Koi Nahi???

I had barely recovered from the t/th phenomenon when I was struck with another alien phrase. I'm sure many of you would not have had exposure to the divine phrase that I'm about to discuss. I was introduced to this heavenly phrase during a conversation with one of my Delhite friends a couple of years back. I was just wondering how come I was ignorant of such a lovely phrase till then. Let me give you a glimpse of that conversation:

Preface: STOMA (Stochastic Modeling & Applications) is a monstrous course which we were forced to take during our 1st sem at IISc. Only those who've credited/audited this course can understand the intensity of pain in my statement.

Me: Yaar, it's too much...STOMA prof is surely gonna fail me in his course.
Friend: Why? What happened?
Me: Yaar, I barely managed to score 15 out of 50 in the mid-term.
Friend: Koi nahi !!! Final mein cover kar lena.
Me: Kahan koi nahi? There are so many people around.
Friend: What are you talking about?
Me: You only said, "koi nahi"

The differences were settled only when my dear friend explained to me that "Koi Nahi" is a phrase commonly used in northern India and has a meaning similar to "koi baat nahi". Some people use even a shorter version "Koi Naa".

Till date, I'm unable to understand the relevance of this phrase in its usage. Koi nahi??? Nobody is there??? Who enquired if anyone's there to begin with???

I wonder if "baat" is such a difficult word to drop off from conversations. Why drop such a lovely word as "baat" from "koi baat nahi"...Akhir baat karne se hi toh baat banti hai, kyun???

Ek Number link for asli Nagpurians

I simply love Nagpuri slang words. Before I list out some of my favorite words, let me put my 2 cents on this topic. I think many of the words that Nagpurians speak have their origin from the fact that Nagpur was the capital of Madhya Bharat some time ago. That’s the reason why Hindi is still a widely spoken language in Nagpur. Many of the Marathi people, especially those from western Maharashtra and Marathwada find difficult to digest the fact when two “Maharashtrian” Nagpurians often converse in Hindi, instead of Marathi. I think they forget the fact the native language is largely impacted by the history and the geography of the region (Nagpur is geographically very close to Madhya Pradesh). I believe that rather than cribbing about each and everything, we should try to enjoy the uniqueness of the things. Anyways, speaking Marathi with a tinge of Hindi in it or vice versa, Nagpurians simple love doing this. Let me give you some examples.

Western Maharashtra Version: Kaay kartoys?

Hindi Version: Kya kar raha?

Nagpuri Version: Kaay karun rahila?

If you notice, “karun rahila” is taken from Hindi “kar raha”.

Sometimes these words sound very funny.

gheun ghya (le lijiye), deun dya (de dijiye), chalalo gelo (chale gaye).

Oops, I diverted from the topic. I wanted to list out some of my favorite Nagpur slang words:

kya bolte; ek number; hao kya; abbey; bey; allag sallag; angaar; apan; badmas; baitad; bavaji; phoknaadyaa; buari; bum; chhapda; bawa; chengad; fal fal karna; fek mat; jhaamal jhaamal karna; fatey tak; ghaape; jaana be; kaadya; kanpatna; konteme; mahol

Many more words with their meanings and usages can be found here:

http://mh-31.com/nagpur/nagpur-media/websites/77-nagpur-words-dictionary-special