What the...? Strange questions for India experts

Hey, thanks, finally I've found something to make relationships clear in a nice and polite way. Great.

federica, wrt my quote in your post, I realised that I was inaccurate.

Ji is a sign of respect.

Its the bhai thing which kills romance. (I have visions of legions of female indiamikers gunning for me because they called too many roadside romeos 'ji', with annoying results)

Captain, this whole discussion is just too funny and too enlightening!

One personal anecdote here: my yoga teacher calls me "ji" and I call him "ji". His girlfriend also calls him "ji", and his (male) friends also call him "ji". You had me worried for a moment!!

If I have understood it correctly, it is commonplace for "ji" to be used instead of the person's name, as a sign of respect. Not tacked onto the name, but just on its own. Please correct me if this is not the case.

True, very true. In fact I am probably older than the parents of my shop 'girlfriends'.

I forget whether or not this brother thing has been explained: the point of a woman calling a man 'brother' is that it both puts him in a category in which romance is unacceptable, and puts upon him the responsibility of protecting you from unwanted advances. Bummer, eh?

that could change at any time!!! so worry ye not!!!!
it could begin with a 'bhaisaab' - and progress to, just a 'ji'



:brishti

Captain, I understood that calling someone bhai means that romance has no chance anymore. A perfect solution for difficult moments

I was referring to the sentence:
Bhaiyya, ek chai dena!

Maybe I won't get the tea, but I'll be out of trouble.

In the best case, I get a brother and a cup of tea

Can anyone tell me the Malayalam/Tamil version please?

How wonderful to just be able to indicate 'just friends' with a word and have it understood instantly - just remembering those terrible teenage conversations which always ended in tears!

I know married couples refer to each other as "ji" and I thought it was kind of the same as "dear" or "darling" used as an address between couples in the UK. I didn't know it could be used as shorthand for any friend.

Here's a question: traditionally, husbands and wives don't refer to each other by name. When I asked what they use to call each other, I was told "suniye ji", which is a polite "please listen", right? This kind of doesn't work though, because what if you were saying, "Take a look at this for me, Bob, I think it needs fixing".
You can't say "Take a look at this for me, please listen, I think it needs fixing".

So what goes in place of the name in that kind of sentence? Other than "ji"?

I've also heard (and said) "ji" to mean "yes", to show understanding or agreement. I guessed this was a shortened form of "anji"?

I've never quite figured out when "achcha" is the best response (except as a kind of joking "Oh really?": "Achcha ji?").

Too many questions....

EDIT: And another one! Is "biscuit" the word for biscuit in Hindi? Because it seems to come out as "biscoot" (with the "oo" as in "foot"), and I can't tell if that's odd pronunciation of the English word, or if it's spelled like that in Devanagari.

My understanding of Ji (जी) meaning yes, is that it is short for हां जी "ha(nasal) ji", or जी हां "ji ha(n)", which is a bit more polite than just saying हां "ha(n)" on it's own. It is less respectful to say the "yes" on it's own, without the "ji" जी , so when it is shortened, it is the ha that gets dropped rather than the ji.

Hindi for biscuit is बिस्कुट - biskut - the "u" sound is the shorter "oo", as in "look", or "foot", rather than the longer "oo" as in "loo" or "school". (At least these hold in the way I pronounce these words - your accent may differ...)

Great stuff vireya. May I ask- what is the line under the "s" in the Hindi word biskut there? Does it link the S and K together so you don't get "bisakut"?

The longer "oo" sound would have the little line under the K going the other way, right?

And the T is that T, I didn't pick up on that before. That's really good, thanks.

I'm not sure how you are seeing it, but on my PC the s and k are joined together. It may depend which fonts you have installed. If you are seeing them as separate but with a small mark underneath, that would be the symbol which means the inherent "a" after the s should not be pronounced - ie, as you say, they are linked so you don't get "bisakut".

Yes, the longer "oo" faces the other way, like in स्कूल - skool, or in हूं - hoon - am (as in "I am").

I think just about any "t" sound in an English loanword uses ट - taxi टैक्सी, truck ट्रक, train ट्रेन, cricket क्रिकेट, biscuit बिस्कुट , all use that t.

My mother in law does this. When she is speaking English, she always just says he or him or his or my husband or papa. It's strange sometimes because right in the middle of a conversation about how to cook eggplant, let's say, she'll say something like "he likes it when I roast it first" without first saying who he is. I was very confused at first. Since then, I've "heard" this happen in two Indian novels, so I figured it must be some sort of tradition not to use the name.

When she is speaking to him directly, she always uses a nickname. That solves the problem that you are describing, at least for them. Don't know if this is a general trend or not. Oh, and interestingly, she is the only person who calls him by this nickname, so I guess that makes it more a pet name.

I never knew that! Thanks.

Carla- interesting stuff. I can see how the "he" thing would get confusing. I wonder how the nicknames are chosen?

It was definitely true of my mother, and that generation in Mahrashtra - it wasn't really the familiar "you", or "him", it was the honorific variants of the pronouns - so त्यान्ना, not त्याला etc..By my generation its more varied - my sister-in-law refered to my brother by his first name, a couple of cousins do, a couple still use the honorifics. Next generation down - hmmmm thinking about it, all my nieces call their husbands by their first name.

-skk

That looks like "tyanna" and "tyala"? I don't know them- is that Marathi then? Is there a Hindi equivalent? (Sorry for the inquisition)