Accidental Blogger

A general interest blog

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Category: Language Arts

  • 20 obsolete English words that should make a comeback

    This link is for the purpose of deliciating and jargogling Dean. (h/t: Abbas Raza)

  • Cultural heritage: language, literature and politics

    A very nice interview with poet, author and artist Sukrita Paul Kumar in Muse India. I am publishing the full interview by GSP Rao below.   Dr Sukrita Paul Kumar, scholar, critic and poet of great sensitivity, has done significant work in diversified areas like women’s studies, literary translations, and cultural diversity and literary traditions of…

  • Translating the language of God

    Compare the following, a few examples of the new English translation of the Roman Missal, the book of texts used in Mass. The revisions are meant to be more faithful to the liturgical Latin that was used for centuries by the Catholic Church, until recently. The first one represents the language in use currently and the second italicized…

  • What Was The Machine “Thinking?”

    This much hyped and watched TV event seems to be the next logical step to ponder following Sujatha's recent post on language and grammar which soon morphed into language and thought in the comments section. So, IBM's Watson beat out the humans. But what was it thinking and in what language? What is the significance of coming up with the…

  • The Grammar Police (Sujatha)

    Take this, you English-mangling, bumbling writers blending in your regional dialects, oddities of phrase and grammar in your writing. A pontificating pundit from The Hindu ('India's National Newspaper') laments the death of good English in Indian writing, and herself commits more than a few cardinal sins in the process.

  • Crônicas (narayan)

    Mention of Jewish mothers on a recent post reminded me of a story so titled : They say that four Jewish mothers got together in heaven. As they couldn't leave well enough alone, the conversation was all about their sons.– I can't complain, said the first. My son, to this day, brings me only happiness.…

  • Manu Joseph’s Literary Offences (narayan)

    In 'Serious Men', his first novel, Manu Joseph has brought together a small group of well realized characters and set them at each others throats in the age old context of class warfare, Indian style. The conflict is set in motion through the machinations of the protagonist, Ayyan, who is motivated by an unrelenting hatred…

  • McCrummy

    A few days ago, I asked my co-bloggers to comment on an excerpt in the Guardian from Globish, a book by Robert McCrum whose blurb reads: How English erased its roots to become the global tongue of the 21st century. 'Throw away your dictionaries!' is the battle cry as a simplified global hybrid of English conquers cultures and continents. In…

  • When foreign words mislead even the pundits

    An interesting article in the Slate about the propensity of people to distort the spirit of foreign words. The word in question is Kabuki. I had to note with mild amusement that the author uses the word "pundit" several times in the article which in English, has a somewhat scornful connotation – that of a pompous know-it-all. Pundit (or Pandit) comes from…

  • The famous cliche – that wasn’t what the astronauts said

    Another famous saying from outer space turns out to be not quite what we think it was. "Houston, we have a problem," is a catchall phrase for SNAFUs that happen even outside of Houston but that is not exactly what the Apollo 13 astronauts actually said when they heard a bang aboard the spaceship. In…

  • “Dammit I’m Mad”

    Not much of a poetic outpouring, I have to say. But I wonder how long it took him to play around with the words until he had them lined up as a 224 word palindromic poem. Check it out. I did… for about four lines and sure enough, all the duckies are in a row. (thanks to…