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Adda (South Asian)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Adda
An adda may be viewed as a form of intellectual exchange among members of the same socio-economic strata.[1] It is most popular among the youths belonging to the so-called "middle-class intelligentsia". Although many Kolkatans boast of the city being the birthplace of adda culture, Satyajit Ray (in his film Agantuk) traces back the origin of the tradition to regular intellectual dialogues prevalent in Ancient Greece at the time of Socrates or Plato. Adda is also a prominent leisure activity in the country of Bangladesh.
Adda is one of the growing list of words which have entered English from the Indian ( Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families of ) languages ( like yoga, guru, avatar, etc). Adda was incorporated into the OED in 2004.
The Indian adda has shades of meaning attached to different languages:
In Hindi, adda is a noun, with the nominal form of the word meaning the location or nest of a group or community, usually shady people. The etymology can be traced to the original meaning of the word, which means the "perching spot or perch for birds".
In Bengali, adda is both a standalone noun and a noun in a noun - verb compound. The nominalization of the word has 2 senses - one being the Hindi sense, and the other being the place of ritual meeting and/or conversation of a group of people. The verb form means informal conversation among a group of people, often for hours at an end, and usually accompanied by food. The word has a laid back feel to it, like the Italian siesta.
The Bengali institution of the adda has also been the subject of recent scholarly attempts to reconstruct alternative histories of modernity in South Asia. [1]
It is not uncommon for word meanings to vary slightly from language to language inside a language family. /m/a/t/l/a/v/a/ ( in the Indo-Aryan family) is another such word.
The official etymology in OED is marked as Hindi, which sparked off intense discussion in India after the inclusion of the word in the OED.