When you live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multifaith country (as opposed to a multi-purpose, multi-task and multi-tool one), you get used to people speaking different languages and for the most people learn either a common language or learn all the languages spoken in their community. If you can’t learn all the languages, then learn some phrases from all the languages in the community. Just don’t speak them all at the same time – although some people go big for the speaking in tongues thing.

My childhood experiences with languages were quite interesting. Firstly as we all spoke English at home, my sisters and I well I at least) learned our Hindi from watching Hindi movies. So much so that my first Hindi sermon consisted of 80 per cent Bollywood dialogue and 20 per cent theological reflection (I’ve improved since then, so I’m told). This means also that growing up, most people didn’t know that my sisters and I understood Hindi – which meant that we could sit and listen to what people were saying (usually about us) in the mistaken view that we couldn’t understand. Then we would go and report it to our parents afterwards. I remember coming across a newsletter which was titled “Offis Blong Ol Meri”. Then I found a number of business cards in which all the women concerned worked at Offis Blong Ol Meri. Who was this old Mary? How did she have so many women working for her and so many offices and publications? I was later to find out that the Offis Blong Ol Meri was more to do with Women’s Department, the Young Women’s Christian Association than the Virgin Mary or indeed a Bloody Mary.

Of course knowing another language is always handy when you are abroad and you feel the urge, need,desire to curse someone, without that particular person thumping you in the face. In boarding school I took much pleasure in practising the only Fijian I knew at the time by convincing my class and dorm mates that words in Fijian that relate to private parts, intimate activities and family members, were in fact phrases of greetings, expressions of gratitude etc. That was fun until one classmate actually came over to Fiji and used the Bhagwan book of phrases to get by with in Fiji. Happy campers they were not!

I know some international or regional translators who, on getting fed up of translating word for word, start to tell their own version of what is being said. Westerners term this as getting lost in translation. In Fiji, our translation is just one word, “Bluff,” or two “lasu taka”

We also make up our own languages. I’m not referring to the infant speak some use such as “bimbim” for icecream, “shoo-shoo” for milk, “mummum” for eat and the one word which lasts beyond childhood and adulthood, “bye-bye” for sleep.

“Baby drink shoo-shoo, mummum bimbim and then bye bye okay?”

When I got married, my wife introduced me to a new dialect of English, which my research has yet to determine is exclusive to her extended family, her clan as a whole or the whole tribe of Lautokan half-castes. “You gang sa stay put here mada ga and *#^% the grog, we sa going to down mama to bye bye.” Perhaps she is related to Jarjar Binks of Star Wars fame. Thank goodness divine intervention in the form of having to teach secondary school English has forced us to speak good “England” at home, although some sentences contain a “maigudnas” or two.

There was even a time way back in the day when “hospital” was not translated as Vale ni Mate (House of Death) before it was changed to Vale ni Bula (House of Health). At one time, before the era of mental health awareness, St. Giles was referred to
as Vale Mad. But with the advent of political correctness, such linguistic faux pas are gone. Instead political correctness in speech has forced upon us more translations to such an extreme that we make sure even our insults… er... personal observations are politically correct. The whole politically correct jargon “thingamy” has gotten a little out of control. However in celebration of new languages, here are some words that may have got a little lost in the political-correct translation, along with some suggested interpretations. Feel free to come up with your own translations and to add your own
words:

• Aesthetically-challenged (ugly)
• Dipsomatically-challenged (drunk)
• Financially-challenged (broke)
• Economically-challenged (wasted)
• Intellectually-challenged (stupid)
• Vertically-challenged (short)
• Horizontally-challenged (legless)
• Culturally-impaired (wannabe)
• Verbally-impaired (talks rubbish)
• Pharmacologically-impaired (grog-doped)

A tropically-challenged (sun-baked), spiritually- challenged (self-confessed Jesus-freak), Padre James Bhagwan spends his time between doing laps in the pool, lecturing at Davuilevu Theological College, preaching at Dudley Methodist Church, playing with his children and driving his wife around the bend.

BY REV. JAMES BHAGWAN