1 Year on.
Wow! Cant believe its been 1 year since I started blogging:
Status Check :-
Receieved enlightenment: Check
Life got busy: Check
Regrets that life got busy: Check
Knows that thats the way it is: Check
Spends free time on youtube: Check
Yes, there are million ways to past time now and I wish I could take more time out for blogging. However, my support for blogging is it at its fullest. Long live the bloggers!
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Ekagrata
We are intuitively aware of the inaccuracies and fallacies of the English language, yet we are aware of the facts associated with it's prevalence, just like the overall score sheet of that one student in high school we always competed with.
It is the first language spoken by approximately 380 million people in the world, and second language to about 1 billion people and is the official language of 71 countries. Most of the translations in the world today are being performed in this language, call centers teach their employees English and that too with certain accents, most blogs (e.g. this one) are in English and yada, yada, yada.
Yet, non-native speakers feel a sort of vacuum when it comes to expressing certain notions, feelings, and ideas. It is obvious. May be one of the reasons could be in a way English proliferated. Historically, English wasn’t taught to people with the intention of making them experts at it. English was a colonial medium imparted for “mutual benefit” of the rulers and the ruled, where the benefit was ‘mutual’ to the extent of the ruler’s whims and desires. Yet all the historical bantering aside, what I find most frustrating is that even today our schools don’t teach English as a translation and expression tool but as a method of communication, if that makes sense. Point being, we learn English from scratch, just like the westerners, without learning the full English Vocabulary pertinent to our countries. But then at a tender age of 3-7, we rush back home and ask our Moms to heat milk in that little native Indian “bartan”, not knowing that there are about a dozen names for different sized vessels and containers in English. Sometimes it matters to know these things. Most of the times we get by.
There are many words in Hindi, for example, which don’t have any direct translation or at least are not immediately accessible. What does an individual do then? It is not a paralyzing handicap, but definitely a mildly stunted expression issue. Many people get befuddled when trying to think in Hindi and speak in English, but without self-training, this problem doesn’t improve.
So I tried to look for meaning of the word “Ekagrata”. Closest I could come to was ‘wholesome’, which I know is not completely right.
So if I am explaining the benefits of Pranayam to a colleague saying that it brings “Ekagrata” to life, I naturally feel stumped. And I blame the Britishers for this!
We are intuitively aware of the inaccuracies and fallacies of the English language, yet we are aware of the facts associated with it's prevalence, just like the overall score sheet of that one student in high school we always competed with.
It is the first language spoken by approximately 380 million people in the world, and second language to about 1 billion people and is the official language of 71 countries. Most of the translations in the world today are being performed in this language, call centers teach their employees English and that too with certain accents, most blogs (e.g. this one) are in English and yada, yada, yada.
Yet, non-native speakers feel a sort of vacuum when it comes to expressing certain notions, feelings, and ideas. It is obvious. May be one of the reasons could be in a way English proliferated. Historically, English wasn’t taught to people with the intention of making them experts at it. English was a colonial medium imparted for “mutual benefit” of the rulers and the ruled, where the benefit was ‘mutual’ to the extent of the ruler’s whims and desires. Yet all the historical bantering aside, what I find most frustrating is that even today our schools don’t teach English as a translation and expression tool but as a method of communication, if that makes sense. Point being, we learn English from scratch, just like the westerners, without learning the full English Vocabulary pertinent to our countries. But then at a tender age of 3-7, we rush back home and ask our Moms to heat milk in that little native Indian “bartan”, not knowing that there are about a dozen names for different sized vessels and containers in English. Sometimes it matters to know these things. Most of the times we get by.
There are many words in Hindi, for example, which don’t have any direct translation or at least are not immediately accessible. What does an individual do then? It is not a paralyzing handicap, but definitely a mildly stunted expression issue. Many people get befuddled when trying to think in Hindi and speak in English, but without self-training, this problem doesn’t improve.
So I tried to look for meaning of the word “Ekagrata”. Closest I could come to was ‘wholesome’, which I know is not completely right.
So if I am explaining the benefits of Pranayam to a colleague saying that it brings “Ekagrata” to life, I naturally feel stumped. And I blame the Britishers for this!
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