It's complicated

On our way to work today, when we'd stopped by for our brekky, the guy at the deli asked what language we were speaking in. We told him it was Nepalese, and like I expected, he asked us how we said, "Hello" in our language. You see, we don't really have a "hello" in our language now, do we? You'd say it was Namaste. But it's way too formal. Something you'd use only to your elders or something you say out of respect to someone like a teacher or a boss. You don't go 'Namaste' to your friends. We told him it was 'Namaste' anyways. Then he asked, what was "Thank you". Hey, that was easy. "Dhanyabaad". When he couldn't wrap his tongue around the word, I asked to write it down for him. I wrote the नमस्ते and धन्यवाद. He told us there was this Nepali girl he liked and he wanted to impress her. He asked how we said, "You have beautiful eyes" in Nepalese. My friend and I looked at each other like he had lost his mind. 

Nepalese language is something. We hardly speak what we write. And writing what we speak would be hilarious. To say to a girl that she had beautiful eyes, one would have to use a formal line. One that we are hardly used to. If I had to say that to a guy, I'd just tell him plain in English. It's that easy. I could never go the hardship of trying to remember what certain song said, or what a poet wrote years ago about beautiful eyes. Nepalese people are used to using आगन्तुक words for a while now. We just say Hello and Thanks and Bye and most importantly I love you (which, if you ask me, is the most awkward translation EVER to make). Words. If you ask me to translate words, I could do that, but never ask me to translate sentences because I am sure as hell to translate it into something that will most definitely come out extremely retarded. Something like, "तपाईका आँखा सुन्दर छन्" and remember it will come out of an Uzbek guy that won't remember how to pronounce them.

Nepalese to English, trust me, the translation, it's complicated.