Dear Hindustan Times, I will jump straight to the point. Why does Karan Thapar get to fill precious center-page real estate of the Sunday newspaper with content found in boring email forwards? I mean, I know it’s your editorial decision and all, but I had expected that you’d give more value to your Sunday center-page, otherwise filled [...]
A pic was shared like crazy on Facebook in the last few weeks— This comic is factually incorrect, but it’s a good demonstration of how most people are confused about what actual Active and Passive voice is, and mostly just assume it to be random rearrangement of words. In the comic, the teacher asks [...]
Today’s PAF (Performing Arts Festival) raised an interesting linguistic issue—what makes a word a word? In the PAF, Rajiv Gandhi’s character was called a mediaphobe since he was scared of facing the media. He retaliated, in almost a childishly innocent manner, by saying that mediaphobe wasn’t even a word and so he couldn’t be called one. He [...]
When you combine an awesome Harry Potter reference with Spanish phonology, you get a winner. This has got to be the funniest thing I’ve seen in the recent past: Since this is Linguistrix, let me add a few lines about the points of linguistic interest in this gag. Spanish pronunciation is delightfully easy and predictable with [...]
The country was galvanized last year by the whole Jan Lokpal Movement, and a lot was said for and against the movement, its leaders and cheerleaders, and the thousands of Indians who poured into the streets in the largest display of public outrage in recent times. While we are all fashionably outraged at the way [...]
This Friday, Sachin Tendulkar completed 100 international cricket centuries and did something that would have been considered impossible by many—prevent millions of Indians from realizing that the new budget is going to make prices rise even more. He also gave everyone an excuse to come up with all kinds of puns involving his name and [...]
As you may have read, Facebook has attracted the anger of—and I swear there is no other way to put it—the Chutiya community from Assam by blocking many Facebook profiles which mentioned Chutiya as their last name. This is of course a bit ironic coming from a company who’s CEO’s sister is named Randi (Hindi insult [...]
[This post is second in the series of general posts on Linguistrix (the first one was Stupid Analogues are like Stupid Analogies). I choose to include such posts on the blog because I find the topic to be of significant intellectual/academic interest.] Harish showed me an interesting article. It talks about 10 food items from [...]
Mamta Sharma, the head of the National Commission for Women, India, has gotten herself into trouble by saying (at a function) that girls shouldn’t be offended if guys call them sexy, as it’s a word with positive connotations of beauty and charm. Her exact quote (or at least what HT reported) was: Boys pass comments [...]
[Edit: A few days after this post was written, the powers-that-be decided to retain the name JEE for the new entrance test that would replace JEE+AIEEE combo from next year] The JEE and AIEEE, two flagship examinations that used to be conducted for students aspiring to secure an admission into the IITs/NITs are going to [...]
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