin with G and that it was an endearing term. It also made her seem quite cool, like the landlady of the Delhi hood, which she sort of is as her empire is continuously growing. New tenements keep appearing where there was once a roof terrace and the other day she beamed when we met her on the stairs and said, “my house is very big now!”A similar incident occurred when I said to a colleague of mine the other week,“it’s a lovely day isn’t it,” and he replied, “yes, lovely, super bad!” It seemed a bit out of place but I thought perhaps he was using western slang to put me at ease. He must of noticed my puzzled frown though and repeated it several times over then gestured for me to repeat until I realised it wasn’t super bad but ‘suprabhat,’ the Hindi for good morning.To help me along my local vendors have started to speak only in Hindi to me, partly for their own amusement I think, often falling into peals of laughter when I attempt to respond in Hindi, but I believe it’s well meant. This evening when I proudly explained to our vendor’s mother, “Mei Hindi sikh rahi hoon” (“I’m learning Hindi”) she made me repeat it three times over for her son, husband and other customers that had just arrived, each time laughing a little bit harder. I only hope shewas laughing at the sight of an English girl attempting to speak Hindi and not because what I was actually saying was something entirely different.