"GAREE" The magic Somali word

[Thuganomics]

That translates everything

My friends father once asked him to read a letter from some insurance firm or something
He started reading it then translated it to his father thus (And I'll paraphrase)

He said " Aabo they said letterkan read garee markaad understand gareysid formka la socda soo fill garee.Markaa soo return garee
His father said "Gartey Aabo!"
What's with this word and where does it come from

[AirBitaale]

The magic number: 4.5
The magic word: Garee

[BlueBlood]

garee means samee or do in english

[TheSultan]

It was just a few weeks back when we were talking about this.

It's all to do with the colonial era. When the British controlled the Northern territory, they kept Indians as their workers. So it'd be the British generals giving commands to the Indian staff which would then communicate with their Somali counterparts.The language barrier would be overcome soon as us Somali's began to loan some of their words. For instance, rooti, gaadhi etc. We also picked up another useful language trick. Since the Indians were also colonised by the Brits, they would utilise English words and add 'kare' at the end to give it that Punjabi/Urdu touch.

They still use it commonly, just listen carefully to a couple westernised south-east Asians.

Ahh, Somali history is sooooo interesting...

[Beer-Dilaacshe]

[AwRastaale]

It has nothing to do with Indians.

The kids that use 'garee' never saw Africa let alone Indian colonel officers in the East African Rifles from WW2.

Those Indians were in the country for maximum 5 years. They did not influence the society. The English language did not take roots either. Much of the English now seen in SL was imported by Diaspora.

It is used by all Somalis living in the West from UK to New Zealand.

Garee is what can be called partial substitution. So we borrowed an English verb but to make it into Somali verb, we added our own 'garee'.

For verbs we add garee and for nouns we often add 'ka' or 'ga' depending on the sound.

For example; intanedka (internet)
Kumbuyurta-ka (the computer).

With Arabic we do what can be referred to as derivatives----or direct loan. For example xawaash, xalwa/xalwad/xabxab/qurac/cilmi

This has nothing to do with Punjabi.

[Thuganomics]

Wallahi I have not seen this vid before until tonight.But as you can see it perfectly illustrates my point.Garee is indeed an all encompassing word.

PO: Thats a very interesting theory.So garee comes from an Indian word karee,which means to do miyaa.So does it only work with English or do Arab Somalis use it too.If Arabs Somalis do use it then this theory is out of the window,and Hawdian's theory might then have some merit