The Diplodocus

The Grey Lady devoted an entire article to the topic of adda a few months ago.  I can’t believe I missed it.  Stateside Bengali friends, where were you on this?  I need your help on quality linkage.

The Coffee House mentioned in the article is a mandatory destination for us when the family goes to Calcutta.  According to G. family mythology, my super interesting Marxist-Humanist paternal grandparents had their wedding reception there.  Not mentioned in the article are the low quality of the Coffee House’s coffee or the Raj-era uniforms the servers wear.  Its a fun place to pass the time, but I’d say as far as Calcutta destinations go its really only interesting for about ten minutes.  And it doesn’t even have wi-fi.  (The day the Coffee House gets wi-fi… well, heads will roll.)   I haven’t been there in a couple years, but I’m doing a brief two day trip to the City of Joy a week from today to see some family.  Plenty of time for some quality adda. 

Today in Bangla class I asked my teacher (yes, Mom, shikkhika is indeed the better word, though apparently shikkhoitri is the more proper term for a female teacher) a question that has been bugging me for some time: is there an English translation for the term adda?

Anyone with some exposure to Bangla culture has come across the term. It’s kind of like conversation, or gossip, or “hanging out.” But at its essence it’s really none of those things. In proper usage its attached to the “to do” helper verb kora: ranna kora (to cook), bam kora (to exercise), opekar kora (to wait), etc. Its an activity, and a popular one amongst Bengalis. You can do it on the phone, in person, in a pair in a larger group. In fact, one doesn’t even need to talk to do adda. Its just something someone does, and I don’t think there’s an English word for it. The traditional Bengali love for it feeds the stereotype that Bengalis love to talk (I am not wont to disagree).

The closest thing my teacher could come up with was “something to do to pass the time.” That’s quite inexact, since adda doesn’t necessarily carry the implication of idly passing time. I’ve always thought of it as an activity that to be enjoyed. My family has also used the helper verb to give (dawa) with the word. Yet another layer of confusion.

So, readers acquainted with Bangla: any suggestions for how to translate adda? The Bangla-English dictionary was no help, and I’d love to have this question answered, either succinctly or not. Have at it!

High up on the list of “The World’s Most Unlikely Homework Assignments”:

Write a letter to your grandmother.

Despite writing in a completely different language, my handwriting is still awful.

Learning to read a language I’ve been able to speak all my life is a fascinating and frustrating struggle. There are whole concepts that were completely unknown to me before this particular endeavor — the regularity of possessive endings, the actual correct pronunciation of the word for “daughter,” the existence of words I thought were actually two separate words when speaking the language. Like all the other writing systems I’ve learned of late, it’s incredibly interesting — but unfortunately, unlike the hyper-logical and almost exception-free Hindi, there’s a whole gaggle of special rules to grapple with. Blast you, silent-only-sometimes “maw!”

In that vein, Bangla class in general continues forward. My teachers are fabulous, incredibly funny, and very amused by what I know and don’t know. I suspect that the way I speak Bangla is indicative of what happens when you grow up with a language but never get educated in it — I may not know the technical word for development, but I know a ton of puns and can make fun of you with the best of them.