On Friday, Mumbaikars tweeted their favourite Mumbai words to celebrate the city's very own lingo
Mumbai's not just famous for its Marine Drive, cutting chai and vada pavs, another thing that makes it different from other cities is its lingo.
Most Mumbaikars use words only understood by their fellow citizens. These words are used in informal conversations and often go unnoticed because it feels so natural to say autowala "bhaiya aage se right 'maro'" or just our usages of "mereko" and "tereko". But for outsiders, most of these words sound like gibberish.
On Friday, Mumbaikars on Twitter decided to make a hashtag celebrating the city's lingo trend. The tag was #BolBambai. Tweets with examples of bambaiya Hindi bhasha flooded timelines.
A few examples of Bambaya lingo are:
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'sum me gum ho gaya' To be lost in thoughts
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'yeda ban ke peda kha raha hai' Innocently taking advantage of the situation
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'vaat lag gayi' To get into trouble
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'khali peeli' Without any meaning or reason
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'dedhfut' A short person
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'abey hut be' A way to say go away, in a friendly tone.
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'chup kar re' A friendly shut up
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dhinchak' Fabulous
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'gheuntak' Just take it
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'kopchi' Corner
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'chamat' A slap
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'Aye shaane' Smart alec
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'kya maalum' I don't know
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'phadu performance' Brilliant performance
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'chop' When something doesn't work out. A way to say made a fool of yourself.
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'abbey dhakkan' You idiot
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'Pakka' Sure
Other mannerisms typical of Mumbai's people include:
-Making wet kiss sounds to call out to a people, usually a taxiwallah or waiter
-Calling a cop saheeb when face-to-face, and pandu or mamu behind the back
-Saying addressing people informally with the word boss.
The word 'bindaas' has also made it to crowd-sourced dictionary www.UrbanDictionary.com. The definitions read: "originally, cool and carefree. In a wider sense, used generally as an adjective of approval; good, excellent, first-class, cool; by hyperbole, okay, passable".
In the past, Mumbaikars have archived the city's lingo on blogs like http://slangmela.blogspot.in/2008/01/bambaiyya-hindi-mumbai-slang.html and http://bambaiyya.wordpress.com/
Three Mumbai students even wrote a book dedicated to the city's tapori lingo. 'Cutting Chai and Maska Pao' written by three 22-year-old city girls explores the Bamabiya language.
"It is a dictionary of the culture of colloquial phrases which are unique to Mumbai." says Mithila Mehta, one of the authors.
The book explores the city and helps a newcomer survive with the city's unique people and cultures.
For the authors Mithila Mehta, Priya Sheth and Digantika Mitra, a new word they came across while writing the book was "Italian Barber", which means a barber sitting on a brick. The word "Italian" comes from the "int"(brick in Hindi).
"City makes a language and language makes a city," says Mehta.
Another such word "aaila" is typical to Mumbai. Made famous by Sachin Tendulkar, the word is used to express shock. Most Mumbaikars use words like that so often that they don't even realise how the city has made its own language.
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