Last night on TV, I was watching a programme in which Sir Peter Ustinov was retracing Mark Twain's voyage around the world. The episode featured Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. Apart from learning a lot about the American subjugation and annexation of Hawaii, I was reminded of another uniquely New Zealand regionalism. Upon arrival in NZ, Ustinov was shown driving along a country road, narrating as he went. He said "I'm in North Island," and that's what gave him away as someone not from New Zealand. An editorial here once remarked upon this distinction. NZers almost invariably use the article. I, for example would automatically say that I live in the North Island, while my aunt lives in the South Island. The editorial commented that this indicates that NZers are not treating North and South as the names of the islands, simply as compass designations. Ever since reading that article years ago, I have listened out for examples, and found that by far the majority of people from outside NZ (excluding most Australians - the 400,000 NZers living there have probably had an influence on that) treat North and South as titles, in the same way Ustinov did.
The shame here is that the three main islands have aurally pleasing, and historically relevant Maori names, which I think ought to be adopted as the official names of the islands, so that instead of the North Island, the South Island, and Stewart Island, we would have te Ika a Maui, te Wai Pounamu, and Rakiura.
Believe it or not, there really is a question after all that background context. Does anybody else use English in a subtle but distinctively different way to refer to their home, analogous to the way NZers retain the article when talking about our main islands? Something small, not necessarily dialect, but a dead giveaway for distinguishing Outlanders from "indigenous" residents?
This is probably not quite what you're getting at, but it's sort of related in that it relies on differences between insiders and outsiders. It does, however, involve the almost opposite use of the definite article from the example that you cite. I've noticed that Christians talk about themselves 'going to church' and Jewish people (for example) 'going to the synagogue'. Jewish friends of mine, on the other hand, speak of themselves as 'going to synagogue' and Christians as 'going to the church'. Sorry if this is a red herring - maybe it's because I'm currently 'into' Dorothy Sayers.
I've noticed that Christians talk about themselves 'going to church' and Jewish people (for example) 'going to the synagogue'. Jewish friends of mine, on the other hand, speak of themselves as 'going to synagogue' and Christians as 'going to the church'
Thanks, Lucy, that was exactly the sort of subtle difference in usage I was interested in hearing about.
I grew up in a town called Beaconsfield (about half way to Oxford from London). The first part of the name is pronounced like beckon by locals and like beacon by people from elsewhere. It was noticeable that my mother, a local girl, used the beckon pronunication, while my father, a Londoner, used the beacon pronunciation.
Bingley
It was noticeable that my mother, a local girl, used the beckon pronunication, while my father, a Londoner, used the beacon pronunciation.
Et tu?
Moi? I beckon not beacon.
Bingley
I thought I'd posted something about place names before but it is lost in the ether, so here goes ...I can think of quite a few place names that cause visitors problems, not all of them Welsh -
see Rhydycroaesau and Llanfyllyn http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=2542
as well as the wonderful place mentioned at http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=1580Shrewsbury has three different pronunciations, according to where the speaker comes from. Likewise Southwell in Nottinghamshire is a name which helps to differentiate locals from outsiders. I'm sure that there are lots of others.
Personal names like St. John and Cholmondley cause amusement for their people in the know.
Personal names like St. John and Cholmondley cause amusement for their people in the know.
I look forward to meeting someone called Sinjin-chumley, perhaps picking them up from llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch before taking them to
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuaakitanarahu
While I have enjoyed the diversion into the way that different pronunciation can distinguish "insiders" from "outsiders", I also find it interesting that so far there have only been two examples where usage would mark the difference. This is interesting, as no one would expect an outsider to know the correct pronunciation, of say, Llanfairgogoch. Variations in usage, however, are more tricky. As an example, a visitor could practice saying "Taumarunui" until they were able to pronounce it perfectly, but still give themselves away by saying that "Taumarunui" was in "North Island." That's why I liked Lucy's parallel example - the pronunciation and accent could be identical, but the usage would still be distinctive.
I love the way AltaVista tried, soooo hard to find the place you mentioned, it didn't find any sites but valiantly came up with the following suggestions:
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I'm very tempted to try the latter. I wonder how many bids I'd get?
OK, here's a couple of examples.
If you live in Manchester then London is to the South. Most people would go "down" to London.
If you live in the South East of England, regardless of whether you live to the North, South, East or West you would go "up" to London.
If you live in Edinburgh which is 50 miles (80km) to the East of Glasgow - how would you describe your journey?
Also, if you're not a native Londoner, then you tend to describe the tube lines by their colours. No native Londoner would dream of talking about travel by the 'green' line or the 'red' line.
In highschool, when time for Prom came around all the kids who weren't local would complain that "Prom" wasn't a proper noun and should be refered to as "the prom". We never did manage to convince them that around here, it was Prom, not the prom.
'going to the synagogue'I think this is definitely not a red herring – it’s the original article.
You have hit on an interesting one here, Lucy, and I agree it’s an insider-type issue. I think there is a complex unspoken thought process betrayed by this simple form of words: “
We go to
(our place of worship) in order to partake of that community – but we could equally go to another
(place of worship) as we are members of a whole network of such places; that
other strange group of misguided souls go to the local
(place of worship) , being the only example of this aberrant institution that has impinged on our consciousness.”
Max, an example I can offer is more of a general rural dividing style from when I lived in Kent. If I said I was going
to town, it would carry a different meaning to going to the town: the latter meant the local town, the former meant going up to London.
PS - drafted before I had read your comment, jo!But most distinctions of Maidstone usage were far cruder. A car-driver stopped me on the pavement with the request for directions to “Mason iced pill”. Had I not been local I might have been confused; as it was, I correctly deciphered this as a synonym for Kent General Opthalmic Hospital (aka Maidstone Eye Hospital)
Thank you all - I
knew that there must be several examples of "insider" usage out there, and the ones you have provided are very useful. Xara, if I find myself 15 younger and attending high school in Mountain City(?)Tennessee, I shall be sure to say "Prom" in order to fit in. Shanks, if I ever find myself in London, (only marginally less unlikely), I shall scrupulously avoid referring to the Tube lines by colour. The only one I can't use is "up to London", as everybody knows that North is down!
Shopping? Compare prices from around the web on Taumatawhakatangihangakoauau Classic! Very funny! Her's a URL that might be a little more enlightening:
http://www.fire.org.nz/regions/eastern/stations/porangahau.htmIt's about 60 kilometres as the tui flies from my home.
As no-one dared a guess about how you get from Edinburgh to Glasgow, the answer is "through". I've never quite worked out "what" you go through to get to Glasgow but you definitely go "through" in "I'm going through to Glasgow."
>If I said I was going to town, it would carry a different meaning to going to the town: the latter meant the local town, the former meant going up to London<
When I lived in Leeds (Yorkshire, northern England) 'going to town' was not used in a geographic sense, only in the sense of splashing out. We used to 'go into town' if we went to the city centre.
AS for London, I think we used to go to London. I don't recall an up or down in the phrase.
On the other hand, when I lived in Harpenden (southern UK, just north of London) and we went into the town centre, we went 'down the village'.
(As an aside, what does it mean that we talk about towns when we mean cities, and villages when we mean towns?)
Hi - I've just joined this list, and I, too, was vaguely amused by Peter Ustinov's dropping of the definitive article when referring to the North Island and the South Island. It's common enough, even among people who have lived here for a long time. An ex-pat Dutchman I work with still does it. When I asked him about why he left out the "the", he replied that it a habit he formed when he first came here and had never managed to shake it off.
And, while I agree that the Maori names are mellifluous, the Maori name for the North Island - Te Ika e Maui - is a little unwieldy for everyday use, perhaps?
- Te Ika e Maui - is a little unwieldy for everyday use, perhaps?Less so than Whanganui a Tara, no?
Leaving out the article "the" seems to show familiarity or association as in to town, to church, to synagogue. By the same token, clinicians and medical staff often go to hospital and professor-types go to university.
In the city of Long Beach, local usage emphasizes the Long and not Beach like a tourist would. Local usage may be such that even if the coast line was once magnificent and long, it is now sadly a big storm drain.
Less so than Whanganui a Tara, no?
Indeed!
In NY, people in THE bronx, (always with an article) go down town, and every one in the other boro's (usually the long spelling in NY) goes to the city when coming into manhattan.
And like London, natives take the IRT, BMT, and IND subwaylines. These are designations from the original companies that built the subways. The companies went belly up more than 50 years ago, but "Real NY's" still use the designations. Out of towners call them red line, blue line. Sophisticated transplants have learn to refer only to the numbers and letters (take the A train, or take the number 7 line-).
NY maps indicate there is an Avenue of the Americas in NY, but no one calls it that, its 6th Avenue. the name was changed sometime before my birth --so immediately pre or post WWII. It was still 6th Avenue in the 30's, when the el (elevated railroad) was torn down, and sold as scrap metal to Japan. (local story is the 6th avenue el sunk the pacific fleet- the scrap from the el being used by Japan to make the bombs.)
I live in Queens-- so i have been denegrated as one of "the bridge and tunnel croud"
An other curiousity is, if you look at a map, you might think Queens is part of Long Island. but in NY, polictics is stronger than geography, so both Brooklyn and Queen are not considered part of Long Island. So I come from Queens, (named for queen Charlotte) not from Long Island. my early childhood was spent in The Bronx, so i still head downtown each morning to work, while most of my nieghbors go to the city.
Pity then the poor Kiwi, who is bombarded from all sides by cultures which have developed elsewhere.
While we are evolving/have evolved a distinctively New Zealand culture (better described using negative statements than positive), we are a former British colony with essentially British institutions adrift in a sea of American cultural icons, news and views.
My grandmother (and many of her contemporaries) always referred to Britain as "home". Most confusing to a child to whom Britain was a mysterious place on the other side of the world.
It was actually worse than that for us kids - we had New Zealand Chinese neighbours on one side of us and Dutch immigrants on the other. (New Zealand Chinese are very common in the part of NZ that I come from. They have been here for four generations or more - as long as most, if not all the current European immigrants).
The kids from the neighbourhood were colour and culture blind - we spoke bits of three languages, none of them well - and confused the hey out of our parents.
American culture appears to have taken root within a very short time of TV becoming available in the early 1960s, although I believe there was a major effort by the programmers to source lots of British shows. Our own were naive to the point of being extremely embarrassing to watch, a problem they sometimes still have.
Now we have more American input than from anywhere else, with the possible exception of shows from the West Island (you will know it as Australia).
Just as an aside, the thread on Cockney rhyming slang made me laugh. We have incorporated quite a bit of it into normal everyday English as spoken in NZ (known as "Zild").
People like me tend to rabbit on all day without ever wondering where the rabbit came from or why it's a verb!
Cheers
In reply to:
Leaving out the article "the" seems to show familiarity or association as in to town, to church, to synagogue. By the same token, clinicians and medical staff often go to hospital and professor-types go to university.
In my (Southern English) usage the difference seems to be that the indicates the institution rather than the place. Thus, the patient is in hospital, but the doctor's just left to go to the hospital. Students go to university to follow a course of study, but might go to the university to get a drink in the bar.
Bingley
an addendum to Helen of Troy's post:
Native Noo Yawkers take the train. Tourists take the subway (once they overcome their fears
)
MaxQ. We have a similar situation in Montréal. Montréal is an almond-shaped island in the St. Lawrence River. At this level, the river is narrow enough to permit bridge links to the land on both sides. Natives of the area refer to the surrounding land as either The North Shore or The South Shore though these descriptions are not to be found on any map. One can always spot an out-of-towner when he has no clue what you are saying when you say “we’re looking to buy a house on the North Shore” or something of the like.
To confuse non-natives further, The North Shore is not the land directly to the north of Montréal. It is the land north of Laval, an island north of Montréal in the river.
>>While we are evolving/have evolved a distinctively New Zealand culture (better described using negative statements than positive)...
C K …what do you mean by this. It sounds awfully self-critical.
C K …what do you mean by this. It sounds awfully self-critical.
Sadly, I think Capital Kiwi is right on the money. Being self-critical is probably the outstanding defining mark of the evolving NZ identity. In the late 70s, a NZ comic challenged this attitude with a humorous ditty entitled "You don't know how lucky you are." He lost, and emigrated to Australia, where he has done spectacularly well.
Completely off-thread, but I had to share my amusement at seeing these two threads juxtaposed:
Where do you live?
chad
C.K. said:
>>While we are evolving/have evolved a distinctively New Zealand culture (better described using negative statements than positive)... Upon which, belMarduk asked:
C K …what do you mean by this. It sounds awfully self-critical.I appreciate Max Quordlepleen's immediate leap to my defence (120-odd miles in a single bound ... how DOES he do it?) although I think his example may be a little off the mark. The comedian he refers to, John Clarke (or his alter ego, Fred Dagg), did indeed say or semi-sing "You don't know how lucky you are." The point that Max missed (or chose to ignore) is that New Zealand is surely but steadily bringing civilisation to the inhabitants of the Ocker Isle. The Land of Oz,
sans Dorothy but
avec Dame Edna Everidge. Go figure. Anyway sending some genuine comedians over there was part of a deliberate policy, best articulated by a now mercifully deceased Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, to raise the average IQ of both countries ...
However, even as I was reading the two posts, a comedy debate was being shown on TV. The debaters were actors/TV personalities, all of them very good. I hope you were watching it, Max, because it reinforced our view of Kiwi Kulcha. The topic of "debate" was "New Zealand is the best little country in the world". I guess most people realise that these comedy debates actually allow the debaters to express real opinions in a non-threatening way. Some of the jokes were really funny. And some were definitely not.
One of the debaters, a Samoan, as it happens, talked about the New Zealand "number eight wire" syndrome. This is a myth (mostly urban, wholly fallacious) that all New Zealanders are born able to do or fix anything that needs doing or fixing without professional help. Folklore has it that whenever nothing better is to hand, anything can be fixed with a piece of No. 8 wire (a gauge of wire generally used in fences designed to restrain as many of New Zealand's 40 million sheep as possible). Since everyone knows that the myth/folklore is not true, it's a negative view. While it's saying "Kiwis can do anything", it also evinces carelessness or sloppiness and a willingness to put up with second best.
And this is generally true (isn't there a thread running on generalisations?) of all our cultural idioms.
But don't get me wrong. Apart from our currency woes (our dollar is becoming known as the "South Pacific Peso") it's a damned good place to live. But we like to leave frequently to reassure ourselves about this by comparing our lifestyle with others ... I'm off to Singapore next week!
Syncopically
,
Capital Kiwi
Another example:
Those who perform Handel's 'Messiah' leave off the definite article, while others call it "The Messiah." Never figured out why.
I have had the advantage (?) of living in Bombay (Mumbai to the newbies there), and can talk at length about the difference between natives and outsiders. Unfortunately, the jests (such feebly ironic ones as there are in all this) will be lost on an English-speaking audience. Perhaps, therefore, it would be best merely to write down my favourite.
As background, India has been through various patriotic convulsions, during which periods it was deemed necessary to reject all signs of the Raj. The change of name from Bombay to Mumbai is one such manifestation. In any case, the 'natives' themselves, bewildered by (or not interested in) these changes, have often stuck to the old names, and their children use them too. Only newcomers to the city, and public transportation, use the 'new; names.
So...
One of the more important junctions in Bombay city, close to the diamond dealing district (and equally close to the notorious red light area, but you don't want to know about that) used to have an Opera House on one corner. Over time this large building evolved into a cinema house, and thence to the ramshackle home of rats that it currently seems to be. Through all that time the locals (all 12 million of them?) persisted in calling that junction 'Opera House'.
In a fit of PC, the authorities, sometime in the '70s, I think, decided to award the title of that junction to some cultural luminary. It was thenceforward officially titled Gnyanacharya Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar Chowk'.
So all the buses have it as a title (if that is their terminus or starting point). And in all official correspondence it is referred to as 'Paluskar Chowk'. But no native ever calls it anything but Opera House.
For those in the least bit interested, the full name translates out as:
Sage-of-knowledge Scholar Vishnu Digambar Paluskar (his actual name - pretty obviously Maharashtrian) Square.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
ps. Don't get me started on SV Road versus Ghodbunder Road, Vallabhbhai Patel Road versus Linking Road, and the like. At least Alexander Graham Bell Road is considered politically correct enough to remain!
Somtime in the eighties I travelled through the former USSR on the Trans Siberian Express. It was back in the says when Leningrad had not yet reverted to St Petersburg.
An interesting thing about the cities was the level of standardisation that the regime had brought about. One day, we got off the train in a city we did not know well with one of the "real" railway buffs. He said that we didn't need any directions. The number one tram would always go in a straight line along Lenin Street, so all you would have to do would be to get off, cross the road and get back on again. The number two tram would go in a circle, so if you stayed on the tram you would get back to where you started. In any of the smaller cities, go down Lenin Street, turn left into Karl Marx Street, left into Pushkin Street and left into Gorky Street to get back to where you started. His directions were really quite accurate and we never did get lost.
left into Gorky Street... ... thus confirming geographically what we all suspected for ages - that Lenin was further to the right than Gorky
...and you couldn't get from Lenin to Gorky without going though Marx.
ps. Don't get me started on SV Road versus Ghodbunder Road, Vallabhbhai Patel Road versus Linking Road, and the like. At least Alexander Graham Bell Road is considered politically correct enough to remain!When legislation was finally passed making Maori an official language of NZ, with the same legal standing as English, many place names were changed. In most cases the older, original, Maori names were simply appended to the front of the English names. Often the Maori names are much more mellifluous (thanks to my compatriot). So instead of Mt. Cook we have Aoraki/Mt. Cook, Mt. Egmont is now Taranaki/Mt. Egmont, and, though seldom seen, Aotearoa/New Zealand. While many people feel that these changes are more PC madness, I like the Maori names, especially Aoraki, meaning "cloud piercer." Every city and town in NZ also has its own official Maori name, which may be used in postal addresses, though I'm sure many postal sorters devoutly hope not to see them, as most are totally unknown, even to their residents.
Max,
Your posting about Maori place names interests me. It has some similarities with what is happening here in Australia, but also some key differences.
I gather that Maori is a uniform language NZ-wide. Was this the case historically, or have a number of distinct languages or dialects been unified in some (artificial?) way to produce an official indigenous language?
The native inhabitants of Australia had hundreds of 'tribes', each with its own language. In fact, anthropologists tend to use the term 'language groups' to distinguish them, apparently since 'tribes' didn't cater well for the extent of mixing and territorial sharing amongst the various nomadic groups. Whilst some Aboriginal people seem keen to rid themselves of the Western-imposed generic label Aboriginal and come up with their own word, there is no one word that does the job. In my region (SE Australia), they call themselves Koories; in other regions there are words such as Murris, Nunga and Anangu. Each of these names applies to many language groups in a large geographical region. Some people prefer to be referred to by their language group and reject the more widely applicable label. To complicate matters further, native inhabitants of the Torres Straits islands, which lie between Australia and Papua New Guinea, are referred to not as Aboriginals but as 'Torres Straits Islanders', leading to frequent references to 'Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders'. Unfortunately, the problem of nomenclature seems to have left indigenous and non-indigenous Australians confused as to the PC term to use for the original inhabitants of our country. I guess this is similar to the dilemma of the indigenous peoples of North America - Indians/American Indians/etc and various tribe names, as touched upon elsewhere on the board.
I was also surprised to hear that there is a Maori equivalent for every city or town in NZ. I understand that traditional places of significance would have an original Maori name. In Australia, when control of Ayers Rock was officially given back to the local Aboriginal people, it reverted to its original - and beautiful - aboriginal name Uluru. Is that well known outside Australia? (As an aside, the transfer has posed a dilemma for tourists, because Aboriginals disapprove of people climbing their sacred rock, but have not prohibited it outright). There are certainly a lot of Aboriginal words used in place names, although many of them are apparently a result of misunderstandings by explorers/settlers of the local Aboriginal language. There is a push to change some placenames to original Aboriginal ones, but it's not a widespread phenomenon.
Getting back to NZ, I am intrigued by the existence of a Maori word for cities and towns that have sprung up in the last 200 years. Are you now applying a traditional Maori word to refer to the region occupied by the "new" settlement, and is there really a one-to-one correspondence between them, or have Maori names been invented recently to cover the gaps?
I gather that Maori is a uniform language NZ-wide. Was this the case historically, or have a number of distinct languages or dialects been unified in some (artificial?) way to produce an official indigenous language?Yes, and no. Maori was basically one language, but with significant regional differences. Aoraki is an example of the most prominent of such. The Maori spoken in the South Island (
te Wai Pounamu) uses
k where North Island Maori uses
ng. Growing up in Rotorua, a North Island city heavily dependent on Maori culture for its economic well-being, I learned the Maori name for Mt. Cook as "Aorangi." I have friends who grew up in the Hokianga, a region in the Far North of NZ, one of three areas in NZ where it is still not uncommon to meet people whose first language is Maori. They tell me that they occasionally have difficulty with the Maori spoken by those from the East Cape region, while Tuhoe, spoken in a geographically isolated region is probably the most distinctive variety of Maori. You are absolutely right in assuming that there has been a synthesised hybrid version created in the interests of standardisation. My friends tell me that this "artificial hybrid" can be almost unintelligible to their ears.
I was also surprised to hear that there is a Maori equivalent for every city or town in NZ. I understand that traditional places of significance would have an original Maori name.
Getting back to NZ, I am intrigued by the existence of a Maori word for cities and towns that have sprung up in the last 200 years. Are you now applying a traditional Maori word to refer to the region occupied by the "new" settlement, and is there really a one-to-one correspondence between them, or have Maori names been invented recently to cover the gaps?Generally, what has been done is to apply the ancient Maori name for a region to the prominent town of the region, if that settlement is of European origin. I live in Hastings, which is called Heretaunga, after the plains on which it stands. Nearby Napier is called Ahuriri, a name refering to a specific locale close to its port, that has been extended to include the entire city. As I understand it, this is the sort of system that has been used nationwide. I don't think that there were any regions of NZ which had not at least been visited by Maori, and henced named by them, before the arrival of Europeans. A lot of towns in NZ already have Maori place names, and these towns have not had English equivalents invented for them.
One final note on your mention of the challenge of naming indigenous peoples. The following is a very thoughtful, concise, summary of the application of the term "Maori" for the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa.
http://maorinews.com/writings/papers/other/pakeha.htm
Thanks for the response and interesting link, Max. It seems that the differences between the NZ Maori and Australian Aboriginal situations are not as great as I original assumed, at least on the issues of tribal languages, tribal names and the difficulties associated with finding a generic term to be applied to and accepted by the indigenous population.
In light of a previous exchange about Whakapapa, I was alarmed to read in the article you linked that it apparently means 'genealogy'.
In light of a previous exchange about Whakapapa, I was alarmed to read in the article you linked that it apparently means 'genealogy'Indeed! I seem to recall attempting a little ribaldry myself on that very point in the thread to which you refer.
>In Australia, when control of Ayers Rock was officially given back to the local Aboriginal people, it reverted to its original - and beautiful - aboriginal name Uluru. Is that well known outside Australia?
Yes, I think so. When I was planning my trip to Australia, all the travel brochures used "Uluru, formerly Ayres Rock" and told us not to expect to be allowed the climb it.
my trip to Australia'fess, Jo - is there
any country you have not yet graced? I'm jealous
>is there any country you have not yet graced?
Well I never made it to see Uluru in all its glory!
Actually the list is humungous. It starts with India, China, the rest of Asia, all of South America and goes on forever ....
I think I was born of gypsy blood, if I don't travel regularly I start to get the jitters. I even had to seek out jobs which allowed me to travel (I've been to every city in Britain except Norwich). I once went to Sweden for the day (from Denmark), so I could tick it off my list. You should pity me, poor unsettled soul that I am!
This one came at me by e-mail. I'd seen it before and ignored it, but in the context of this thread, I thought it was probably worth sharing. (I haven't 'standardised' the language, because it helps give a flavour of the way English is used in Bombay). I will provide glosses if anyone's interested...
25 things that prove you're a Bombayite......if you're proud of being one.
1.) You think of Chowpatty & Juhu beaches as "nature."
2.) You say "town " and expect everyone to know that this means south of Churchgate.
3.) You speak in a dialect of Hindi called 'Bambaiya Hindi', which only Mumbaikars can understand
4.) Your door has more than three locks.
5.) Rs 500 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag.
6.) Train timings (9.27, 10.49 etc.) are really important events of life.
7.) You spend more time each month travelling than you spend at home.
8.) You call an 8' x 10' clustered room a Hall.
9.) You're paying Rs 10,000 for a 1 room flat, the size of a walk-in closet and you think it's a "steal."
10.) You have the following sets of friends: school friends, college friends, neighborhood friends, office friends and yes, train friends, a species unique to Mumbai - ???.
11.) Cabbies and bus conductors think you are from Mars if you call the roads by their Indian name, they are more familiar with Warden Road, Peddar Road, Altamount Road and the like.
12.) Stock market quotes are the only other thing besides cricket which you follow passionately.
13.) The first thing that you read in the Times of India is the "Bombay Times" supplement.
14.) You take fashion seriously.
15.) You're suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.
16.) Hookers, beggars and the homeless are invisible.
17.) You compare Mumbai to New York's Manhattan instead of any other cities in India.
18.) The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.
19.) You insist on calling Mumbai as Bombay, CST as VT, and Sahar and Santacruz airports instead of Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
20.) You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.
21.) Your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes.
22.) Being truly alone makes you nervous.
23.) You love wading through knee deep mucky water in the monsoons, and actually call it 'romantic'.
24.) Only in Mumbai, you would get Chinese Dosa and Jain Chicken.
25.) You call traffic policemen as 'Pandus" and expect out of towners to understand that.
>yes, train friends, a species unique to Mumbai - ???.
NY'ers have train friends too! I pity people who have to drive and don't.
Helen
I presented the email without comment, whilst realising that almost any large city with an effective public transportation system would have 'train friends' (or tram friends or even bus friends). So I presumed that would be the case in NY. And yes, I pity those whose journey to work has to be the cocooned (entombed) loneliness of the long distance driver. As an alternative, however, I have often commuted by bicycle, and whilst it is a journey undertaken alone, there seems to be a liveliness to it that a car can never achieve. (Plus, of course, you give yourself many pats on the back for environmental awareness, economy and health benefits!)
cheer
the sunshine warrior
ps. Bombay train friends usually engage in repeatable activities like playing cards or singing bhajans (hymns).
I haven't browsed all the replies to your post so apologise to anybody if I've repeated their input.
I think all places on the globe offer nuances of pronunciation - that's probably why you've had so many replies!
Anyway, different pronunciations of place names is rife in Australia - and I'm not referring to the often tough to pronounce Aboriginal names. (Try the famous "Woolloomooloo" for instance! The "common" (and therefore correct?) pronunciation is "wool-a-mar-loo").
We Western Australians can instantly identify an outlander by their mispronunciation of the towns of Derby (Derby us, Darby them) and Albany (Al-bunny us, All-bunny them). The one that always gets them however is the town of Toodyay - we say 2-jay, "they" just mangle it!
Victoria (and Tasmania I think) persist in saying "cassle" - when we know they really mean to say "carssle" (for castle).
Just for a laugh, how about these: Innaloo (a suburb of Perth, pronounced exactly as it looks - unfortunately!), Upper Swan (also in Perth. By the way, what IS the word for intimate but unnatural relations with a swan?) and Blackbutt (one in both Queensland and New South Wales - named after a type of tree).
Cheers
Stales