The Tamil situation

In case I didn't mention this before, my Tamil's gotten pretty good. My Tamil colleagues at work are continually surprised by my fluent speech and a couple of guys were surprised to know that Tamil's not my first language. That was probably a highlight for me! It helps that as opposed to before, when my Tamilian friends would speak to me in English with a few Tamil expressions thrown in, these people here speak to me primarily in Tamil. This one girl who sits next to me constantly speaks in Tamil each time she sees me. So even without trying my own skills have gone up.

I'm also watching a lot of Tamil channels. My primary TV watching (which I'm trying to cut down in the first place) can be categorized primarily into either Movies, reruns of US sitcoms or Tamil comedy clip shows. The Tamil networks show a lot of comedy clip shows during the night hours. I'm now intimately familiar with the works of Vadivel and Vivek.

After a lot of effort I was able to download "Kadhala Kadhala" at home and began watching it last night. It occurred to me that I find the average Tamil movie a lot funnier than the average Tamil viewer. I think it's because when I watch any Tamil show/movie, I have to translate it in my head. The understanding of what's being said comes after a bit of effort, so I don't take it for granted. Hence when I finally "get" the joke, and sometimes the hidden second joke or pun or reference, I am very pleased with myself for "getting" it. Added to that there's the unfamiliarity of the terrain. In any culture, just learning the language isn't enough, you need a context to appreciate the culture. Similarly in Tamil movies there's a "culture" that you need to get in order to find the joke funny, but on the flip-side, someone familiar with the usual jokes might not find that much humour in them. Since I'm discovering these jokes for the first time, I tend to find them a lot funnier.

"ROON JAHAM".