My neighborhood, Bandra, is known for its shopping. So on my day off this week, I wandered through the boutiques and departments stores in Bandra.
At one store I bought a salwar kameez, an outfit that consists of a long kurta, (a shirt) a dupatta, (a scarf) and salwars (pants). The shirt is a long tunic, to your knees or mid shin. The scarf is worn sort of like a backwards boa- looped across your front and over your shoulders. The pants are made of simple light cloth, and have either straight legs, pantaloony, puffy legs, or, most common, close, fitted legs with ankles that come in tightly and keep going about half a meter past the end of your foot, so you have to bunch them up. Mine fall into the last category. I might try to see if I can convince a tailor to modify them for me, because I don’t like the tight feel of them. The outfit is really comfy besides that though. The salwar kameez is what Indian women wear as traditional garb when not wearing saris. (There are also lots of women in Western clothing too.)
I don’t think I am going to buy a sari, because I don’t think I would ever wear it. The salwar I can maybe get away with, sort of, but the sari would just look silly. Also, if I wore it in Seattle, it would feel as though I were wearing a sign saying “I have been to India and you haven’t. You know, because I am wearing this sari. Why aren’t you wearing yours? Oh, that’s right. You probably don’t have one. India.” Just painting all that onto a piece of cardboard and hanging it around my neck would be cheaper and easier.
At one store I bought a salwar kameez, an outfit that consists of a long kurta, (a shirt) a dupatta, (a scarf) and salwars (pants). The shirt is a long tunic, to your knees or mid shin. The scarf is worn sort of like a backwards boa- looped across your front and over your shoulders. The pants are made of simple light cloth, and have either straight legs, pantaloony, puffy legs, or, most common, close, fitted legs with ankles that come in tightly and keep going about half a meter past the end of your foot, so you have to bunch them up. Mine fall into the last category. I might try to see if I can convince a tailor to modify them for me, because I don’t like the tight feel of them. The outfit is really comfy besides that though. The salwar kameez is what Indian women wear as traditional garb when not wearing saris. (There are also lots of women in Western clothing too.)
I don’t think I am going to buy a sari, because I don’t think I would ever wear it. The salwar I can maybe get away with, sort of, but the sari would just look silly. Also, if I wore it in Seattle, it would feel as though I were wearing a sign saying “I have been to India and you haven’t. You know, because I am wearing this sari. Why aren’t you wearing yours? Oh, that’s right. You probably don’t have one. India.” Just painting all that onto a piece of cardboard and hanging it around my neck would be cheaper and easier.
1 comment:
I got to wondering whether kameez is related to chemise, the French word for shirt. Then I got to wondering, if it was a borrowing, which language borrowed it from which?
Looking it up, it seems that chemise has been attested in French since at least 1200, and is ultimately, through proto-germanic, from a pIE (proto-Indo-european) root *ken, to cover or cloak. So, since Hindi is a indo-european language, this could in theory be a true cognate, and not a borrowing. Since the ancestors of French and Hindi divereged many thousands of years ago, that would be pretty remarkable.
I wonder if the Portuguese colonial influence in the area makes it more likely that this is a borrowing from Portuguese into Hindi?
(now would be a good time to start ignoring this and tuning out :)
Looks like I'm not the only one who wonders about this. Someone here looked it up in the OED online, and finds that it's in Arabic (in the Quran, so maybe 550 AD), but there it's thought to be a latin borrowing, as it's attested far earlier in Latin. Some speculate a Sanskit word kshauma, which has something to do with linen. And the argument ensues as to germanic or latin origin. (Still, looks like definitely not Sanskrit - so did it come into the region via a latin language or via arabic?)
Finally the most fascinating thing (if the kameez/chemise mystery doesn't keep you up at night) might be that the post I linked to is a blog post with 676 comments. Wow.
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