Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Dial B for Violence

Everybody has friggin accents. Even the goras have accents, even though they'll be shocked if someone suggests that to them. But in a world of such variegated accents, some are funnier than others. The Mallu English accent, because of its obvious laughter inducing effect, has to be one of the most done-to-death accents in the world (probably one rung below Italian English). Which other accent has whole TV and radio shows dedicated to it? In office, I begin every day by clearing my inbox of mails which make fun of the way we pronounce 'auto' and 'office' sent to me by north Indian friends who think they are the first ones to discover the peculiar traits of Mallu English. I have seen all the Mallu accent-mocking mails that there is to be seen and honestly, they are not funny anymore. It's time they started sending me something different - like funny Bong English accent mails.

In my opinion, the Bong English accent has a lot of potential which people have not exploited fully. This was revealed to me a few days back when Kunz (yes, this is another one of the Kunz posts!) was very animatedly explaining to me the reasons for Kolkata Kinght Rider's disgraceful loss to Mumbai Indians.

Me: The KKRs are a bunch of losers, dude! Look how Mumbai Indians beat the shit out of them. Dada should go drown himself in the Hooghly.

Kunz: Nahin yaad! They lost because the peach was bad when Dada was batting.

It took me a few seconds to figure out that he was not blaming the quality of peaches and plums for the failure, but the quality of the pitch.

Kunz, unfortunately (or fortunately?), has a habit of shortening the 'ee' sound when it should be long and lengthening it when it should be short. The only times he says it correctly is when he says 'Eeesh!" (which is a popular Bong exclamation) and "Pheesh!" (which is a popular Bong food). On second thoughts, his pheesh would sound better if he shortened it to fish.

Once, Med had come home after roaming around Chennai seeing the sights and generally doing the experiencing-the-city thing.

Kunz: Where did you go, bitch?

Guys calling each other bitch may be fashionable in some circles, but neither Med nor Kunz belonged to such circles. Before anything unpleasant happened, I explained to Med that what Kunz meant to ask him was, "Where did you go? Beach?"

There are many such instances, one of which was at the end of a tiring day at work when Kunz declared that he was feeling like 'slipping'. By now you know the rules of Kunz's English and shouldn't have difficulty figuring out what he actually meant.

The lengthening and shortening of 'ee' is quite easy to figure out once you have heard Kunz speak for some days. But sometimes enigmatic gems emanate from him which takes a lot of effort in deciphering - like the one time he came to me very frustrated and declared that he badly needed to improve his 'bhaarbhal' ability. After about half an hour of tough mental gymnastics (sifting through words like 'barber' and 'bar-bell' to fit into the sentence), I too came to the conclusion that he badly needed to improve his 'verbal' ability.

But the one that takes the cake is this one:

One day I was sitting at my table, trying to post something on my blog, when Kunz came up to me.

Kunz: Hey, what is your hard dick's size?

I was shell-shocked and didn't know what to reply. Getting no reaction from me, he repeated the dreaded sentence, this time pointing to my laptop (and thankfully not to my lap). He was talking about my hard disk!

I've noticed that people from the North-East in general and some Bongs cannot pronounce the word 'disk' properly. Reminds me of the many times Tomba used to come to my room in college asking me whether he could 'have my hard dicks' when all he actually wanted to do was borrow my hard disk so that he could copy some movies. I have, since then, done the 'disk test' on many Bongs and North-East guys and most of them have failed, with hilarious consequences.

PS: Kunz has steadfastly refused to read my posts about him, maintaining that it's for my own safety - he says I won't be able to handle the 'bhaiyolance' that he'll unleash upon me. But I have a feeling he's been sneaking in to read when nobody's looking. So Kunz, if you're reading this, I'll continue to bombard you with the links until one day you read it in front of me.

[Other Kunz posts are here and here.]

17 comments:

silverine said...

Lol!! Kunz if you are reading this, we love you! :p

I have grown up with a Bengali friend so am familiar with all the terms you used here. I had Bong Physics teacher and that was disaster. Bholume of the Bhessel (Volume of the vessel) to Bhelocity (Velocity) to Shit (Sheet). On hindsight I should have compiled all that. It would have made a neat post. :)

g-man said...

lmfao! put up a pic of kunz next time around and give everyone in your office the link to the posts :D if that doesn't make him take notice, nothing will

mathew said...

ROTFL!! awesome..!!;-D
Kunz might be the hit at the Dick'sos in town!!

Philip said...

silverine: lol..you should still compile that. There is only so much one person can do.
Physics classes would have been so much fun :)

g-man: I don't think I can risk putting up his photo...all the ladies will stop paying attention to what I have to say ;)

mathew: Dick'sos...ROTFL! Good one.

Karthik said...

And another style is replacing the a's with o's. And also adding 'h' before o. So 'Sonar Kella' becomes 'Shonor Kello'

:)

g-man said...

which is why you have photoshop >:)

Anonymous said...

Hahaha...bhery goood! But do you realise, Bong accents are probably the second-most spoofed after Mallu accents. Of course the Grand North believes that everything south of Mumbai is one homogeneous group (Yennada rascala, mind it!). What each southern state says of the other is another story altogether - being a Tam, I've heard various not-too-flattering references to other other idli-chomping neighbors as well. Ever experienced that?

Philip said...

karthik: That's the first thing that comes to mind when we think 'Bong'

g-man: hmm..i may try it out some time ;)

ideasmith: Much honoured :))

Of course. Denigrating other south Indians is a Mallu pastime rivalled only by political debates in chaya kadas.

Sidharth said...

Hilarious man . Esp the the HardDick reminds me of Russel Peter mocking Indian names .Harddik and Suckdeep (Sukdeep) lol

Philip said...

sidthekid: Russel Peters is awesome :))

man in painting said...

That was too good."Eh bullete is going from eh gunne...."I still remember my physics professor Rengaraja Iyyer...
Very very good writing.

Unknown said...

:D I had a funny experience with a chap who is from the western part of our country. He needed to give me a set of files for a project we were doing togethor. He said he would 'gip' and send them to me. I will admit,as a person who takes pride in being aware of the 'hip' jargon in my line of business I was hurt by my own ignorance. Gip.. is that a new file extension someone introduced? Could it be a Google alternative to the Sky Drive? Anyway my online searches were churning out some weird results and I decided to wait. The dude said he would send it. Let me receive it and then I will crack it, I thought. It finally arrived and I guess it would suffice to say I was a little disappointed in finding a certain 'zip' file in my inbox sent by my Gujju friend.

Indian Madder said...

Hilarious!! :-D

My best pal's a Bong, most of my profs were Bong, and so are the colleagues in my team!! Had these sporadic 'bhaiyolent' outbreaks of Bonglish as a result.
Am mailing you the 'Bengali alphabet' fwd....a bhaery intreshting one if you haven't read it!

Philip said...

man in painting: Thank you :)

midhun: Good intro to the world of jeeros and jip files :)

zahra: Thanks. Even Kunz had a bhaery bhaiyolent outburst after he read this. I'm lucky to have saarbhaibhed.

Thanks for the fwd. I had seen this some time back, although I couldn't find it when I needed it to write this post ;)

Acroyali said...

well, in bangla there is no phonetic sound similar to the "Z" in english. so it's always jebra crossing. also, the "Sh"s instead of "S"'s are shoshally axe-eptable. :D

Love your posts btw.

nishita said...

oh mieee gowd i am having a really boring day at work and ur blog has me laughing out loud much to the chagrin of my collegues...

we had a teacher who taught construction(a subject which needed loads of drawing on sheets)

daily she used to enter the class and shout..
"take out ur shits and spread them on the table..." ha ha aha aha

Philip said...

acroyali: LOL! Thanks for dropping in :)

nishita: Glad to have brightened up a boring day.

"take out your shit and spread it on the table"..ROTFL *ouch, my side hurts* more ROTFL.