I was having some problems with Chiff & Fipple, and so I called Joanne the customer service intern. Anyway, when I called she said “please holding for I transfer your call.” I say okay, and then I hear this Muzak.
After 38 minutes of Bollywood hits as played by the Tijuana Brass, Joanne came back on the line and said, “Hello. What is yours?”
I say, “Yes, I’d like to speak with Joanne.”
And she said “I am being Joanne.”
I say, “I don’t want to speak with someone ‘being’ Joanne. I want to speak with Joanne!”
She said “Please to hold.”
And I say, “No! I don’t please to hold. Just get me Joanne on the line I need to talk with her!”
She said “I being Joanne.”
Then I say “Please, let me speak with your supervisor.”
I am immediately transferred to another line, and am greeted with “Hello, GMAC. How can we finance you?”
Talasiga, bless him, included the magical Hindi phrases that it is necessary to say to call-centre demons. My searching skills are not up to finding this thread - it’s here on C&F somewhere, but maybe Slude Dude will oblige if you ask him nicely. Or you could try asking Talasiga.
Yeh, that could give 'em a start if they’re expecting some monoglot Brit, Yank or Aussie.
That’s roughly “Michael Ji, where do you call me from?”
Actually, I’d have thought that continuous tense would have been more appropriate, as in:
“Michael Ji, aap mujhko kahaan se ring rahaa hain?” which would mean “Michael Ji, where are you calling me from?”
The first version I understand to be more a kind of habitual tense asking where the guy calls (habitual) from, rather than where he is calling (now) from.
My Hindi is awfully rusty, and I hope Talasiga will be kind enough to put me right.
There’s a Sikh gent who shops in the same supermarket as me. I usually see him with his daughter who is about 10 or 11. Their conversation is conducted in two languages: the father conducts his side in Panjabi, while the little girl replies and speaks in English! It’s great.
A friend of mine got told off by a visiting uncle because his Panjabi is too adulterated with Hindi words, and because he speaks both those languages with too much of an English accent. The last bit really amused me, because when he speaks English it seems to me to be very heavily Panjabi accented!
