{{This article was originally posted on February 1, 2017. My posts were lost and after being found I am re-posting them.}}
When I was in school, we had an interesting person as the night watchman at the Infirmary. His name was Dominique. Once, in class 8, I felt sick and stayed in the infirmary. At night Dominique and I used to talk. Just before leaving he would say “Good garauna” and we would shake hands. I didn’t think about it much then.
When in class 10, I got sick again and the nightly chats with Dominique started. Again he would say “Good garauna” and we would shake hands. From then on those words stuck in my head, but I really didn’t understand what he was saying.
By the time I was in college I had forgotten about Dominique and his Good garauna. I visited Pokhara once and was talking to an ex-British Gurkha army man. When parting he said “Good garauna”. That suddenly brought back Dominique. This time I asked him why he said that. He said it was practise among most ex-British Gurkha army men to say that before shaking hands. Dominique had also served in the British army. So I began to see connections.
Few years later, out of college, and visiting Pokhara again, I met an ex-British Gurkha army man. While in conversation I mentioned to him that most ex-British army men tended to say Good garne and he said that was standard practice and that it had become common in most rural parts of Nepal to say that. He explained to me that the term came from the British saying “Good Morning” or “Good Afternoon”, while shaking hands. Nepali army men didn’t understand the other terms, but heard “Good” everytime and then took it that the process of shaking hands was called “Doing Good” — “Good garne” in Nepali.
That was that!!!… Understand, suddenly aaha moments, all smiles, but rapidly forgotten. Fars forward 17 years to last year when Shailendra (one of my students, currently studying in China) came back from his home in Ramechhap. We got to talking about farming and food stuff and milk. So I asked him the price of milk and he said “NRs. 40 for one Horlicks”. I was taken aback. I had heard and used metric system heavily, heard of emperical system, written software for conversion of various Nepali measurement units. And here was an unit that I could have never ever imagined. It turned out that the milk was measured using Horlicks bottles and its size was half a liter. So instead of saying half a liter, people just called it 1 Horlicks.
Since then I have been meaning to write an article on the Nepalish language and this it is.
Nepalish has a rich vocabulary, a non-exhaustive list of words is given at the end of this article. Before the list though there is three other words that I was to specifically talk about, first of which is courtesy Dominique (remember the Good garne guy!). We used to have movie nights every Friday. A Friday fell on one of the days when I had fallen ill and retired to the infirmary. Dominque came in and said “you missed the 22 scope today right”. Puzzled I asked him what “22 scope” was. He, in his own strange way, rounded his fingers and looked through indicating, and making me realize, about the movie. Again, puzzled as ever, I put to brain the word 22 scope, which supposedly stood for movies. Recently I remembered the word and looked put to find that it meant Cinemascope film shot with 22mm focal length cameras. It seems in some old movies the word “22 SCOPE” would be written in bold and, during their British army days, people seem to have picked up the words to mean cinema.
The second word is “bushat”. Bushat is shortened Nepalized word for Shirts with Buttons. I just like the sound fo that word. Hehe… What can I say!!!…
And the third is “matshaab”, shortened Nepalized word for Master Shaab, commonly term for teachers. This word is dear to me as my father has been a teacher for over 50 years now and as long as I can remember people have called him “matshaab”.
A non-exhaustive list of words in Nepalish:
genoon – genuine
goltin – tin with golden coloring originally. Now all tin cans.
tikas – ticket
misscall hanne – call from phone, but hangup just before receiving on the other side
tausi – taxi
tyam – time
tem – time
phoon – phone
byar – beer
bayler – broiler chicken
paiit – pant
point – pant
pilate – plate
gilas – glass
cilas – class
fuscilas – first class
pias – plyers
wrenchu – wrench
bingness – business
almunim – aluminium
meassage – message
bodi – body
bicut – boycott
heroni – heroine
millen – million
billen – billion
lop parne – have an affair
commnista – communist
easta coat – waist coat
patty – party
patty – political party
Biskoot — Biscuit
Saraf — Detergent (derived from an Indian brand of detergent called Surf)
Cocola — Coca Cola
Bottal – Bottle
Baiscope — Cinema (Comes from 22 scope, a film format used in really olden days
Filim — Film
Tinisin — Tension
Gilas — glass
Cinima — Cinema
Vote of Thanks – to Santosh, Prajwal, Aakarshan and Barsha for bringing into attention so many of the words in this list.
Note : This is a work in progress. If anyone has any words please feel free to send them. I will add with proper credits.