PEEVE!!!!!
I don't know what exactly made me post this today, but it is something that has always bugged me and sooner or later it was gonna make its way on my blog.
I hate it when some radio jockeys, VJs or trashy pseudo journalists like those working for 'Pune Times' try to go all ethno-linguistic in a bid to sound "one of us" and say "Aamchi Pune". It stems from the overuse of the "Aamchi Mumbai" term. What people don't realise is that in Marathi, even cities are alloted genders. And that pronouns in marathi are altered according to the gender they are referring to. Mumbai has generally been referred to in a feminine sense and so "Aamchi Mumbai" is spot on. No complaints there. But Pune is not explicitly female unless you append it with a 'nagari'...which no real Punekar will do. Pune is always referred to as "Hey Pune ase aahe..." i.e in the respectful sense, the way "Woh" is used to refer to a single person in Hindi.
Thus the appropriate way to act all "one of you" would be to call it "Aamche Pune", notice, the "e" at the end instead of the "i".
I wish some of those Pune Times himbos and bimbos would read this and alter their pronouns accordingly.
Just a general peeve though, nothing as obsessively compulsive as to make the state government decree that it should be Aamche and not aamchi. ;-)
I don't know what exactly made me post this today, but it is something that has always bugged me and sooner or later it was gonna make its way on my blog.
I hate it when some radio jockeys, VJs or trashy pseudo journalists like those working for 'Pune Times' try to go all ethno-linguistic in a bid to sound "one of us" and say "Aamchi Pune". It stems from the overuse of the "Aamchi Mumbai" term. What people don't realise is that in Marathi, even cities are alloted genders. And that pronouns in marathi are altered according to the gender they are referring to. Mumbai has generally been referred to in a feminine sense and so "Aamchi Mumbai" is spot on. No complaints there. But Pune is not explicitly female unless you append it with a 'nagari'...which no real Punekar will do. Pune is always referred to as "Hey Pune ase aahe..." i.e in the respectful sense, the way "Woh" is used to refer to a single person in Hindi.
Thus the appropriate way to act all "one of you" would be to call it "Aamche Pune", notice, the "e" at the end instead of the "i".
I wish some of those Pune Times himbos and bimbos would read this and alter their pronouns accordingly.
Just a general peeve though, nothing as obsessively compulsive as to make the state government decree that it should be Aamche and not aamchi. ;-)
