People always say that the best way to learn culture and language is not through lessons and phrase books but to live in the place where that culture and language is practiced in everyday life.
For that I am thankful to be in Cosmopolitan Brighton where I've picked up many random phrases from friends over the years, from "studen umie" (I'm cold in Bulgarian) to "Yati Klani Togati" (My cat farted in Greek.)
During the first year of living with my housemate, I somehow managed to pick up a basic understanding in Urdu through observation of body language and tone of voices despite not having a clue what she was talking about to her parents or friends. Somehow or rather, throughout the three years of living with her and with the help of many similar words in Malay, nobody bothers to even translate the conversation to me anymore because they would talk in Urdu and I would understand 70% of their conversation and end up replying in English.
For that I am thankful to be in Cosmopolitan Brighton where I've picked up many random phrases from friends over the years, from "studen umie" (I'm cold in Bulgarian) to "Yati Klani Togati" (My cat farted in Greek.)
During the first year of living with my housemate, I somehow managed to pick up a basic understanding in Urdu through observation of body language and tone of voices despite not having a clue what she was talking about to her parents or friends. Somehow or rather, throughout the three years of living with her and with the help of many similar words in Malay, nobody bothers to even translate the conversation to me anymore because they would talk in Urdu and I would understand 70% of their conversation and end up replying in English.
The real test came when my housemate and her mum were in London and I received a call from her maid back home, asking for my housemate's mother.
"Oh sorry, Aunty is not in right now, she's in London."
"Ji."(Yes)
"Can I know who's speaking?"
"Ji."
(Awkward silence. I knew from here that this person spoke no English, and I didn't exactly want to hang up the phone on her. Somehow, I managed to tell her in basic, broken Urdu, that my housemate's mother was not there.)
"Aunty nahie he."(Aunty's not here.)
"Ahhh (Eureka moment) Aunty nahie he? *something something which I guessed to be Urdu for "tell her that I called."*
"Ah OK, shukria, bye." (Ah OK, thank you, bye.)
My housemate cracked up when she found out, as we always joke that I would return home to Malaysia more Desi than English after these long years in the UK.
Today, I ended up agreeing to go for a Bollywood film with my housemate, her mum, and 2 other Pakistani friends. I usually decline to watch Bollywood movies because they're normally three hours long with an intermission in between and I get restless after half an hour into any movie, but somehow I decided to go ahead with it today. Now with Bollywood movies, though they're in Urdu, I can't seem to understand much the way I understand it when my housemate and her friends talk. Maybe it's due to the fact that subtitles are conveniently available for me in English hence I just completely rely on them and don't bother trying to understand these characters, Anyway after 3 hours of anticipated song, dance, and overly exaggerated tragic love stories, one of my friends said:
"Kim are you tired?"
"No, why?"
"Did you enjoy reading the movie?"
"-_-"
No comments:
Post a Comment