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Saturday, August 29, 2009

Anyone Here Know Konkani?

I am in the process of learning how to write my name and my girlfriend's name in as many Indian languages as possible. Well, at least as many different Indic scripts as possible. This all started with a waiter from Kerala.

I visited Bangalore's new Chili's restaurant one afternoon and my waiter asked me where I was from. I then asked him where he was from. When I told him I had visited Kochi, in Kerala, he asked me if I had picked up any of the local language, Malayalam. I pulled a pen from my pocket and wrote "toddy" on my napkin in Malayalam, which simultaneously impressed him and made him laugh. He then showed me how to write my name in Malayalam.

When I got to work, I showed my name to Robin, who is from Kerala, and he fixed some problems with the spelling. Then he showed me how to write "Anjali", and then it occurred to me that I could ask around to find out how to write our names in many languages. I turned to Jitan and asked him how to write our names in Hindi and Oriya. Then, Javed showed me in Urdu.

Here is what I have so far (my name is always on the left, hers on the right):

Assamese
Us in Assamese

Bengali
Us in Bengali

Gujarati
Us in Gujarati

Hindi
Us in Hindi

Kannada
Us in Kannada

Kashmiri
Us in Kashmiri

Malayalam
Us in Malayalam

Manipuri
Us in Manipuri

Nepali
Us in Nepali

Oriya
Us in Oriya

Punjabi
Us in Punjabi

Tamil
Us in Tamil

Telugu
Us in Telugu

Urdu
Us in Urdu

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