I had this weird dream sometime this morning, just before I awoke.
OK, I saw that Cash had come back. And we were being very chummy about it, and all of a sudden we are in a class in college. Only, the class happens to be the Nursery hall of my old school. And an old professor comes in with a lot of cronies who set up a microphone ( which looked like a Shure piece, pretty professional and all ), and a speaker which was one of those conical things you see in political speeches.
Then this old chap, who happens to be a professor, comes in and starts lecturing on….believe it or not…Lord of the Rings, in pure Assamese. I can assure you that Assamese is a funny language, it’s pretty sweet to listen to, but it’s funny with words, like – saying Markin Juktorashtra for the United States cracks me up everytime. This old fellow starts teaching the first chapter of LotR, and very drily, at that. And I could vaguely get the feeling that it was the last day of the lecture, and he had been to the class only on the first day, where he had handled the preface, and exams were two days away.
All the while I was thinking, oh my Gosh, I don’t remember how to spell Gandalf in Assamese. And Cash was going crazy trying to write “Gom Pau” on a notebook. And then he got caught while trying to do that. And then I woke up.
I don’t remember eating anything odd last night.
Gom Pao
Kung Pow!
On a related note, you all know what’s King Kong, what or who is Kong King?
A: a kind of noodles company that has exclusive monopoly over the north-east. Kong King Chow CHow=yum yum yum, in Assam.
Is ‘s’ pronounced as ‘h’ in Assamese? One of my Mizo friends once told me about ‘Sisir Saha’ who was stopped by the Police for speeding. And then they asked his name…
yes, a very sibilant “h”, too.
the vocabulary has a very marked similarity to the Bengali/Hindi/Sanskrit family. But the pronounciation is very different, in fact, the “s” pronounciation is used for “ch” and “chh” words. like saying “samatkaar” instead of “chamatkar”.
all “s” words, except for very anglicised ones are pronounced in that peculiar “h”. The way to denote a difference in the written form ( at least, this is how the Newspapers there do it ) is to distinguish “s” and “h” by using “x” for the latter.
So we asy “Axom Xahitya Xabhaa” instead of “Assam Sahitya Sabha”.
“Sorai” is a bird, while “Xorai” is a traditional platter(made of brass/gunmetal) that’s used in weddings and public ceremonies as a gift of honour.
“Sisir Saha” would be “Xixir Saha”, then.
And not Hihi Haha,eh?
-Jayaxankar
nope :-))
“Xixir” would definitely sound like “Hee hee”, but Saha being a bong surname, is fixed as “Saha”, unless it’s a very
traditional axomiya guy saying it. Or, of course, a joke. :-P
:)