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July 08, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: rubber

rubber. /rəb·ər/. A useful writing tool that is used to erase marks made by pencils. Generally known as an eraser in the United States. Why? Because it erases things! How then does 'rubber' make sense? Because it rubs things out!

If you are in any doubt about the sanity of referring to to such an operation as 'rubbing out', perhaps you'd like to know that you have used rub out many times by now, unless you are a touch typist that hasn't made a single typo in your life. RUBOUT is a sequence sent by keyboards to computers when you need to erase a character previously typed. RUBOUT (Ctrl-H, or occasionally Ctrl-?) can be interpreted as either a Backspace or a Delete depending on the settings of the computer system. Early Unix keyboards didn't have separate Backspace and Delete keys. They had one Rubout key, whose behavior could be configured.

Of course, the conventional usage of rubber in the United States is to refer to a male device for contraception and STD prevention. Many Indians come to the U.S. unaware of this fact and use rubber to refer to an eraser. There was a fairly painful scene in American Desi, IIRC, which used this fact to provide supposed comedic value. An Indian graduate student is teaching a recitation in a banal New Jersey university as a Teaching Assistant. During roll call, he pronounces Jesús not as /che·SOOS/, but as /JEE·səs/, as Anglo-Americans do. Later in the roll call he makes a mistake noting down somebody's attendance and asks a hot girl in the front row, "Miss, do you have a rubber"? Because she obviously interprets it as him asking for a condom, she says no. He goes on and asks, "Jesus, do you have a rubber?"

While I am talking about school stuff, I might as well give props to Devraj from Dick & Garlick for having undertaken a similar mission to mine in the area of demystifying Indian English. He makes another excellent Indian English entry which has eluded me: by-heart, used as a verb. By-hearting is the most used schooling technique in India and around the world. I owe a lot to by-hearting for getting me where I am today.

Posted by Vishy at July 8, 2005 11:21 PM

Comments

The American Desi scene, goes, I think:
"Does anyone have a rubber?"
(Class looking mystified, and barely containing their laughter)
"Jesus, do you have a rubber?"
"Miss, you must have a rubber in your purse"

:-)

Posted by: the nav at July 9, 2005 01:02 PM