Thread by @beastoftraal

A thread on 'Open Sesame':
How do you pronounce “Sesame”? Till my mid-20s, I have pronounced it as “See same”. Then I stumble upon the TV show ‘Sesame Street’ where I hear people uttering it as “Se sa mee Street” and my whole life felt like a lie. 1/21

2/21 And then I realized that at least in the case of Tamil Nadu, one of the reasons why many people pronounce it as See-same could be because of M.G.Ramachandran aka MGR!

Why?

3/21 Because, he starred in a 1956 Tamil version of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves (Alibabavum 40 Thirudargalum), which was massively successful, and he said, in that film, “Andaa Ka Kasam, Abu Ka Hukum, Thirandhidu See-same”!!

4/21 Now, he wasn’t referring to the see-same in any cooking or kitchen sense – he was merely parroting what was given to him as dialogs in the movie. And there was no specific context to sesame in the film either. But “see-same” stuck on, somehow, beyond a fantasy film, to a

5/21 LOT of people in Tamil Nadu using that pronunciation! Just search for “seesame” and ‘tamil nadu’ and you’d realize how very common this pronunciation is! Was MGR the super-spreader of this pronunciation, passed from generations? I don’t know, but looks likely.

6/21 The phrase supposedly appears for the first time in Antoine Galland’s French book Les Mille et une nuits (1704–1717), based on One Thousand and One Nights, popularly known as Arabian Nights, as ‘Sésame, ouvre-toi’ (meaning, sesame – open yourself).

7/21 But this line of thought took me in another interesting direction. Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves is a story from Arabian Nights and it has been made as a film many times, in many countries, in many languages. What was 'open sesame' in all those language versions?

8/21 Here’s a fascinating snapshot based on some of the films available on YouTube! Let me start with Andhra Pradesh! The 1970 Telugu film, Ali Baba 40 Dongalu, starred NT Rama Rao and Jayalalitha! NTR says, in the film, “Khuda Ka Kasam, Hassan Ka Hukum, Khulo Sey-same”!

9/21 Kerala - Malayalam! Prem Nazir stars as Ali Baba, in the 1975 film, Alibabayum 41 Kallanmaarum. He says, “Allah Ki Kasam, Abu Ka Hukum, Thurakkum See-same”!

10/21 Probably the first version in India, in 1937, was in Bangla. The script was an adaptation of Kshirodprasad Bidyabinod's play that was itself based on the original Arabian Nights. The phrase used in this film is "Chiching Fak". This is the (like the early Hindi

11/21 equivalents - see below) Indian equivalent of Open Sesame that doesn't seem to have anything to do with 'sesame', as far as I could find out. Another Bengali film from 1973, ‘Marjina Abdulla’, also uses the same code-phrase ‘Chiching Fak‘!

12/21 Hindi cinema has used the Ali Baba story more than once. Here are some of those.

The 1954 film, Alibaba Aur Chalis Chor, starring Mahipal and Shakila. Mahipal says, “Khul Ja Samsam”!

13/21 In the 1966 Hindi film starring Sanjeev Kumar, the code-phrase is the same – “Khul Ja Samsam”!

14/21 For the 1976 film starring Dara Singh as Ali Baba, the code-phrase is the now-famous, “Khul Jaa Simsim”.

In the 1980 Indo-Russian co-production Alibaba Aur 40 Chor, starring Dharmendra, the phrase was “Khul Jaa Simsim” (available on Netflix).

15/21 Incidentally, sesame is called ‘simsim’ in East Africa, from what I understand! So, they are essentially referring to sesame too, just not in an Indian language variant of the name.

16/21 Going outside India, here are some versions.

In a 2007 French TV film, Ali Baba et les 40 voleurs, the phrase is, “Sésame, ouvre-toi”. Not say-samee, but ‘se same’, closer to the Tamil Nadu pronunciation!

17/21 In the 1971 Turkish version of the same story, “Ali Baba ve Kirk Haramiler”, the phrase is, “Acil susam, acil”. Susam is one of the Turkish words for Sesame, from what I gathered online!

18/21 Of all the movies made on the Ali Baba story that I glimpsed to check the cave-opening phrase, the funniest was the 1960 Malaysian movie, “Ali Baba Bujang Lapok”. It is billed as a comedy movie and not as an adventure movie. The leader of the thieves comes in a

19/21 puny bike! He even says ‘Hi’ to Ali Baba who is hiding in a tree and then goes on to literally sing the phrase with a hilarious dance-like gesture 🙂 There doesn’t seem to be anything related to sesame in the phrase this guy uses!

20/21 The pronunciation for sesame that I learned from my mother (the one MGR popularlized through his film) is close to the French pronunciation but vastly different from the actual English pronunciation.

21/21 I still have to mentally tune my pronunciation to decide whether to say ‘say-samee’ or ‘see-same’ depending on who I’m talking to :)