I guess it’s my turn to start. In a couple of previous entries, Rae and
I have written about language challenges we’ve faced. Today, I am picking up
that loose thread. You may hear that everyone in India speaks English. Well
that’s not true. You have read before of the language issues Rae has faced with
various workers. Unskilled laborers rarely speak English. The best educated
speak English quite well. Everyone else falls somewhere between. Even quite
educated people often shift back and forth between Hindi and English, even in
the same sentence. The advantage to this Hindi/English is that I often catch
enough English words to keep up with the general thrust of conversations. My vocabulary
is growing but if the conversation is totally in Hindi, I am lost.
Actually, sometimes even when the conversation is entirely in English I
get lost. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, Indian English accent
takes some time to get used to. This has to do with cadence as well as
pronunciation. I think I mentioned that during a meeting shortly after I came
here one of the managers told me he sometimes had a difficult time
understanding me because of my accent. What? My accent? Well, I have tried to
adapt at least to some of the local cadence and pronunciation so I am easier to
understand. So, when I get back if I apologize for reaching you on your mo-buy-l, don’t assume I am just quoting
Friends. Besides, I probably wanted to reach you on your mobile. Part of the
issue with lack of understanding has to do with use of some colloquial expressions.
It is often commented that Britain and America are two countries separated by a
common language. Throw in the differences in cadence, pronunciation, and accent
and you have India and the US.
Often, if I am trying to figure out what to call something, I ask
myself, “What would I call this in the UK?” That doesn’t always work but it often
leads to the right word (such as chemist rather than pharmacist). A friend gave
me a list of common India English words and phrases. In hopes that it will
prepare and inspire you to come visit, here are a few items for you to memorize:
India US Use
Belong to come
from Where do you
belong to?
Bunk skip John
bunked school today.
Cabin office Which is
your cabin?
Colony neighborhood We live in Friends Colony
West.
Cribbing complaining She
was cribbing about the heat.
Flyover overpass
He stood on
the flyover watching the traffic
Fresher recent
graduate Many of our students are
Freshers.
Geyser (pronounced GHEE-zer) hot water heater No hot water. The geyser is broken
again.
Gravy sauce The gravy on
the fish was very spicy.
Hoarding billboard Turn left just
after the Honda hoarding.
Hostel dorm
Many
of our students stay in our hostel.
Jab injection I got a jab at the
doctor’s office today.
Ladyfingers okra The
ladyfingers in masala are delicious.
Out of station away Phil was out of station that
day, in Nepal.
Prepone move
to earlier The meeting was
preponed to Tuesday.
Revert reply I will
revert next week.
Savings account checking account We have a joint savings account.
Shift move When did you
shift to India?
Specs glasses He put on his
specs to read the sign.
Tube light
bulb We seem
to go through tubes too fast.
Tuition tutoring I need tuition
to learn Hindi.
Now that I have reviewed those phrases, the rest
of the blog lies (she has or has responsibility for) with Rae.
Well, another week has passed and I continue
to learn new things, get frustrated by some of the same old things, and become
more comfortable with my surroundings.
Let me start by saying that I can feel a
slight change in the weather. It is
still warm and a bit humid, but the humidity is certainly less. The windows in my house are no longer foggy
and I don’t want to die if the power goes out and I know there will be no AC
for a while. I can even turn the AC off
in some rooms at least for a while. I
can even walk outside to get into the car and not feel like I need to go back
inside for another shower. I feel that
there is hope that it will eventually cool off enough that I’ll be excited
about going out to see some of the sights and visit the open air markets. I am excited to do that, just not when it's so hot.
Yesterday it was my and Phil’s turn to help
clean our church building. Let me say
that even though it is a bit cooler, by the time we were finished, I was soaked
in sweat and more than ready to come home and shower. We will include a few pictures of our
building from the outside, but they will not show some of the unique features
of our building on the inside, so I’ll try to explain a bit about how things
are inside. Phil told me years ago the
building used to be the home for a wealthy family, which has been remodelled into
our Church building. If you think of a large two story home rather than a
church, you may have a better visual image. Here are a couple of pictures of
the outside, just off the entry.
There is a lobby as you enter, but the lobby
is rather an open air room and so there is no AC for that part of the
building. Off of the Lobby is our chapel
area, a doorway to an outback patio (which is where our baptismal font is
located), a couple of classrooms and a marble stairway that leads up to another
open area with a few classrooms and the Branch President’s office off of
it. This inner corridor has no AC and so
moving from the chapel to the classrooms means a trek thru this warm inner
area. Also, any gatherings or baptisms take
place outside on the patio area, so those are always toasty in the summer
months. The chapel and each of the
classrooms have individual AC units and ceiling fans, so they are usually
comfortable as long as someone bothers to turn them on or the power doesn’t go
out. Here is a thought that I’ve had,
there are doors that close the Lobby to the outside, and so in my US mind I
think…they could just close those doors, add AC units and that inner area could
be so comfortable, I wonder why they don’t think of doing that?
There are some things about cleaning our
building that are things I’ve always thought would be a nice feature for any
home. Often as I’ve cleaned my bathrooms
I’ve thought that a room with a drain and tile floors and walls would mean that
I could just hose the room down. Well,
that is just what we do for parts of the building. There are tile floors and walls in the
bathrooms and drains in the floors.
There is a tap that connects to a hose with a spray nozzle that is
located next to the toilet (a version of a bidet) and so it makes hosing down
the bathrooms pretty slick. The lobby
area upstairs, the stairs and the lower lobby are all marble, so they are also
hosed down. There are large squeegee like
tools that are used to move the water off the floor, down the stairs and out
the lobby doors. I know I’ve talked
about the black soot before, but it is amazing to me to see all that black
water that comes off those floors. Some of the other aspects of cleaning the
building seem fairly antiquated and not very affective. I’ve already made mental notes of some of my
own cleaning things I will be taking with me for our next time.
I think I’ve mentioned before that our
kitchen was rare from other kitchens I looked at, in that it had an oven. When we looked at the flat, the person
representing the landlord said that they were going to replace the stove/oven
unit. That didn’t happen and it turned
out that the oven didn’t work. I’ve been
both disappointed and frustrated that I haven’t had an oven. A couple of weeks ago the landlord showed up
with a toaster oven. I was shocked and disappointed
if that’s going to be my oven. I asked
the landlord if he wasn’t going to replace the other oven. He said later, and we all know what that
means. Anyway, I do have a sort of oven
now and have done some baking, just don’t plan on any 9x13s or cookie
sheets. Today I made an entire dinner for
the 1st time since I’ve arrived here. It was both fun, fulfilling and frustrating
[Phil – and delicious!]. I have to do a
lot of adapting both with measurements, ingredients and equipment, so I was
pleased that it turned out as good as it did.
I think I’ll try to do this occasionally just so I don’t completely
forget everything. Below are a few
pictures of my stove/oven equipment, and also the finished project.
Well, I’ve probably kept you spell bound long
enough with my captivating writing skills.
Hopefully next week will have some new adventures to share. Possibly something exciting like trying to buy
the vacuum I think I want.
Namaste.
No comments:
Post a Comment