One of the amusing aspects of being an ethnic immigrant in a Western country is encountering repetitive descriptions of things ethnic, mainly food items.
E.g., Chai tea (that's tea tea), naan bread (just naan will do nicely) and raita sauce (ditto).
This is a nice image I found on the web, by the way. I like the stylistic representation of the Bharatanatyam dancer. [And since 'naatyam' means dance, perhaps Bharatanatyam would be 'Bharatanatyam dance'.]
The Japanese might have a similar feeling about the 'Nashi pears' sold in the supermarket (I'm told 'nashi' means 'pear' in Japanese).
I recently came across the latest example of this on the supermarket shelf. Don't miss the handy pronunciation guide ("Arta").
Atta flour is used to make naan bread. Now how about that?
4 comments:
A Delhi habit is to say `roti shoti', `khana vana' or `pyar vyar' where the second word has no real meaning and only rhymes with the first word. Is there any figure of speech describing this, I wonder. Tautology shotology?
Such a poetically rhyming figure of speech is worthy of a Delhi Shelley :-)
Way back in 1987-89, having come across this figure of speech for the first time, I'd thought up a few Delhi-Shelleyisms that could actually be construed to mean something.
E.g., marketing-sharketing (describing cut-throat sales tactics), tie-shy (describing an abhorrence of formality), female-shemale (for a formidable Amazonian type), etc.
Chemistry bemystery would be mine, for the subject was, is and will be foreever a puzzle to me.
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