No aggrieved partner does away with himself/herself over romance upheaval unless they are disillusioned about life in general. It is the fallacy of small/marginal numbers sourced from tabloids reporting on conjugal doom which the rattled minds flash on online media as burning topic of the society. They are misled into believing that outlier incidents have thereupon encroached as the norm of the society with a Ripley citation. Usually, the credulous tend to catastrophize exceptions as extraordinary evidence to indict the depravity in society. I, usually, avoid indulging in such mongering because it is futile to controvert their cynical apprehensions. People who tend to get stuck in marginal sensations are forever muttering rather than moving on to the next page for some bright news on how society has progressed much. There's Bridget who moves on to a new job after spotting Daniel's philandering ways. There's Sweety from Kal Ho Na Ho who believes in finding and marrying another man when the spouse strays. They may appear comical but at least they are not stupid and melodramatic. People who are upbeat in life generally tend to be (more) upbeat in romance also. The melodramatic spouses and their seppukus just garner media noise and fade away whilst it is the blundering forth yet cheerful Bridget and Sweety who flourish unnoticed in life.
Check out the podcast: Thinking Allowed (with plenty of fodder on sociological phenomenon) And the episode Management Jargon. The Stephen Elop's email quoted in that episode is here. (1000-worded email to imply 'you are fired'.)
Snoopy begins his great novel with the acclaimed opening. These days, I watch out for variants in that atmospheric openings of the novels. Believe me, Terry Pratchett has the best weather openings with metaphors of assasins and dark innards of cats. Just finished his Wyrd Sisters (parody on Macbeth). "THE WIND HOWLED. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills. The night was as black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past. Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once."
And his character introductions are inventively and uniquely funny. No two characters share the same physiognomy or fellowship. Introduction of Hwel: "Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. Some people are even more unfortunate. They get them all. Such a one was Hwel. Enough inspirations to equip a complete history of the performing arts poured continuously into a small heavy skull designed by evolution to do nothing more spectacular than be remarkably resistant to axe blows." In describing the architect of Lancre Castle: "Lancre Castle was built on an outcrop of rock by an architect who had heard about Gormenghast but hadn’t got the budget. He’d done his best, though, with a tiny confection of cut-price turrets, bargain basements, buttresses, crenellations, gargoyles, towers, courtyards, keeps and dungeons; in fact, just about everything a castle needs except maybe reasonable foundations and the kind of mortar that doesn’t wash away in a light shower." Terry Pratchett's Discworld series should be worked into school curriculum for a happy and salutary childhood.
Amulet's translation of quote: I do not have the answer to whether the Tamil language was protected, or grew, because of the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960's organized and conducted by the D.K. party. Didn't "hindi agitation" happen to make English the link-language, and stop Hindi being declared "official" and the eradication of English education ? Many would say that Tamil Nation was instrumental in the preservation of education in English, which helped the whole nation, when the economy was liberalized in the early 1990's and we had a huge army of people who can squeak out some English in their speech, read a little, and write computer code (in cobol). Amulet't translation of the quote: They (the anti-hindi-agitators) were fear mongering, saying "ayyoo.. if you learn this (language) Tamil will be killed in the future". While this fake-fear was spread, English which shamelessly borrows and steals to expand its vocabulary is slowly becoming the death of Tamil. It has also succeeded much is my opinion. ....Debator Solomon's arguments advance this notion quite beautifully... link to Solomon's radio debate.One high mucky-muck in the European Union parliament had said that the "official language of the EU is Bad-English", and they will continue to use that language, whether or not there would be a successful exit of Britain from the common market (Brexit). As more people of India are able to travel within the nation, and get settled in different regions other than own (original linguistic state), we too may have the same official language, i.e., Bad-English. That would the culminating success of the anti-Hindi-agitation thanks to the Tamil Nation. We will study the local language for preserving the heritage and culture, and have a world language for dealing with the other parts of the world. You'd be happy to know that Gaelic is still used in Scotland. And they also teach English in their schools.
Moved my input in a dicussion in regional poetry subforum, because it has both English and Tamil.... and had veered off from the poetry to the topic of preservation of languages from the English hegemony. ........ My parents tried to impose the exclusive in-home use their language (not Tamil) inside the house, but did not succeed all that well. I had Marathi "speaking" (descendents of some Royal family) elementary schoolmates in Tanjavur, who spoke really sweet Marathi mixed Tamil. The Bigg Boss 2 Tamil show on television tries so very hard to inculcate the use of Tamil among the reality show contestants. Their failures as well as successes are nice to watch. Nice post. I am saving it to read it slowly.
I like Lucy Kellaway. She has retired from FT now..] Here is her take on losing her battle against the Management Jargon claptrap. https://next-media-api.ft.com/renditions/957452/1920x1080.mp4 Languages evolve, don't they ? The management language is tribal, has acronyms as words, shorthands, dog-whistles (innuendoes that only some hear, and others are left gaping). I suspect that this is what had made Lucy Kellaway throw her hands up in the air and give up. English users also have the appreciation of the community when they develop a new word or turn a clever/cute phrase. Even Sarah Palin in America mangled refute and repudiate, and came out with refudiate, and left people agog.[She didn't produce much after that. We all put out made up (often hyphenated) words just to get by and not grope around too long. Recently I decided legitimatery is a proper opposite word for adultery... because it conveys the sense I meant to convey, as well as sounds out better than the prescribed dictionary alternatives.
@PavithraS wonders why " ரெண்டு தமிழன் எங்கயாவது சந்திச்சா வணக்கம்னு சொல்றதைவிட ரொம்ப இஸ்டைலா 'ஹலோ ஹொவ் ஆர் யு ' ன்னு குசலம் விசாரிப்பாங்கோ...இது தான் எனக்கு, என்னைப் போல் பலருக்கு எரிச்சல் தரும். [Translation: When two Tamils meet somewhere, instead of a Tamil greeting "vanakkam" they will "hello..how are you" in good inglees shstyle .. this would annoy the lot of us so much.]" Questions: Do bilinguals use English (or whatever is their 2nd language) as an arm's-length* device with acquaintances who'd also speak a more familiar language ? Do other indian language speaking bilinguals in des or phoren do this ? *Arm's length Definition of ARM'S LENGTH 1 : a distance discouraging personal contact or familiarity
@Ouroboros The link to bbc podcasts wants one to log in to listen to the conversation. It so happened that I have a loginability to that site. It is a good site to listen to all manner of things... e.g., I just learned that marriages between women are more prone to divorces than men (at 17 min 40 seconds on the timeline) in the podcast at BBC - iPlayer Radio When phoren people ask me about listening to good spoken english in a radio program, I direct them to web radios from Canada, or midwestern USA. The regions in the north American continent that is supposed to speak neutral accented English. Who decides what is neutral ? I am used to that kind "neutral" Canadian english, so I think it is neutral. Most English speakers live in the American continent. Pretty soon (as more hispanic population overwhelms the english speaking crowd) India would have the most English speakers. Slowly slowly our way of speaking inglis would become the correct way. Wouldn't that be (as the Brits would put it) brilliant? BBC - iPlayer Radio
You might have coined it jocularly but the need for striking language rather than sufficing language is the order of the day. If the vocabulary does not exist, invent it. Read these articles: this and this. Distancing from the intent, and delving only into the language employed to write these statutes: One of the most criticized Obama mandates was the requirement that schools assess allegations of sexual misconduct using the lowest legal standard, “preponderance of the evidence,” or what is numerically rendered as anything over a 50 percent likelihood. The Trump rules would give schools the option to use a higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” often described as at least 75 percent certainty. Should "preponderance" be substituted with "clear and convincing", that alters the dimension (not mass but depth) and association (not contention but credibility) and relevance (not remote but immediate) of the evidence considered. In future would even that "clear and convincing" could be contested as inefficient and not incriminating the severity of the indiscretion. Language is tricky! The more I think about it, I feel even the sharpest verbal expression lacks the force of a sentiment and instinct, hence we rely on indicative terms. In the other Claire Fox's article, The Equalities Act’s legal definition is of ‘unwanted behaviour which is perceived as offensive or which makes someone feel intimidated or humiliated’ (my emphasis). This catch-all seems dangerously subjective, especially when one considers that a recent YouGov survey reveals that two-thirds of women aged 18 to 24 view wolf-whistling as ‘always or usually’ being a form of sexual harassment and 28% see winking in the same way. Yes, winking. How do we rewrite that impersonal definition to vindicate wolf-whistles and winks? Reminds me of this passage from yesterday's reading of Wyrd Sisters: "The troupe got under way a few hours before sunset, their four carts lurching off down the road that led towards the Sto plains and the big cities. Lancre had a town rule that all mummers, mountebanks and other potential criminals were outside the gates by sundown; it didn’t offend anyone really because the town had no walls to speak of, and no-one much minded if people nipped back in again after dark. It was the look of the thing that counted." "Look of the thing that counted" — can these decrees enforce with certainty what they intend to avert or is it merely the 'look of the thing' that matters with rest up for discretion on what constitutes you-know-what.
