Accidental Blogger

People, Places and Things

When culture influences grammar. (Link: Dean)

Everybody knows that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. It's one of those undeniable facts of daily life, a fact we seldom question until we meet up with a case that doesn't quite fit the way we're used to viewing things.

That's exactly what happened to a student in Ohio when his English teacher decided to play the noun game. To the teacher, the noun game seemed a fun way to take the drudgery out of grammar. To the student it forced a metaphysical crisis. To me it shows what happens when cultures clash and children get lost in the tyranny of school. That's a lot to get from a grammar game.

Anyway, here's how you play. Every student gets a set of cards with nouns written on them. At the front of the classroom are three buckets, labeled "person," "place," and "thing." The students take turns sorting their cards into the appropriate buckets. "Book" goes in the thing bucket. "city" goes in the place bucket. "Gandhi" goes in the person bucket.

Ganesh had a card with "horse" on it. Ganesh isn't his real name, by the way. It's actually my cousin's name, so I'm going to use it here.

You might guess from his name that Ganesh is South Asian. In India, where he had been in school before coming to Ohio, Ganesh was taught that a noun named a person, place, thing, or animal. If he played the noun game in India he'd have four buckets and there would be no problem deciding what to do with "horse." But in Ohio Ganesh had only three buckets, and it wasn't clear to him which one he should put "horse" in.

In India, Ganesh's religion taught him that all forms of life are continuous, interrelated parts of the universal plan. So when he surveyed the three buckets it never occurred to him that a horse, a living creature, could be a thing. He knew that horses weren't people, but they had more in common with people than with places or things. Forced to choose, Ganesh put the horse card in the person bucket.

Blapp! Wrong! You lose. The teacher shook her head, and Ganesh sat down, mortified, with a C for his efforts. This was a game where you got a grade, and a C for a child from a South Asian family of overachievers is a disgrace. So his parents went to talk to the teacher.

I have a hard time referring to animals (birds and mammals especially) as "it."

"Colour"

Quite coincidentally, right on the heels of our recent discussion on language and thought, Sukrita Paul Kumar sent me the following essay in which she muses over the issue of color.  Color also came up tangentially in the comments section of the language post. Sukrita's is a literary approach - no Sapir-Whorf there. Her thoughts also touch upon this discussion here. (Sukrita has used Indian / British spelling. Hence colour)  

COLOUR AS NATURE?

 Sukrita Paul Kumar

When Orhan Pamuk spoke on the making of his novel My Name is Red , someone asked him if the use of colour red in the title was symbolic. His reply is what I want to start this piece with. He said “I use colour as texture, not as symbolism”. And I wondered, is it at all possible to disassociate one’s self from the culturally, and even politically, defined symbolic ramifications of different colours as we may use them in writing, painting or during the course of everyday living. Some of Pamuk’s other novels such as The White Castle, The Black Book and Other Colours too, forefront some colour or the other in the title as is evidenced. It is a sure feat of creativity to be able to shake off cultural labels from the colours, to perceive them phenomenologically and present them with pristine innocence. Mind you, not naiveté .

In fact how refreshing it would be if innocence could be recreated, if one could go centuries back in history, cleanse our brains, eliminate genetic memory and regain our ability to see colours in the freshness of their own texture without any baggage of cultural prejudice and meaning. Or any historical symbolism, infested with political tension and psychological oppression. The human mind today is enslaved by orientations of a society that is certainly not colour-blind in its perception of the white, the black , the yellow or the brown people, perpetually fanning issues of racism ironically, even through endless articulation of its denouncement.

Nor are we able to disengage ourselves from the religious symbolism of colours. In fact in our part of the world, ‘saffronization’ of education is a term thrown up by recent history, when a major political party in power was perceived to be attempting to give a specific ideological colour to school text books in history and philosophy. The colour saffron today languishes in a very insular political prison house rather than blossoming in the fields out there.

The question to ask is, can an individual triumph in releasing colour from the oppression of cultural identity, when we do not today live as much by nature as by nurture. How have some colours been nurtured in the context of the colour of skin? I am reminded here of an example of a white couple who adopted a black son precisely to free themselves of racial prejudice. They did not realize the existential cultural dilemma they put this child into. Years later, despite his loving parents, he recorded how he passed through intense moments of alienation and anguish repeatedly because as a black child and then as an adolescent, he received not-so-subtle messages from all around that convinced him that he was different, unacceptable and inferior. His black skin endowed upon him identity ascriptions different from his own identity-claims as a child grown up in a white household. He had to actually undergo therapy to overcome his dilemma.

The blacks are compelled to remain together to empower each other with energy to combat an all-pervasive racism, nurtured over times immemorial. We know then why there aren’t any white ghettos. Identity politics have laid out the superiority of the white in the hierarchy of power. Culture actually becomes an accident of birth if identity is so dependent on the colour of the skin or the race one is born into. When recorded history or visible history constantly reinforces the myth of the superiority of a particular race, poets such as Derek Walcott lament :

Where are your monuments,

your battles, martyrs?

Where is your tribal memory? Sirs

In that gray vault. The sea. The sea

Has locked them up.¡¨

                   From “The Sea is History”

Thousands of gray vaults will have to be retrieved from the sea and then opened to excavate the history of “the wretched of the earth”, for the wretched to turn the tables. Remember what James Baldwin said “I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the colour there”.

Transformation Through Language

Sharon Begley in Newsweek:

When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide accolades. German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness" and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense" "concrete giant." Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power? Lera Boroditsky thinks not.

A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism—as in testable hypotheses and actual data.

That's where Boroditsky comes in. In a series of clever experiments guided by pointed questions, she is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that "the private mental lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically," not only when they are thinking in order to speak, "but in all manner of cognitive tasks," including basic sensory perception. "Even a small fluke of grammar"—the gender of nouns—"can have an effect on how people think about things in the world," she says.

As in that bridge. In German, the noun for bridge, Brücke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw prototypically female features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys (Schlüssel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language construes key as masculine and which as feminine? Grammatical gender also shapes how we construe abstractions. In 85 percent of artistic depictions of death and victory, for instance, the idea is represented by a man if the noun is masculine and a woman if it is feminine, says Boroditsky. Germans tend to paint death as male, and Russians tend to paint it as female.

Being fluent in three languages (speak, read, write, think, quarrel), I can attest to the truth of this. Indeed, objects and ideas do often take on different forms and nuances in our minds depending on the language we assign to them. But can language shape our bodies? Some silly people seem to think so, without quite explaining how!

SHOULD’A / WOULD’A (Narayan)

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama's pick for the Supreme Court has been characterized by right wing rabblerousers as a racist and a militant femme. She has caught a lot of flak, particularly for one statement she made in a 2001 speech at the University of Berkeley entitled, ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice,’ during which she elaborated upon her experience on the bench as a woman of Hispanic background. Her critics have interpreted the statement as racist and biased against white males (some of them are backtracking now).

Reader Narayan Acharya, who has contributed several interesting opinion pieces here, speculates that Sotomayor was not making a political statement at all when she brought up her race, gender and life experience. The much reviled, awkwardly worded sentence was the result of thinking in Spanish and speaking in English. The grammatical differences of the two languages may have crossed wires in her brain, according to Narayan.  Specifically, Sotomayor was tripped up by the "subjunctive!"

Narayan explains:

What Sotomayor said was :

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness o f her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

This is a daunting sentence to analyze. By now we know all the negative meanings and implications that have been imputed to the speaker by those with an axe to grind. But is there something more subtle going on in the rendering of the sentence? I think so, although I find it difficult to clearly identify it. Simply parsing the sentence is futile because mere structure is not what I’m after – deconstruction is needed. Let me strip it to its skeleton anyway :

“I would hope that X would U than Y who hasn’t V” where X is ‘a wise Latina woman’, U is the verbal phrase ‘reach a better conclusion’, Y is ‘a white male’, and V the verbal phrase ‘lived that life’.

One cannot quarrel with the sentence except to quibble that a strict grammarian of a generation or two ago would take issue with the opening verbal phrase saying that ‘I should hope that’ is the only admissible form. I recall being shown a typescript of a primer that claimed that ‘should’ also signals the subjunctive mood, but have not been able to confirm the validity of this claim from other sources. Fowler states that the pairing of ‘I’ and ‘would’ is an “invasion from the other side of the Atlantic”, and that ‘should’ is the correct word to use with the verbs like ‘like’, ‘prefer’, ‘care’, ‘be glad’, ‘be inclined’ etc.

The crux of the matter, I believe, is that Sotomayor is bilingual, and though she may be a native English speaker, her mother tongue is Spanish. We can agree that she is also a native Spanish speaker without debating which came first. Undoubtedly she learnt both languages at an early age when speech is established through imitation rather than formal learning. At that age one learns to speak correctly memetically, without knowing the whys and wherefores. I maintain that Sotomayor must have learnt the use of subjunctive verb forms well before she knew why they were needed.

I do not recall being taught about the subjunctive in English and didn’t know of its significance until I embarked on a course in Spanish. Since then I have discovered that, except perhaps for the uneducated, Spanish speakers use the correct verb forms when the subjunctive mood is called for. English speakers, even the best educated, are sloppy in this respect, using the indicative where the subjunctive is called for, arguing that the meaning is understood anyway by the context.

 From “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage”, H.W.Fowler,1965

“Subjunctive … a verb-form different from that of the indicative mood in order to ‘denote an action or a state as conceived (and not as a fact), and [expressing] a wish, command, exhortation, or a contingent, hypothetical, or prospective event’ – OED. About the subjunctive, so delimited, the important general facts are : (1) that it is moribund except in a few easily specified uses; (2) that, owing to the capricious influence of the much analysed classical moods upon the less studied native, it probably never would have been possible to draw upon a satisfactory table of the English subjunctive uses; (3) that assuredly no one will ever find it either possible or worth while to do so, now that the subject is dying; and (4) that subjunctives met with today, outside the few truly living uses, are either deliberate revivals, especially by poets, for legitimate enough archaic effect, or antiquated survivals giving a pretentious flavour to their context, or new arrivals possible only in an age to which the grammar of the subjunctive is not natural but artificial.”

From “The American Language”, H.L.Mencken

1936 ed : “…virtually extinct in the vulgar tongue”

 1948 ed : “On higher levels, of course, the subjunctive shows more life, and there is ground for questioning the conclusion of Bradley, Krapp, Vizetelly, Fowler and other authorities that it is on its way out.”

From “Modern Spanish Grammar – A Practical Guide”, J.Kattán-Ibarra & C.J.Pountain, 1997.

“Sometimes the subjunctive is automatically required by another element in the sentence such as a verb or a conjunction. Sometimes there is a choice between subjunctive and indicative, in which case there is always a difference in meaning between the two. The subjunctive is not ‘avoided’ in Spanish, and is not in any way old-fashioned or unusual.”

A Lexicographic Count Down

The English language is about to reach the 1million word mark. At least, by one person's reckoning - that of Paul Payack, a "word watcher" (of the Wordubon Society?) from Austin, Texas. Payack thinks he knows the precise time that the million^th word will enter the English language lexicon - 10:22 am (GMT) on Wednesday, June 10, 2009. He has a count-down clock ticking towards that moment on his website. While Payack seems all set to welcome the landmark linguistic event, other language mavens sniff at his presumptive prediction. They call his count spurious and claim that there is no way anyone can accurately account for the exact number of words in a language. 

More from Tuesday's Houston Chronicle.

Cracking a 4000 year old linguistic mystery?

Are scientists on the path to deciphering the Indus Valley script?  The story here and here.

An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.

Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.

"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what's found in many languages," said University of Washington computer scientist Rajesh Rao.

The Indus script, used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. in what is now eastern Pakistan and northwest India, belonged to a civilization as sophisticated as its Mesopotamian and Egyptian contemporaries. However, it left fewer linguistic remains. Archaeologists have uncovered about 1,500 unique inscriptions from fragments of pottery, tablets and seals. The longest inscription is just 27 signs long.

In 1877, British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham hypothesized that the Indus script was a forerunner of modern-day Brahmic scripts, used from Central to Southeast Asia. Other researchers disagreed. Fueled by scores of competing and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to decipher the script, that contentious state of affairs has persisted to the present.

Among the languages linked to the mysterious script are Chinese Lolo, Sumerian, Egyptian, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Old Slavic, even Easter Island — and, finally, no language at all. In 2004, linguist Steve Farmer published a paper asserting that the Indus script was nothing more than political and religious symbols. It was a controversial notion, but not an unpopular one.

Marriage by definition

First the Iowa Supreme Court, followed by the Vermont Legislature and now Noah Webster?  Will the fact that dictionaries are giving a nod to same sex unions in their definition of "marriage,"  smooth the way for gay marriage?

Opponents of gay marriage generally have relied on two authorities, the Bible and the dictionary—the divine word and the defined word. A 2006 friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of anti-gay-marriage organizations in a Maryland marriage case cited no fewer than seven dictionaries to make its point. And when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage last week, it ignored the state's plea to abide by a dictionary definition that limited marriage to "the legal union of a man and a woman."

But in their latest editions, the dictionaries have begun to switch sides—though until recently, no one seemed to have much noticed. The American Heritage Dictionary, Black's Law Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Webster's have all added same-sex unions to their definitions of marriage.* The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily broke the news in March about Webster's, reporting that the dictionary had "resolved the argument" over gay marriage by applying the ancient term "to same-sex duos."

How, exactly, has the wording in the dictionaries changed? American Heritage went first, adding this to its definition of marriage in 2000: "A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage." In 2003, Webster's included in its definition "the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage." In 2004, in its eighth edition, Black's added "same-sex marriage" to its marriage entry, recognizing that "same-sex couples have successfully challenged the laws against same-sex marriage" in a number of states. Even more interesting, 2008's Webster's Contemporary School and Office Dictionary says nothing gendered about marriage at all. The entry simply states that marriage is "the state of being united to another person as a contractual relationship according to law or custom." And the king of them all, the Oxford English Dictionary, since 2000 has included in the definition of marriage the phrase "long-term relationships between partners of the same sex."*

The skull and the cup - from the same set of china

 There may be many a slip between the cup and the lip. But do you know that the drinking cup is  etymologically a close cousin of the skull? I did but that knowledge is tucked away in a distant enough corner of the brain that it doesn't color the way I look at my tea cup.  

I am an avid tea drinker. I like "real" tea - the slightly acrid and soothing liquor made with tea leaves, both black and green. I drink the former with milk and the latter without. Not for me the new age concoctions contaminated with orange, lemon, pomegranate, elderberry, wild flowers and other unnecessary flavors although I do occasionally enjoy jasmine, ginger, chamomile, mint, Indian chai masala or a few strands of saffron in my brew. But mostly, I like to partake of the undiluted version of the beverage. There is no special tea ceremony in our home. The kettle is put to boil whenever the craving strikes for a hot refreshing cuppa.

I grew up around copious tea drinkers. Tea was served all year round at breakfast, at afternoon teatime and when guests came. Though not particularly tempted as a child to drink the beverage of the adults, I was nevertheless fascinated by the paraphernelia of the tea tray.  My mother owned three sets of tea service made of fine English bone china. They were part of her bridal trousseau - gifts from her father. One was an elegant and sedate cream color set with green and gold edging. Another, a dainty design of pink roses on pristine white. The third, my childhood favorite, consisted of a very round teapot surrounded by globular tea cups of impossibly thin and exquisitely translucent beige china festooned with tiny red, deep blue and gold birds, flowers and berries. Although I did not start drinking tea regularly until I entered college, the sight of the steaming amber-gold liquid being poured from one of the gorgeous teapots into a waiting cup was an aesthetic experience even my childish eyes could appreciate.

Perhaps it says something about my austere mother's indifference to material possessions that those beautiful pieces, an anomaly in our otherwise in-ostentatious Bengali kitchen, were not stowed away in a cupboard for special occasions but put to daily use by the family as well as guests who regularly dropped by for a cup of tea. It is therefore not surprising that most of the tea cups and pots from the collection were gone by the time I began drinking tea in my late teen years. Isolated pieces of the beautiful china remained - a few cups and saucers, a mate less creamer from one set and an unmatched sugar bowl from another. The teapots were all gone - chipped, cracked or broken due to years of use and careless handling. We then drank tea from non-descript ceramic cups and tea pots. No one bothered to go out and shop for good china. When I earned my first pay check, I bought my mother a set of eight cups and saucers (no teapot, creamer or sugar bowl) made of locally produced bone china. They were not half as elegant as my mother's old collection but she accepted the replacements with whole hearted enthusiasm.

As a person who loves tea and tea sets, I do own some nice tea cups and mugs. But sadly, my kitchen pantry is currently devoid of a good china / clay teapot. I have owned a few ceramic and clay ones since I set up independent house keeping after marriage. They were all traditionally attractive, affordable and eminently serviceable fat bellied pots. They are now gone and I currently own a few glass, stainless steel and pewter ones. My "formal" dinner set did not come with a teapot. By the time I went back and searched in a catalog of Mikasa's line of accessories, the design had been discontinued. I never got around to buying a suitable tea pot to go with the set. Perhaps this nostalgic blather will act as an impetus to begin a new search.

My sudden outpourings about tea, teapots and cups was set in motion by an excellent article, Fragments of Bone and Clay  by Aditya Dev Sood, a new writer at 3 Quarks Daily. Among other observations about the culture of tea drinking, Aditya goes into deep musings over bone china and the the drinking cup.

The form of a teacup awaits and anticipates its human users with intimacy, affording a second finger leverage, varieties of opposition for the thumb, and of course, that slippery kiss. But it has still more intimate links with the human body: the word ‘cup’ has Indo-European roots, being linked to cupola, as in dome, as well as the Latin cephalus and the Sanskrit kapala, both cognate words for skull. The kapalika-s, of course, are members of that now nearly extinct sect of Saivism, who carry around a human skull, from which they both eat and drink. I believe it is a false calumny that their skull belongs to someone they have killed, but rather that their purpose is, like Hamlet, to be in proximity and awareness of death, the better to feel their own quickness and capacity for live action. How much does it matter whether one’s cup be found whole in nature or be crafted by human hands? Whether it be a human relic or a fine puree of mammalian bones? The important thing is that a cup can serve as a means for dialogue, for silent communion, for mutuality and shared sustenance.

For more on the kapala - cup connection see here.

Mavericks: The cattle and the men

John McCain never tires of reminding us that he is a "maverick," a dissenter "who marches to his own drum," he said in his acceptance speech. We know the common dictionary meaning of the word that referred originally to wayward cattle and later to a public figure with an independent mind. The owner of the maverick cattle herd who gave us the word in its current form was Sam Maverick, a South Carolinian turned Texan. Maverick fought in the Texas Revolution, spent time in a Mexican prison, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, served as a state legislator and the mayor of San Antonio.

Columnist Rick Casey writes in the Houston Chronicle that there were other Mavericks before and after Sam, the lousy Texas cattleman and some of them too were mavericks.

Behind the scenes at the GOP Convention

After a shaky start, the Republican National Convention picked up tempo by midweek. The party reached its high point on Wednesday, the 3rd of September, when John McCain's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska brought the house down with her acceptance speech. McCain wrapped up the convention the next day with a patriotic story and a promise to "change" Washington during his own address. Those of us who watched the convention coverage on TV, saw the razzle dazzle and choreography of the orchestrated events. Now it is being reported that the GOP stagecraft wasn't exactly flawless. For example:

• Like any political gala designed to tug at the heartstrings of voters, the Republican convention was awash in symbolism and iconography, most of them easily understood. But for reasons that remained unclear for half a day, McCain delivered his acceptance speech before a giant image of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood. Neither the audience in the hall nor TV viewers recognized the building or its particular significance in relation to the speech. The McCain campaign cannot explain why this particular school was used as the back drop on McCain's big night. Although the campaign won't admit it, it is now widely believed that the image that was intended to be there for patriotic symbolism was that of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. and not the school. The inept stage crew got the props mixed up and the principal of Walter Reed School is now unhappy that her school's photo was appropriated by the RNC without permission.
• When anti-war protesters interrupted McCain who peppered his speech with references to patriotism, honor and national security, he placated the audience thus:

  "My friends, my dear friends ... please, please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static," McCain said. "I'm going to talk about it some more, but Americans want us to stop yelling at each other."

  What McCain must have known but didn't say, is that the protesters, who were "escorted" out by security guards were not mere "ground noise and static". They were Iraq War veterans who have hounded McCain at other public events because of his support of the war but not of those who are fighting it.
• Sarah Palin delighted the audience at the convention with many homilies about her down-home, common sense, non-elitist approach to governing. One punch line that got thunderous applause was when Palin decried the unnecessary perks of the governor's office.  "That luxury jet was over the top ..... I put it on eBay," she declared. But being the  consummate stand-up comic that she has proved to be, Palin knew exactly where to end her narrative to elicit the loudest cheer. It turns out that she did "put" the plane on eBay but she did not "sell" it.  The plane was later sold to a private buyer for $300,000 less than the asking price. Yet Sen McCain later told audiences during campaign stops that his running mate had sold the plane on the Internet for a profit.
• McCain spoke at length about fighting corruption, reducing the size of the government, defeating terrorists, cutting taxes and of honor and pride. He spoke more briefly about the economy, energy independence and education. On health care, he had only this to say: 

My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His [Obama] plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.

Perhaps McCain had so little to say on this issue because he doesn't really believe that health care is a problem for most Americans. John Goodman, a health care adviser to the McCain campaign has claimed that there are no "uninsured Americans" because everyone has access to the hospital emergency room.  (McCain's campaign has now disassociated itself from Goodman)

Senator McCain has admitted that he doesn't understand economic issues very well. It is therefore not a surprise that he did not address the challenges facing the US economy in his speech. The day after the GOP convention ended, the US Department of Labor released a report showing that the US unemployment rate rose in the month of August to 6.1%, the highest in five years. Perhaps it is time for the McCain campaign to hire an economic adviser like Goodman who can redefine joblessness and declare, "There are no unemployed Americans;  there are only persons of leisure with access to eBay where they can sell at a profit all the accumulated junk in their basement and make a living."

Post Convention Updates:

The Invisible Sarah: The upcoming Sunday talk shows will be bristling with the presidential candidates answering questions of reporters and making their case to the public. One candidate who will not speak to the media is Sarah Palin. The McCain  campaign says that she will speak "directly to the American people."

Pray Away The Gay:  The church attended by Sarah Palin has planned a conference to promote the conversion of homosexuals to heterosexuals through the power of prayer. The "Love Won Out" conference is scheduled for the 13th of September in Anchorage, Alaska.      

Should Obama Fear Sarah Palin?

Should we? Perhaps. The game plan of the Democrats has to be radically overhauled. This is no longer going to be a campaign only about "issues" or the State of the Union. It is also about cultural divisiveness and pushing voters into their "zone of discomfort" many of whom are now likely to cast the November ballot in an emotional, not cerebral way.

Dean, in his comment, beat me to George Lakoff's article (link: Narayan Acharya) explaining precisely this aspect of public oratory - whether the speaker focuses on external realities or emotional symbolisms. Republicans have bamboozled the public time and again by pushing cultural and social hot buttons even when they are running on an abysmal record of external realities and managed to win. Democrats, who pride themselves on caring for bread and butter issues have failed even when reality dictates that they should win handily. Bread and butter for some inexplicable reason always lose to mom and apple pie. Sarah Palin, predictably did just that - spoke about all the things that make America "great" but she did it in a way that I wasn't expecting. She smiled, she looked disarming and was even quite funny in a middle schoolish way. That was a vast improvement over Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee who tried the same thing earlier but came off sounding lame, vicious and hokey respectively.

Palin said many things last night. She paid homage to family, country, hard working "ordinary" people, common sense and of course, John McCain. She railed against the media, congress, Washington insiders and other "elites." She did not once mention Bush-Cheney, Afghanistan, education, health care or the economy.  But what she conveyed most effectively to her audience was that Barack and Michelle Obama are not one of "us." She managed to exoticize and alienate them sufficiently to sow a seed of doubt in some minds and irrigate those who had already planted it. It was done masterfully. Hillary couldn't do it with her barely repressed anger and McCain can't do it because he is a lousy speaker. Palin took on Obama's record and without overtly ridiculing it, managed to thoroughly trash it. The "othering" of Obama was Palin's designated task and she exceeded the expectation in what some are calling a "Steel Magnolia" style. Ma Palin managed to imply that her five precious kids (and yours too) may not be entirely safe if Obama becomes president.

Even some otherwise intrepid souls are a bit shaken. My husband, who was lying on the sofa before Palin began was about to doze off. He sat bolt upright about ten minutes into the speech and was very concerned by the time she had finished. John Dickerson of Slate is worried. Even Brian Leiter admits that she was effective (and deceptive). Strangely enough, though I am quite easily unnerved by right wing shenanigans, I was not very nervous. I will wait for the media to their job - dig deep into her record and interview those who know her well. I will also wait for Palin to face the media without a prepared script.  Instead, I am seething. Once again, I see an attempt at hood-winking, Swift Boating and race baiting by the ruthless ignoramuses. Once again, I fear they might succeed (do I then have to continue blogging for four more years?). Hard to imagine, but McCain-Palin may turn out to be even more ugly than Bush-Cheney. I have to hope that Chicago politics have taught Obama to take body blows and push back.

One last note on last night's gathering of the sharks who came to feed on "red meat."  Every featured speaker, including Palin, mentioned that he / she has "always been proud of America."  This was a blatantly orchestrated move to belittle Michelle Obama. I really wish that the Obamas will have the gumption and the guts to ask these splendid patriots if they were also "proud" when lynching, Jim Crow and other criminal indignities were being inflicted upon certain Americans who don't quite look like them.   

The Cognoscenti of Perfumes (Sujatha)

I happened upon this article about the inspiration behind Hermes perfumes via Asian Window. This year has been declared  by Hermes to be the Year of India, with " silk scarves ... vivid with raw pinks and fleshy mangoes, elephants harnessed to carriages and tigers rampant."  Parfumeur Jean Claude Ellena travelled through Kerala, India in search of olfactory inspiration for his new 'Jardin apres la mousson' ('Garden after the monsoons") set to be released this summer.
(As with all overwrought prose dedicated to the exotification of India and the monsoons, this article has its hilarious bloopers, which will undoubtedly pass unnoticed by the majority of the target audience. A sampling below:
"all rooms are cobbled out of 200 year old teak cottages (tharavadu)" -Tharavadu means family, not cottage
"  Women wear their saris differently here than they do up in the north, draping them like togas" - Sarongs are a more appropriate comparisons.
"And when the first monsoon blows in from the Arabian sea....the modest women of Kerala rush out into the rain..."and the saris cling very close to the body" "  -Sounds like a Bollywood rain song, not reality

But I digress ,as usual.)

Ellena travels about the world, inhaling scents and attempting to recreate their most pleasing elements not with the original source, but a palette of chemicals such as geraniol, indole, castoreum and a whole host of other derivatives from floral, animal and other sources. It's a fascinating field that revels in the blending and mixing to generate a whole forest of sensation in a single sniff.

While Monsieur Ellena cooks up his olfactory masterpieces and Hermes markets them at astronomical prices to the cognoscenti, another company has taken a different kind of potshot at the Asian mass market.

You might think twice before telling a friend, and you would bite your lip rather than mention it to your boss, but one soap company has no qualms about telling 3 billion Asians that they need to use a deodorant.

Unilever is preparing to confront the issue head-on with a marketing and advertising push directed at a new Asian generation.

Russell Taylor, global vice-president for Axe, the Unilever-made deodorant marketed as Lynx in Britain, said that no one had yet found a way of making Asians self-conscious about body odour. “Asia is a market we have never really cracked. They don’t think they smell, but people everywhere smell,” he said.

He said that the region was a billion-pound opportunity – “the last empty space on the map”. He estimated that only 7 per cent of Asians used a deodorant, with consumption in India virtually nil, and his team is dreaming up advertisements that will induce shame about sweat stains and odour across the region.

All this, despite the fact that body odor is not really a pressing problem in these countries, where frequent baths (even twice daily in the hot season) are the norm. But that won't deter the marketers from creating an illusion of need to sell their product. The question is whether their audience will be receptive or oblivious to these blandishments. That's still up in the air, just like the "Jardin apres la mousson", I guess. 

Lost in Translation? (Sujatha)

This recent review of a translated version of noted Urdu author Joginder Paul (Ruchira's father-in-law) sparked the question: How much is being lost in translation?

(Thanks to Ruchira for the link to the Library of Congress recordings and Bio. page)

"Apostrophe"

Matt's found sound - through punctuation. Should we give him "a posh trophy?"

And here are some folks who have made the "apostrophe" their life's misson.

A Metareview of "Unaccustomed Earth" (Sujatha)

Reading Jhumpa Lahiri's latest collection of short stories "Unaccustomed Earth" left me with the feeling of watching life unfold in slow motion. I felt as though as I was walking through treacle, time slowing down to a crawl as I took a break from reading to venture out on a short shopping expedition. Luckily, the effect faded after 5 minutes.

The book has been reviewed to death already: no less than twice on the NY Times - effusion I, effusion II. (login subscription needed) Though not all critics have been kind to her- this one likens reviewing her books to throwing pebbles at an elephant. Another faults her for too narrow a canvas. Not that I completely agree with the paeans or the criticisms.

 

"Brigade de Cuisine" (Dean)

I approach food writing with caution, if not dread. Too often a writer's musings about the culinary arts turn out unappetizingly precious or pretentious. Restaurant reviewers have to work hard to avoid saying pretty much the same thing about this week's carbonnara as they remarked of last week's polenta. The sappiness and off-putting wordplay can be compounded when foodies get all confessional, presuming the stories of their lives and of their transcendent "passion for food" are necessarily interesting to their readers, but also sufficient to sustain a literary text. I briefly went off on a related tangent in a recent comment here. There's no need to persist with the complaint, and I'd rather highlight an exception or two to the rule.

Waterboarding (Hint: It Is Torture)

In my comment on Joe's post below, I expressed some frustration in failing to locate any official international of national document describing methods of interrogation that actually amount to torture. I searched specifically for "waterboarding."  Although the Wikipedia defines it as torture, Attorney General Mukasey evaded giving an answer during his confirmation hearings by claiming he did not have enough information about the exact technique of waterboarding. As I pointed out in my comment, it is clear to me that although many politicians play lip service to banning torture, they want to leave enough loopholes in its definition in case "we" decide to use it under certain circumstances. It was therefore refreshing to find conservative wordsmith and retired commentator William Safire, a supporter of the Iraq War, say unequivocally that waterboarding in fact is torture.  Safire uses the simple rule of deductive logic that if something looks, walks and quacks like a duck, there is little doubt that it is a duck even if the salesman selling you the bird calls it a chicken.

Some locutions begin as bland bureaucratic euphemisms to conceal great crimes. As their meanings become clear, these collocations gain an aura of horror. In the past century, final solution and ethnic cleansing were phrases that sent a chill through our lexicon. In this young century, the word in the news — though not yet in most dictionaries — that causes much wincing during debate is the verbal noun waterboarding.

If the word torture, rooted in the Latin for “twist,” means anything (and it means “the deliberate infliction of excruciating physical or mental pain to punish or coerce”), then waterboarding is a means of torture. The predecessor terms for its various forms are water torture, water cure and water treatment.

The early phrase Chinese water torture described a cruel ordeal invented by Asian ancients. The purpose of slowly dripping water on the forehead until each little splash became unbearable was not “to elicit information through harsh interrogation” but to drive the victim mad. That phrase outlived its sadistic practice and is in use today, adopted as a metaphor for “repeated annoyance intended to infuriate.” In a 1991 hostage standoff, President George H. W. Bush decried “the cruel water torture of occasional vague promises.”

Looks like Poppy Bush didn't like the technique. However Bush Jr. would like us to believe that waterboarding is benign, effective, mildly uncomfortable and doesn't amount to "harsh" interrogation; which is why he has vetoed the bill that was designed to ban the method. Other US presidents and armed forces veterans too have stated that waterboarding is a form of torture. Once upon a time Senator John McCain seemed to agree. 

Senator John McCain — no stranger to both the wrong of painful coercion and the need for antiterror intelligence — strongly denounced the procedure as “exquisite torture.”

Between that time when he denounced waterboarding and now, what happened to Straight Talker McCain, who voted "no" on the recent senate bill proposing a ban on waterboarding?  The alluring vision of the White House has appeared in the crystal ball, no doubt. Joe asked in his post that if torture is banned in the US, why is there even a need to debate the issue? I pointed out that defining "down" torture is often the devious way a government can continue to use torture and at the same time hypocritically claim to be against it. One way to redefine an age old, tried and tested method of torture is to give it a new name.

Why did boarding take over from cure, treatment and torture? Darius Rejali, the author of the recent book “Torture and Democracy” and a professor at Reed College, has an answer: “There is a special vocabulary for torture. When people use tortures that are old, they rename them and alter them a wee bit. They invent slightly new words to mask the similarities. This creates an inside club, especially important in work where secrecy matters. Waterboarding is clearly a jailhouse joke. It refers to surfboarding” — a word found as early as 1929 — “they are attaching somebody to a board and helping them surf. Torturers create names that are funny to them.”

See Safire's full article in the New York Times here.   

To "Apu" Or Not To "Apu?"

"Walk like an Egyptian."  And talk like an Indian?  Or a Chinese, Arab or Zulu?  When does artistic license with foreign cultures add to the authenticity of a dramatic endeavor and when does it descend to the level of second rate mimicry?

A good friend, an Indian American, has shared with me a somewhat disconcerting personal experience. He and his family recently attended a school function where videos of students staging dramatized versions of stories from different parts of the world were shown to visiting parents. It just happened that the class in which my friend's young son belongs, had picked an Indian story set in India. Much to his surprise (and the embarrassment of the child), my friend discovered that some of the children in the Indian play affected a stereotypical Indian accent. Now, please understand that the characters in the play are NOT Indians speaking in English but rather the translation of a story which occurs in India in a time and place where the characters would in "reality" be conversing in their native tongue.

Last summer when The Simpsons, the movie was released, heated discussions erupted about the character Apu and the stereotype of Indian Americans that he personifies. There is no doubt that Apu's persona is highly exaggerated and his accent is over the top - very few Indians speak like that.  But everything about The Simpsons is exaggerated and over the top. The opinion of Apu among Indian Americans (and their British counterparts) was divided. Some felt that in an outrageous comedy where all the characters take a beating, Apu is no exception. Others felt that the depiction of all the cringe-worthy stereotypes of an ethnic minority group even for comic effect perpetuates the stereotype and mocks an entire community. 

Whatever one thinks of Apu, the case of The Simpsons is not identical to the one my friend experienced at his son's school. There is an important difference. Apu, an Indian immigrant, whose native language is not English, actually speaks English in the show. The characters in the school play are not supposed to be speaking English in the original setting - they do so only in translation. The accent, even an exceptionally exaggerated one, can be considered a "natural" part of the Apu character.  But that is not the case for the actors of the school play. Convincing accents by actors are often a very fine part of drama. But one needs to know where they are applicable.

Having grown up in India and learnt English there, I have an accent that is distinctive in America. But  my children sound "natural." (They have an accent when they visit India!)  In  movies about Indian (and British) Americans, it is common to find actors playing Indian born characters speak English with an accent and their kids sounding like locals.  But if you staged a dramatized version of an Indian epic in English and had the characters utter Apu like accent and inflection for the sake of authenticity, it would be ridiculous. To put it in perspective, imagine the Royal Shakespeare Company's actors laboring with heavy Scottish accents in Macbeth and speaking lilting Italian English in the Merchant of Venice.

So, why the confusion?  Why don't people get it? I blame Disney.

"Dukh - Pain": an English - Romani poetry book

Dukh - Pain, a book of poetry by Bosnian writer Hedina Sijercic has been brought to my attention by the book's publisher, Roland Hönsch of Magoria Books.  The poems are in Romani. See a preview here along with the English translation of some of the poems.

Romani, the language of the Roma or Gypsies, belongs in the Indo-European family of languages with many similarities with North Indian dialects. I have no knowledge or familiarity with it but on reading the preview I can understand several words without deciphering the context or the meaning of the poems. Incidentally, Dukh, the word in the title of the book does mean pain or sorrow in most north Indian languages.

Update:  Mr. Hönsch has forwarded me this link to articles by Ronald Lee on a variety of social and cultural issues pertaining to the Roma. Among them is an interesting piece about the Romani custom of worshiping the Black Madonna. I had mentioned this practice in my review of Isabel Fonseca's book Bury Me Standing.  As I had speculated in my review, Lee too traces the origin of the Black Madonna to the Indian goddess Kali.

Until recently it was widely believed that this worship of Kali Sara, the Romani Black Madonna or Goddess was unique to Les Saintes Maries de La Mer. My own recent research among Romani refugees from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and in countries of the Balkans has uncovered the little-known fact that other Black Virgins are worshipped by Roma in central/eastern Europe and that Roma from these countries perform similar rituals. These rituals include laying flowers at the feet of the statue, adorning the statue with clothing of the sick hoping for cures, placing requests to the statue, and lighting candles to the female divinity. To the Roma, Kali Sara is the Protectress who will cure sickness, bring good luck and fertility and grant success in business ventures.

The Romani ceremony at Les Saintes Maries, as elsewhere, consists of carrying the statue on a platform strewn with flowers into the closest body of water such as a sea, lake, flowing river or even a large pond of clear water. The platform is then lowered to touch the water while the crowd throws flowers into the water. Indian scholars such as Dr. Weer Rishi and others who have witnesses this Romani ceremony as well as Western observers who are familiar with Hindu religious customs have identified this ceremony with the Durga Pooja of India In Romani, Kali Sara means Black Sara and in India, the Goddess Kali is known as Kali/Durga/Sara. Like the Hindus, the Roma practice shaktism, the worship of Goddesses. In other words, the Roma who attend the pilgrimage to Les Saintes Maries in France and in other related ceremonies elsewhere honouring black female divinities, are in fact continuing to worship Kali/Durga/Sara their original Goddess in India.

Well, It Is What It Is

With the advent of each new year we contend with "lists." Lists of resolutions, hopes, predictions, trends, the most important people/books/movies/technological innovations of the last year etc.  The wordsmiths too go to work with lists of new words and expressions that enter our vocabulary. This year I found a list of nineteen words and phrases compiled by AP writer Jeff Karoub who wants them banned in 2008. (As it happens, wordsmith is one of them)

The List  (and comments by readers who voted for the ban)

PERFECT STORM - "Overused by the pundits on evening TV shows to mean just about any coincidence." - Lynn Allen, Warren, Michigan.

WEBINAR - A seminar on the web about any number of topics. "Yet another non-word trying to worm its way into the English language due to the Internet. It belongs in the same school of non-thought that brought us e-anything and i-anything." - Scott Lassiter, Houston, Texas

WATERBOARDING - "Let's banish 'waterboarding' to the beach, where it belongs with boogie boards and surfboards." - Patrick K. Egan, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

ORGANIC - "Overused and misused to describe not only food, but computer products or human behavior, and often used when describing something as "natural," says Crystal Giordano of Brooklyn, New York.

WORDSMITH/WORDSMITHING - "I've never read anything created by a wordsmith - or via wordsmithing - that was pleasant to read." - Emily Kissane, St. Paul, Minnesota.

AUTHOR/AUTHORED - "In one of former TV commentator Edwin Newman's books, he wonders if it would be correct to say that someone 'paintered' a picture?" - Dorothy Betzweiser, Cincinnati, Ohio.

POST 9/11 - "'Our post-9/11 world,' is used now, and probably used more, than AD, BC, or Y2K, time references. You'd think the United States didn't have jet fighters, nuclear bombs, and secret agents, let alone electricity, 'pre-9/11.'" - Chazz Miner, Midland, Michigan.

SURGE - "'Surge' has become a reference to a military build-up. Give me the old days, when it referenced storms and electrical power." - Michael F. Raczko, Swanton, Ohio.

GIVE BACK - "This oleaginous phrase is an emergency submission to the 2008 list. The notion has arisen that as one's life progresses, one accumulates a sort of deficit balance with society which must be neutralized by charitable works or financial outlays. Are one's daily transactions throughout life a form of theft?" - Richard Ong, Carthage, Missouri.

'BLANK' is the new 'BLANK' or 'X' is the new 'Y' - In spite of statements to the contrary, 'Cold is (NOT) the new hot,' nor is '70 the new 50.' The idea behind such comparisons was originally good, but we've all watched them spiral out of reasonable uses into ludicrous ones and it's now time to banish them from use. Or, to phrase it another way, 'Originally clever advertising is now the new absurdity!'" - Lawrence Mickel, Coventry, Connecticut. 

BLACK FRIDAY - "The day after Thanksgiving that retailers use to keep themselves out of the 'red' for the year. (And then followed by "Cyber-Monday.") This is counter to the start of the Great Depression's use of the term 'Black Tuesday,' which signaled the crash of the stock market that sent the economy into a tailspin. - Carl Marschner, Melvindale, Michigan.

BACK IN THE DAY - "Back in the day, we used 'back-in-the-day' to mean something really historical. Now you hear ridiculous statements such as 'Back in the day, people used Blackberries without Blue Tooth.'" - Liz Jameson, Tallahassee, Florida.

RANDOM - Popular with teenagers in many places. "Over-used and usually out of context, i.e. 'You are so random!' Really? Random is supposed to mean 'by chance.' So what I said was by chance, and not by choice?" - Gabriel Brandel, Farmington Hills, Michigan.

SWEET - "Youth lingo overuse, similar to 'awesome.' I became sick of this one immediately." - Gordon Johnson, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

DECIMATE - Word-watchers have been calling for the annihilation of this one for several years. "'Decimate' has been turned upside down. It means 'to destroy one tenth,' but people are using it to mean 'to destroy nine tenths.' - David Welch, Venice, Florida.

EMOTIONAL - "Reporters, short on vocabulary, often describe a scene as 'emotional.' Well sure, but which emotion? For a radio reporter to gravely announce, 'There was an emotional send off to Joe Blow' tells me nothing, other than the reporter perceived that the participants acted in an emotional way. For instance: I had an emotional day today. I started out feeling tired and a bit grumpy until I had my coffee. I was distraught over a cat killing a bird on the other side of the street. I was bemused by my reaction to the way nature works. I was intrigued this evening to add a word or two to your suggestions. I was happy to see the words that others had posted. Gosh, this has been an emotional day for me." - Brendan Kennedy, Quesnel, British Columbia, Canada.

POP - "On every single one of the 45,000 decorating shows on cable TV (of which I watch many) there is at LEAST one obligatory use of a phrase such as ... 'the addition of the red really makes it POP.' You know when it's coming ... you mouth it along with the decorator. There must be some other way of describing the addition of an interesting detail." - Barbara, Arlington, Texas.

IT IS WHAT IT IS - "Only Yogi Berra should be allowed to utter such a circumlocution." - Jerry Holloway, Belcamp, Maryland.

UNDER THE BUS - "For overuse. I frequently hear this in the cliché-filled sports world, where it's used to describe misplaced blame - i.e. 'After Sunday's loss, the fans threw T.O. under the bus." - Mark R. Hinkston, Racine, Wisconsin.

"Please, just 'blame' them." - Mike Lekan, Kettering, Ohio.

Although I don't much care what words and expressions others use, I take great interest in the evolution of the common parlance. If I don't like a word or expression, I just don't use it but I don't get all riled up if others have annoying speech patterns. I don't think I have ever seriously considered banning linguistic irritants even when certain words and phrases make me wince or smirk. One such "non-expression" devoid of any meaning (like "It is what it is,") is "That's a good question!" - usually uttered in a ponderous tone of voice accompanied by the shadow of an approving nod. Translated, it always means, "I don't know the answer." May be I would ban that.  The other phrase which I have wished to see disappear for the last seven years is "The Bush Administration."  Alas, although I know it will be officially retired at the end of 2008, we won't be rid of it for a long time due to the stench it will leave behind. I hope it will not be replaced by another scary term - "The Clinton Administration."

Ethnic, Exotic : For And According To Whom?

I had a similar debate at another blog many months ago but was reminded of it recently after a casual encounter.  Earlier last month, during Diwali I met an Indian American man I know slightly who was on his way to a festive party to celebrate the occasion. He was dressed in a very elegant silk kurta. I complimented him on the same and he said somewhat irrelevantly, "The email invitation asked guests to dress in ethnic clothes, so here I am." Now, I wasn't invited to the same party so I hadn't seen the language in the invitation. I don't know if the e-mail said, "Indian dress or Ethnic dress required." But I was struck by the use of the word "ethnic" by an adult Indian born American to describe the kurta. For me and according to the dictionary, the word "ethnic" bears a connotation of "minority" culture outside the mainstream. I wear saris to most formal and semi-formal occasions both when I am in India as well as in the US. To me the sari is not an "ethnic" dress although to non-Indian observers, it may be - like a fancy costume. I was therefore a bit surprised by the choice of the adjective by a man who grew up in India where men of all classes (and from many regions) sport the kurta. Or was he just pointing to its uniqueness in the sartorial culture of mainstream America?

This brings me to another observation - the use of the words ethnic and exotic in India to characterize Indian traditional clothing, art, craft and beauty. Urban Indian men and women wear both Indian and western clothing without self-consciousness. While the majority of the men dress in shirts, jackets and trousers in the workplace, professional Indian women are more likely to be seen in traditional Indian clothing than in western garb. There are indeed modes of dresses within India which are ethnic in the Indian context - peculiar to a certain region or religion. When I lived in India, I had never heard the word "ethnic" to describe most traditional Indian clothing, handicrafts or jewelery. But in the last few years during my visits to India, I have occasionally seen it being used in shop signs and heard it in conversations to include plain old saris, shalwar kameez and kurta - pajamas. These all happen to be mainstream garments in India. When did these styles become ethnic ? Or are people using it like the word desi which incidentally means national or local.

I was too polite to point this out but the use of the word ethnic to describe home grown stuff made in India was rather bemusing. Perhaps the usage is not so different from the time in my youth when the same wrong headed choice of vocabulary was reflected in describing dark skinned women who comprise the overwhelming majority of Indian women. I don't know how it is now, but twenty five years ago, popular film and fashion magazines could not bring themselves to describe a drop dead gorgeous but dark complected Indian woman simply as beautiful. The adjectives of choice were dusky, sultry and most gallingly, exotic. How's that for a colonial hangover? But ethnic is new for me. Exotic, ethnic - for whom and where?

I understand that in certain circumstances words and expressions can be appropriated by a group to mean whatever it wishes them to mean. (I am of an age that I remember the time when "gay" meant plain "happy") Usually the underlying motive is to take control of how one wants something personal to be defined rather than let others do it. Sometimes the purpose is to take the sting out of an outsider's derogatory epithet by making it one's own; such as the appropriation of the n-word by African American rappers and "queer" by gay rights activists. Sometimes however, inappropriate use of language enters common parlance out of sloppiness - probably because the word sounds "smart" or because one is too lazy to look it up in the dictionary.

Note to readers and co-bloggers:  Although all references here are to India and things Indian, this is not a desi or ethnic post.  It is about language. There is no doubt in my mind that the word "ethnic" is clearly wrong when applied to Indian clothing in India.  But was my acquaintance in Houston too somewhat mistaken in referring to the kurta as ethnic in a conversation with me?  Please don't hesitate to jump in with your informed opinions.

Cat (or Global Forces) Got Your Tongue?

The New York Times has an article about vanishing languages. The author quotes linguists who claim that almost half of the existing languages of today are in danger of becoming extinct - some as early as next week!

Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and likely to disappear in this century. In fact, one falls out of use about every two weeks.

Some languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television.

New research, reported yesterday, has found the five regions where languages are disappearing most rapidly: northern Australia, central South America, North America’s upper Pacific coastal zone, eastern Siberia, and Oklahoma and the southwestern United States. All have indigenous people speaking diverse languages, in falling numbers.

The study was based on field research and data analysis supported by the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. The findings are described in the October issue of National Geographic and at languagehotspots.org.

Language is a crucial ingredient of our overall identity and a powerful connection to our cultural history. Amin Maalouf in his book on multi-faceted and overlapping identities prescribes several remedies for the fractious nature of the world where he urges us to seek common ground. But even he becomes sentimental when it comes to language - he doesn't want to cede ground when it comes to linguistic identity.  This is what I wrote in the book review regarding Maalouf's fears.

The author believes that redefining identity to include all our roles in the world, is likely to reduce cultural and political strife among groups. He sees globalization as a beneficial engine towards that goal due to the inevitable give and take that occurs in opening ourselves up to newer cultures. Yet, he also worries that the same force that may some day eradicate suspicions and violence among disparate communities, could also become responsible for wholesale obliteration of "weaker" cultures.  He worries mostly about the linguistic hegemony of more advanced societies whose grip on the language of science and technology could one day wipe out other less technologically developed languages. There are many sides to this debate - I am not wholly in agreement with the author on this one. Red flags about cultural preservation are raised all the time. Progress and civilization have their own momentum. Some aspects of human history get lost before the juggernaut of another more powerful force while others survive despite thousands of years of oppression, coercion and bullying.

Razib at Gene Expression, considers the idea of the loss of a language. His approach is a bit like my own. "No big deal", he says when it comes to the big picture of human progress. Losing a language, he claims, is mostly a choice, not an imposition by others.  Is language then one of those things in our lives to which we are attached by habit but in reality, life wouldn't be very different without it? In this vein, see my own "heartlessly unsentimental" post about the literary classics  that we came close to missing. But is a "book that never was" on the same footing as a "language that will no longer be? "  Perhaps not that different, if you agree with what Razib says in his post, especially in the last paragraph:

On a more philosophical level one must ask whether the creative genius of humanity is constrained and defined by the texture of a particular language, or whether specific works are simply masks placed upon universal faces. Does the language make the myth, or does the myth simply seek a language? I lean toward the latter, though I do not deny that the ancients puns and Hebrew world-play embedded within the Pentateuch are obscured in translation. Something special, sui generis, is lost as a language winks out of existence, but the fundamental truths that we value as human beings is extant in stories which transcend the particular speech in which they are transmitted. The Epic of Gilgamesh has the same heart whether it is in Sumerian, Akkadian or English. All men live only in memory after they die.

 

How Many Eggcorns Do You Have In Your Basket?

An idiom by definition is idiosyncratic - it conveys a meaning that is not always obvious or predictable from its construction. No wonder then, people tend to mangle and modify old fashioned idioms containing  quaint expressions and words of foreign or antique origin to suit their own understanding of the language. A bit of logic too enters the modification according to our perceptions of the world around us. For example:

• Damp Squib (squib = an obscure name for a small explosive device) sometimes becomes Damp Squid for obvious reasons
• Vocal Cords (cord = thin rope or cable) is changed to Vocal Chords associated with sound (but why does the misspelling also extend to the spinal cord which is not involved with tonal function?)
• Fount (a gushing source) of Knowledge appears more impressive to some as the Font (receptacle) of Knowledge.
• Chaise Longue (pronounced shayz longg, meaning long chair in French) is languidly called the Chaise Lounge, the latter associated with relaxation.
• Just Deserts (from  deservir in French meaning deserve) may have transformed to Just Desserts due to simple misspelling.

I often misspell the word "deceit" as "deceipt." Its correlation to "deception" in meaning and the phonetic similarity to "receipt," leads to this frequent error.  My sister's housekeeper in India who doesn't speak English, refers to a cell phone as a "celephone." Serving the same utility, the newer technology is clearly linked in her mind to its traditional land line cousin not just in its purpose but also in a rhyming name. Associative linguistic changes and shifting idioms such as those above have been collectively termed eggcorns in honor of someone misspelling the word "acorn" as "eggcorn" (after all, acorns do look like large egg shaped corns). Spellings of individual words too become altered when we misread the origin of the word. The word minuscule meaning very small, derives its roots from minus. The alternate (but erroneous) spelling miniscule is becoming increasingly common because many now trace the word to mini.  For more on eggcornucopia and the frequency of the usage of eggcorns as compared to the original phraseology, see here.  (link via 3 QD)

There are other words and expressions, not quite eggcorns, that I have occasionally wondered about.  For example, some words exist only in their negative connotation with no  corresponding positive term in common usage. A "ruthless" person, we know is particularly unkind. Yet for the merciful among us, we don't describe them as possessing veins which are overflowing with the milk of human "ruth."  Similarly "uncouth."  We know who they are - the boorish, coarse and the unmannered types. But we never compliment someone's gracious behavior as being suitably "couth."

Two expressions, both slightly sarcastic in their usage, that always confound me just a hair are "over educated" and "same difference." Exactly how educated does one have to be before being disqualified as unsuitable for a particular job or social acceptance?  And why say "same" when one means "no?" 

Also interesting is how a Hobson's Choice can also be a Hobbesian one. No eggcorn here but a logical extrapolation of the idiom leading to philosopher Thomas Hobbes who coined a famous and specific Hobson's Choice - a choice between two options so unequal in their value ("your money or your life") that it is not a choice at all. 

Do You Speak Indish?

Even if you don't know it, you speak Indish if:

• you wear pajamas (pai = leg, jama = garment. origin: Persian, common to most Indian languages)
• you shampoo your hair (champi = press or knead the head or any part of the body; origin: Hindi)
• your wardrobe contains khaki clothing (khak = dust; origin: Persian / Urdu)
• you have ever witnessed the unstoppable juggernaut of a social or political movement (refers to the chariot of the god Jagannath which is rolled out with great force and momentum through the streets of the eastern Indian city of Puri once a year; origin: Sanskrit)
• you don't want to be a pariah within your social circle ( pariah = the name of an untouchable caste; origin: Tamil)
• on the other hand, you do want to be perceived as a pundit ( pundit = learned, expert; from the original Sanskrit)
• the Swastika makes you nervous (Swasti: well being; origin: Sanskrit . Incidentally, the Swastika which is a symbol associated with unspeakable horror in the west, is a common auspicious marking in Hindu households and invokes peace, harmony and general contentment.)
• you are natty dresser who ties a colorful bandana around your head or neck (bandhan = to tie; origin: Sanskrit  )
• you relax with an occasional after-dinner cheroot (churuttoo = a roll of tobacco; origin:Tamil)
• you wear a toupée (topee = cap or hat; origin: Hindi)

English, German, Persian and north Indian languages originating in Sanskrit are said to belong to the Indo-European group of languages. Many words in these tongues have common roots. Examples of some common words in English closely related to their cousins in the other three : father, mother, brother, widow, deity and many more. In these cases, the bifurcation occurred in ancient times. The bulleted words listed above however, are relatively recent arrivals and were absorbed during colonial times when Europeans occupied India. Colonial English borrowed from both north and south Indian languages, the latter group falling outside the Indo-European classification. Some of them went directly from the Indian to English. Others took a more circuitous path via Portuguese, French and even Latin. For more of the same, see here. Some of the words will naturally be more familiar to the British than to American English speakers. The list is by no means exhaustive. But as you will see, you also speak Indish if you've ever visited a bazaar to buy a mango, occupied a bungalow with a veranda, acquired a guru to enrich your body and soul or lusted after a pricey cashmere sweater.

Note: This quick post was inspired by the discovery that the new Merriam-Webster collegiate dictionary to be published next fall will contain the word Bollywood among nearly 100 other new words in English.

Harry Potter and the Merchants of Memes (Sujatha)

The hoopla over Year 7 has finally come to an end. Bookstore owners are gnashing their teeth that the publishing juggernaut of Harry Potter has finally rolled to a stop."What next, now that Harry Potter's done with?", they agonize.
Fans are jubilant at its arrival after the long, much hyped midnight launch parties, even stamps are being issued in honor of the release (Click on image for larger view.)

No, not so fast. We're still only at movie 5 in the screen version, that leaves a couple more years for the Pottermania,the backlog of already printed books and plastic paraphernalia to sell,  before the book sets start to appear untouched in library used book sales.
J.K.Rowling assured her fans that she was in tears at the end of one of the chapters, and had a sense of weary completion at the end.  As beneficiary of one of the most massive marketing campaigns ever launched for a book, she is entitled to highlight any little windows into the creative process, rather than leaving it to dusty academics in Hogwartian libraries, puzzling over the motives of the author in their ivory towers. But when all this is fed into a mass-marketing machine and spit out packaged in plastic and shrink-wrap * at the other end, it creates a curious spectacle for those removed from the frenzy.

Harry Potter has become a meme for our times. :

a unit of cultural information, cultural evolution or diffusion — propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes).

It remains to be seen if the Potter meme has the staying power of other far older memes which have already survived the test of time (the Cinderella story, which echoes all the way through literature, with different variations in a hundred languages or more), or merely becomes the passing fad of a generation, to be superseded by the next marketing phenomenon. Or will it become the next Wizard of Oz, destined to live on in adaptations, satire, topsy turvy versions and parodies?

It's easy to imagine that the Oz franchise lives by the power of its own magic. However, the real wizards standing behind the curtain of Oz mania are the savvy marketers that conjure up fresh enthusiasm for Baum's creation using only the powers of promotion. The 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz was accompanied by radio and newspaper specials designed to capture the public's attention. Also, the film marked the first time a movie was promoted by the sales of promotional toys, games, dolls, Valentines, soaps, and clothing. Although the promotion didn't create an overnight box office success, the film later became a smash hit on television—Oz aired yearly from 1956 to 1988, grossing about 20 million.

As Susan Blackmore says, in this extract from her book The Meme Machine:

Take the song "Happy Birthday to You". Millions of people - probably thousands of millions of people the world over - know this tune. Indeed I only have to write down those four words to have a pretty good idea that you may soon start humming it to yourself. Those words affect you, probably quite without any conscious intention on your part, by stirring up a memory you already possess. And where did that come from? Like millions of other people you have acquired it by imitation. Something; some kind of information, some kind of instruction, has become lodged in all those brains so that now we all do the same thing at birthday parties. That something is what we call the meme.

Memes spread themselves around indiscriminately without regard to whether they are useful, neutral or positively harmful to us. A brilliant new scientific idea, or a technological invention may spread because of its usefulness. A song like "Jingle Bells" may spread because it sounds OK, though it is not seriously useful and can definitely get on your nerves. But some memes are positively harmful - like chain letters and pyramid selling, new methods of fraud and false doctrines, ineffective slimming diets and dangerous medical `cures'. Of course the memes don't care; they are selfish like genes and will simply spread if they can.

Some memes are born and spread virally without a machinery to propagate it, beyond the propensity for imitation by humans. Some memes are created and have huge campaigns funded by those who benefit from its propagation in some form or the other, as the advertising world knows and uses the latest research into human psychology to devastating effect. My sense is that Pottermania is one of these artificial memes.

Will these books be checked out from libraries in droves a hundred years from now? Probably not. But there will still be the curious ones who will be examining it to determine what it was that drove the Pottermania meme to the blazing success that it enjoyed in its heyday.

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*Actually, an acknowledgement of  the  power of  the 'green' meme: as in

"We try to produce the most beautiful books possible, and we are also extremely concerned about the impact of our manufacturing process on the forests of the world and the environment as a whole. Accordingly, we made sure that all of the paper we used contains 30% post-consumer recycled fiber, and that over 65% has been certified as coming from forests that are managed to insure the protection of the people and wildlife dependent upon them"

        - disclaimer from copyright page of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

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