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 with useful and interesting content. You know, if you want your readers to read fascinating and funny stuff about the English language taken from the Web, I would suggest reprinting any of Language Log’s posts instead of the mindless drivel that you let KT write just because, well, he’s KT.
This is of course the third time in the past year that Karan Thapar has used his center-space page to deliver quality content about the English language to his jaded readers. In a post back in November, I had discussed in detail the lame claims made by him about English and Hindi and his fascination for the unique property of a sentence which I showed is shared by every sentence of English and Hindi (and countless other languages). The only consolation is that this time, his claims are mostly factually correct, which I suppose is due to the fact that 80% of his article is basically content taken directly from _funny_ mails/SMSes about how English spelling and punctuation are confusing.
Seriously, HT, there are innumerable linguists out there who are probably working for a pittance and who actually know a thing or two about language. Give them a fraction of the money you pay to your center-page columnists and they will regale you with fascinating nuggets of information about languages. Or, you could even send a mail to antariksh@linguistrix.com and I can whip something up for you. I promise it won’t be material rehashed from silly email forwards.
Sincerely,
[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 with useful and interesting content. You know, if you want your readers to read fascinating and funny stuff about the English language taken from the Web, I would suggest reprinting any of Language Log’s posts instead of the mindless drivel that you let KT write just because, well, he’s KT.
This is of course the third time in the past year that Karan Thapar has used his center-space page to deliver quality content about the English language to his jaded readers. In a post back in November, I had discussed in detail the lame claims made by him about English and Hindi and his fascination for the unique property of a sentence which I showed is shared by every sentence of English and Hindi (and countless other languages). The only consolation is that this time, his claims are mostly factually correct, which I suppose is due to the fact that 80% of his article is basically content taken directly from _funny_ mails/SMSes about how English spelling and punctuation are confusing.
Seriously, HT, there are innumerable linguists out there who are probably working for a pittance and who actually know a thing or two about language. Give them a fraction of the money you pay to your center-page columnists and they will regale you with fascinating nuggets of information about languages. Or, you could even send a mail to antariksh@linguistrix.com and I can whip something up for you. I promise it won’t be material rehashed from silly email forwards.
Sincerely,
]3
