A British milkman has learned Gujarati to help his Asian customers.
John Mather, known to his customers as 'Jimmy,' has been delivering fresh milk and dairy products to customers in the county of Lancashire, north-west England, for 50 years.
He began learning Gujarati, the Indian language with 45 million speakers worldwide, when the first wave of immigrants arrived from India and Bangladesh in the 1960s.
"They were good, decent folk but obviously their English wasn't good," he told the Daily Mail newspaper (London). "So, I picked it up myself and it made things a whole lot easier."
Jimmy began learning the language by repeating simple phrases he heard from customers. He credits his impressive memory with helping him to master the foreign tongue.
Customer Mohammed Sufi said he was "shocked to hear him speaking such fluent Gujarati" when he arrived in the UK in 1974.
Mr. Sufi is not the only customer to have become a personal friend of Jimmy's. "I must have been invited to dozens of weddings every year," said Jimmy, who has also enjoyed participating in eastern cultural and religious festivals.
Professor Rachel Dwyer, a University of London academic who specializes in Indian cultures, told the Daily Mail it was rare for non-Indians to learn Gujarati. "A few Arab traders in Oman and … a handful of scholars" know the language, she said.
She added that that vowel sounds and grammatical structure were very different from those of English.
Mr Mather, 69, says he loves his job too much to retire.
"I'll keep going as long as I can," he vowed, adding, "and my Bengali's not so bad, so I'm having a go at that."
19 July 2010
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