Are you qualified to use certain words?

In my mother tongue Tamil, lot of boys and men use the word "machi" or "machaan" to address another guy in a friendly manner. The word "machaan" or "machi" means wife's brother. In Hindi too, there are slang words, "saalaa" or "saaley", which mean the same.

I just want to present some scenarios where the usage of these slang words might be acceptable.

Let's say an unmarried guy A calls another guy B "machi" (or its equivalent). This might be fine if any of the following are true:
  • A is already married to B's sister
  • B doesn't have a sister for A to marry (A can remain a bachelor then.)
  • A intends to marry B's sister and both B and one of B's sisters are fine with that
This might not be fine if A intends to marry B's sister, but B or B's sister don't like that idea. Then A, B and probably one of B's sisters have a problem to sort out.

But if a married man A calls another guy B "machi", then what he is implying is that B should consider A's wife as his sister. That sounds like a very gentle way of suggesting morality.

PS: I am assuming A, B, B's sisters and A's wife are all adherents to generally established moral rules of today.

Popular posts from this blog

The beauty of guilt

A perspective on our understanding of God