When a friend of mine posted some really cute pictures of herself on her Facebook wall, I clicked through to post an appropriate comment on the album but was stopped cold in my tracks by another commenter. “Cute stills, sis, “ it said.
The 1800s called. They want their vernacular back.
Oh wait, they didn’t call, they sent a telegram. Because that’s how ancient the word “stills” sounds in reference to photographs. Stills? Do people still use that word? I thought about it for a while and it kind of made sense when one took into account that animated gifs and videos also exist in the world of pixels, but something told me that the use of the word “stills” was not in reference to the option of moving images.
It doesn’t stop at “‘stills”, though. People also refer to photos as “clicks” (because of the sound your phone makes when you click the shutter button?) and “snaps” (because they “snap” a fleeting moment from life?). “Pix” is probably the only one that I can let go by without physically cringing, because it bears some semblance to the word “picture”, which is what the item actually is.
If you are the kind of person whose auditory senses go on red alert when you hear vernacular, then you will do well to stay away from desis.
This first occurred to me while backpacking in Europe at the tender age of 21.
I was finished with my coffee in Paris and I needed to throw my takeaway cup, so I looked for a dustbin.
“A what?” asked an American from San Diego.
It was a bit dark as we made our way back to the hostel in Amsterdam and I warned my Canadian friend to look out for the “footpath”.
“The what?” she asked, confused, then proceeded to trip and fall.
Every time we eat out, I have the same conversation with my mum. A hotel is an establishment that rents out rooms to people. A restaurant is one where they go to eat. The difference is lost on my darling mum, as it is on practically all desis. KFC is a hotel. Pizza Hut is a hotel, too. Spectrum on One is a hotel within the Fairmont hotel. I have learnt to not let it bother me as much anymore.
With some of the quirkier words, it’s a bit more difficult to keep a straight face, though.
Like when someone steps out in the sun, shields their eyes and says “Oh no! It’s so sunny, I wish I had brought my goggles” and you immediately imagine them pulling out a scuba suit, because that is what the word goggles actually goes with.
Or when somebody steps into your kitchen and asks for a “tumbler”. You in turn, look around for a time machine, or at the very least a teleportation device, because the only people you can imagine drinking from tumblers are those in the 1920s or in Britain – if not both. I’m not completely absolving myself of ever having partaken in these conversational quirks.
Just the other day, I read something particularly funny and announced to a friend of mine that this may just be the funniest thing on the world wide web, to which his response was: “You mean since the 1980s when ‘world wide web’ was last used?”
The writer is an honest-to-goodness desi living in Dubai
