Another #LifeEh story!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How close two individuals are to one another, one can deduce from a number of different things. In Nepal, the pronoun and\/or the verb conjugation one uses when addressing one another CAN be an indicator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The use of the most informal pronoun Ta<\/em> (\u0924\u0901) between two friends can indicate a real closeness. (If not, the use of the pronoun by one, but not the other in case of those who aren’t kins, can indicate a difference in social status — caste and\/or class — or what the speaker thinks of — or how the speaker views — the other person relative to himself\/herself.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, since returning to Nepal seven years ago, I have discovered I have NO Nepali female friends who I use the most informal pronoun to\/with! In other words, in the 15-plus million Nepali female population, I cannot count a single one as someone I am so close to that I can be so informal with!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, I have international female friends I made during my time as a student at the United World College in Italy, Grinnell College in the US, Lancaster University in the UK, and the University of New South Wales in Australia. I also have other international female friends I made during my time at the various international schools around the world as an international teacher. I also have other female friends I have made along the way, pretty much exclusively international though. Among them are those who I am still close to and\/or am able to talk to about pretty much everything!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But NOT a single Nepali woman who I can say I have been really close to or am still close to and am able to talk to about everything under the sun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I came to realize this observing interactions between men and women in Kathmandu who had attended co-educational schools in the valley. They referred to each other using Ta<\/em> (\u0924\u0901), the most informal pronoun and language I myself mostly reserve for my St. Xavier\u2019s School classmates. I struggle to use the pronoun and language with other Nepali men, forget about using them with a Nepali girl or woman!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back now, I have realized that I had very limited opportunities to meet Nepali females throughout my life. To begin with, we were all male siblings at home. And then I went off to an all-boys — the first five years at a boarding school at that! I think from fourth grade onwards, we were taught exclusively by male teachers. By the time I reached fifth grade, I discovered I was a very very sensitive and very shy around females<\/a> (which I mostly lost leaving the country). Not long after completing my secondary schooling at the all-boys school, I left Nepal and spent most of the next twenty-five years abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I did NOT come in close contact with Nepali females for any significant length of time the entire time I lived abroad! In the majority of the cities I lived, there were hardly any Nepalis to begin with anyway! In the cities where there were — such as in Hong Kong, London, New York, and Sydney — unless they were relatives and\/or friends from the Nepal, I kind of avoided them, the details of which could be a whole blog post on its own altogether. I’ll say this though: one of the number of reasons for going abroad had been to “escape”<\/a> from the country and the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Life eh!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n (If you are interested in other #LifeEh observations, click here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here,<\/a> here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The pronoun you use in Nepali to address a fellow Nepali can be an indicator of the level of closeness to the person. Curiously enough but not really surprisingly I have discovered that I don’t really have a single Nepali woman who I can say I am really close to, no one I am very informal in pronoun and\/or the language I use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":11240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"#LifeEh: On the Question of Women...","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[160],"tags":[569,576,613],"class_list":["post-18755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-personal-stories","tag-life-eh","tag-gender","tag-gender-issue"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Holi-feat-image.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Jbro-4Sv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29732,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18755\/revisions\/29732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}