Wells - Cooly Tamil (1915)

The 1915 classic Cooly Tamil, As Understood by Labourers on Tea and Rubber Estates - Specially Arranged for Planters and Planting Students by W. G. B. Wells is such a brilliant book on so many different levels that I barely know where to begin discussing it.

I first stumbled upon it almost fifteen years ago in the dark, cavernous stacks of Robarts library at U of T. I lovingly flipped through it and photocopied some of the most stunning pages, and I came back to visit the little book every few months for several years to see how it was doing. But I always hoped that one day I'd be able to have my own copy.

Well thank god we are living in The Future. Someone scanned and posted UCLA's version for you to download, print out, carry with you and carefully study. If you are Tamil and don't speak the language, or are a non-Tamil who happens to have married into a Tamil family, now you can finally communicate with your loved ones! And if you are a non-Tamil with Tamil friends or co-workers, now you can finally communicate with them in a way they will fully understand.

Here are some useful phrases included in the book:

Why do you stand there doing nothing?
Take your tools you lazy fellow.
Hurry up you lazy donkeys!
You are all old coolies.
Just playing the fool. Go to the lines!

Hmm. I think that my mother has used some of those on me. Anyway, as you become more confident with your Tamil, you can eventually progress to these more complicated statements and dialogues:

That woman and those boys are not plucking!
(No master, they are lazy.)
You low caste drunken fellow, why cannot you obey the sense I am always telling you about drinking?
(Sir, a coolie is dying on the lines.)
He who stole these things is a thief!

Don't forget to tackle the grammatical constructions of this ancient language with 77 million speakers. Here are some helpful verb conjugations:

She is being beaten.
He will be beaten.
He will have been beaten.

And finally, before dealing with any large group of Tamils, commit this phrase to memory:

Who is laughing?!