Christmas is around the corner, and it seems to be that time of the year when you discover you had been pronouncing a word wrongly all this time. The word is awry, which I had always thought of as awe-ry, instead of its actual pronunciation a-wry (əˈraɪ). The funny part is that I learnt of the correct pronunciation while reading someone else’s account of how he had been making the same mistake (for a much longer period than mine).

Someone called E has posted a question in the comments section of my last post—The VanDamme Academy, and why grammar is not about clarity—Part 2. I was going to answer it there itself, but I realized this had enough material to be a post, so here it goes. First, his question: So, what, according to you, is ‘unconditionally ungrammatical’ about _They is walking_? If it conveys all the information the speaker intends to convey, unambiguously, the only thing wrong with it is the fact that it does not follow convention (the convention of conjugating a verb a certain way with certain subjects)

[This is Part 2 of the post title. If you haven’t read the first part, please read it here, though this post can be read in isolation too] An important distinction that people often miss out on is the difference between grammar and style—the difference between writing correctly and writing well. And this distinction is very important because it’s more or less easy for most native speakers with some amount of training in the standard dialect (and knowledge of things like right spellings) to write correctly.

Miheer Desai suggested that I check out the Lisa VanDamme channel on YouTube for her views on parenting and teaching. I found the VanDamme Academy fairly interesting, and Ms VanDamme seems to be a very passionate person. Her video response to the Chinese Moms article was also thought-provoking, and it’s heartening to see that someone is putting an effort into improving pedagogy and understanding the ways in which we can educate kids in today’s world.

Two small snippets today. Our neighbours have a son who must be around 7–8 years old, the age when kids begin to facepalm over the many idiosyncrancies of the English spelling system. I found this stuck on their front door. What was funny was that this actually looks more like an IPA transcription. Of course, the [n] would actually be the velar nasal [ŋ], the [g] is usually there in Indian pronunciation but not in many other dialects and the second vowel would be [ɪ].

My views on IITB lingo have changed considerably over the years. I used to find it ‘positively revolting’ in freshman year, and this slowly changed to ‘occasionally annoying’ somewhere around third year, finally settling at ‘mostly harmless’. I am sure reams of paper have been devoted towards discussing campus lingo in general (there’s an entire Masters Thesis about IITM lingo, for instance), so I won’t discuss it here. There are two reasons why I wrote this post, and critiquing IIT lingo isn’t either of them—firstly, I wanted to demonstrate how we can investigate simple issues surrounding language usage by using freely and publicly available tools and resources, and secondly, I wanted to talk about how this teaches us to never assume things right-away when dealing with linguistic issues, but to adopt a scientific approach where we try to look at data to prove or disprove our claims instead of blindly trusting our intuition.

This article is the second article in the multi-part series The Tower of Babel Guide: How to learn any language The first part dealt with the whys and whats that you might encounter when you decide to learn a language. In this part, we will talk about the kinds of resources you can use for learning languages, and their pros and cons. Quite a few of you might have been taught a foreign language at school.

There’s some happy news on the personal front—I got placed recently, so I am likely to have more money in the future to spend on this blog! And ever since the 1st of December, I have been, as Oscar Wilde said, living entirely for pleasure. From having S_tarters only!_ lunches to spending the whole night playing weirdass games with friends, it’s been a great time so far. In this post-placement decadence, I went to watch The Dirty Picture.

Today’s Hindustan Times has an interesting pun (I am assuming it was intentional, though I won’t put my cash on it). For some reason, I find it weird, but at the same time it’s tough to say why. One reason is that I usually associate the word toon with cartoon movies, not comic strips or paper characters. I checked this with a couple of online dictionaries, and they supported my intuition—

I have planned a multi-part series on the topic of learning languages. It is aimed at serving two purposes—answering questions around this issue that many people have asked me in the past few years, and putting into words my observations of what worked best for me or others around me, and where I felt I or others could have done better. The series will roughly address the following issues— Why a new language—difficulties—rewards—how to choose one How to start—where to learn from Pronouncing it well—how to sound good—common mistakes—useful tips—improving your pronunciation Moving ahead—how to start getting a hang of the language—how to cope up with differences—improving your fluency How to keep it once you have it—ways to advance your level—ways to practise—closing remarks It is aimed at being a leisurely read, and I hope it will be a considerable value addition to whoever reads it till the end.