So I’m straying from the promised book post for an entertaining tidbit from Bangla class today … we discovered today that to say “to fall down” in Bengali you say “eat a pickle.” As in, “It’s pretty icy out there, be careful you don’t eat a pickle!”
In reality, the two words aren’t exactly the same – just extremely close homonyms. “Fall down” is achhar khawa while “eat a pickle” is achar khawa. So you make it a little more breathy (ach-har) to distinguish “falling” from “pickle.” My chances of correctly and distinctly pronouncing these words – or of distinguishing them should someone actually ever offer me a pickle – are approximately nil.
I wonder if my Bengali colleagues will get a kick out of it when I inevitably tell them I ate a pickle on the way to work because of all the mud …
