Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #74

The first line still holds true.

So, another leisurely meal, another arbitrary thought. Try this one on for size -

There is no original Western European or American first-name that begins with 'Z'. All of them are predominantly Middle Eastern in origin, with some East Asian ones thrown in for flavour.

Go on, think about it.

Most of the first-names that you can think of come from the belt of land that stretches from Greece to Afghanistan (on a longitudinal basis), and from the languages that originated therein (Arabic, Hebrew or Cyrillic). There are a few Chinese names that I can think of off-hand too, and I can't quite speak about names in the South Asian countries, but the chunk seems to be Middle-Eastern/Central Asian in origin.

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On the other hand, there are tons of first names in Western Europe and America that begin with the letter 'C', but none in that West Asia/Middle Asia belt (excluding the East).

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All those history lessons about the many invasions of India from the armies of Central Asia suddenly make so much sense. Even a quintessentially Gujurati name like Zaveri has its roots in those incursions.


Update: We have the odd-one-out (thanks be to the wise Fëanor) - Basque. In my defence, the language is denoted as an 'isolate', so it really doesn't bear much in common to its neighbours. Still, a valid exception.

Pet Peeves #43

"Ok, so write me".

Yah. Just like you want me to "sing you"? And "call out you"? And "post that letter you"? And "hand that mug you"?

Stupid American English.


PS. Even if you go with the "if you can 'call me', why not 'write me'" argument, there's no excuse for the sentence, "I wrote you". What am I, some frikkin' imaginary character in a book you're drafting? Oh yeah? Well, come see the pretty lines on my knuckles. No, no, a little closer...

Bloggysses, Bloggysez

or, How not to read Joyce

1. Without notes.

Cuz you ain't seen nothing like it, yo.

The man brings all his Latin-filled, literary-enthused, religion-obsessed chaos and thumps it right across your face. And you'll feel pretty much as if you're facing ol' Curtly at Antigua while carrying a table tennis racket. In a swimsuit.

Get an annotated version.


2. At night, in bed.

After a long day spent working, reading up on all the shittiness that is the world, and trying to keep track of all the blogs you follow (and leave some sensible comments on them), and finally getting your bleary, addled brain to a soft (so soft) pillow - that is really not when you want to be reading this book.

Especially if you happen to be reading chapter three*.


3. On a lovely, sunny day with a slight breeze floating through it.

Otherwise you will just hate yourself, anybody who ever suggested you read Joyce, all the books and articles that keep going on about it's such an important piece of literature, and the man himself.

There is also the risk that polite police officers might land up at your door wondering why you thought it necessary to give so many people a minor heart attack with all the banging and clawing against the window.


4. Simultaneously with other books.

Especially if they're of a genre or by an author that you really like. Or if they're the type of light fluff that floats out of navels. Or if they have pretty covers. Or .... basically, don't have anything else in your house that you haven't read, because otherwise you will waste endless hours wondering just why you're reading this book instead of all those others.




* Three words - no fucking clue.

So, at last count, it was three men and two women who'd prefer to be dogs, and six women and one man choosing to be cats. Two abstained, preferring to be fish and a horse, one anonymous wouldn't reveal their gender, and Feanor linked to a book instead of answering the question directly (typical math-lover behaviour).

Which confirms my hunch - that there's not much difference in the genders for those who would choose to be dogs, but cats would be overwhelmingly chosen just by females.

And while quite a bit of that would be due to the very nature of the creatures, it does raise the question whether it's also perhaps related to the subsconscious gender that we automatically associate with animals, which has been generated by language-associations.

I would be willing to bet that when most people think 'dogs', they think 'male'. Even though that's just the species, we still think of dogs and female dogs (we won't even go into why nobody but vets and dog-owners use the technically correct 'bitch'). Yes, we know that both genders exist (heck, you may even had several as pets), but most people will still instantly - for that brief moment before conscious thought kicks in - assume you're talking about a male dog when you do talk about one.

And the reverse applies to cats. You instinctively think cats and tom cats. If just the generic term is used, people will immediately associate with female overtones. Cats are so Egyptian goddesses. And Selina Kyle in all her sleek, snugly-leathered glory arching her....ahem. Right. But see?

And it's not just them - it's the animal kingdom in general. There is so much immediate association, and distinction, all because the names and the language was written up by men. All deer are female, except when they're does and stags. All sheep are female, unless they're ewes and rams. All tigers are male, all bears too - although lions and lionesses are unique, for some reason.

So, maybe it comes down to this (and yes, this is slightly far out) - that subsconsciously, equal numbers of men and women would choose to be born as males in another avatar, but men can't (won't) contemplate being born as women.

I could throw a lot of theories behind that too, but I suspect it's simply this - Men realise that they have it easier than women in this world, on so many counts (one word - periods), so they wouldn't want to change. The odd male who would consider it, would do so because they like a challenge. And most women hate men and their domineering entitled smug parochialism too much already to even contemplate being one of them. Ever.

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On a minor note, I would also suggest that men are more antipathetic towards cats than women are to dogs because cats are more obviously female than dogs are male. By which I mean that it's easy to visually distinguish between male and female dogs, but not so easy to distinguish between male and female cats. Which enhances the male-female association.

Maybe I should've added a coda - If you're a woman and you choose to be a dog, which gender would you rather be?

Hills.

You ever realise you can't use movement on hills to explain a situation in the positive?

You can't tell someone things are going to get better by suggesting it's all downhill, because that's...bad (?) - even though going downhill is such a joyous, carefree, low-exertion process. But, you also can't tell someone it's all uphill, because they'll just think you're scaring them by pointing out the obstacles they have to climb.

It's a conspiracy by the British I tell you. Why else would the most commonly used phrase to explain good times be smooth sailing? What else would you expect from a bunch of islanders whose love for seafaring helped them conquer half the world?

More random gender-giri

....continued from here.

You almost never hear the epithet 'bastard' being hurled abusively at a woman, do you? It's always a man who's one. It's almost as if it's de facto rule, which is rather strange, given that in the purest sense, both genders can be born to the title.

Is it something about the word, perhaps? Maybe the hard ending syllable that makes it feel more masculine? (hmmm...could words themselves have genders? Find linguist. Discuss.)

Or is it a subsconscious way of balancing the scale, given that there's one definitive abusive term for females ('bitch'), but there isn't for males? Like the way we've almost-universally allocated the word gay to mean only male homosexuals, even though it defines both.

I mean, Gay and Lesbian Parade/Ball/Rights? Redundant usage, surely (although I can see why it might have been done - it probably made it less of a shocker to the fence-sitters than if it were announced as a Homosexual Parade). Come to think about it, even the word homosexual is now more or less coopted by males of such a persuasion. People mostly seem to declare themselves to be hetero-, homo- or lesbian.

...Ok that's it. Go do your own thinking now.


Edit: Some of the comments reminded me that I might have posted something related to this a while back. And I was right. Apparently, I'm now down to recycling old content.

Random gender-giri

You want (more) evidence of the extent of the patriarchal nature of English? I give you - female breasts.

'Boobs' are quite easily the second most distinctive feminine aspect of any girl/woman. So why is it that so many of the slang terms for breasts have a masculine or (even more oddly) aggressive connotation? When did they suddenly metamorphose into 'bad boys', and 'puppies*', and 'bazookas', and 'bangers'? Ok, there may be the occasional person who refers to 'the girls' or the 'bouncy/pointer sisters', but even when they're 'the twins', they're defined without any gender. Just 'the twins'.

And worse, you don't hear of genitalia given feminine nicknames, do you? You ever hear a man talk about his 'little princess'? Noooooo. It's all 'Mr Wiggly', and 'chhota bhai', and 'One-eyed Willy'.


* Hush? Is that it?

Breaking News

When you think about it, the usage of that phrase by TV channels is so wrong.

What is it supposed to imply? That the news is being broken? No? Oh, so the news story is breaking? But even that doesn't make sense. News doesn't break - it happens, it evolves, it is. And news stories are (taking place, developing, being discovered).

Or is the news trying to "break out (from the confines of secrecy)"? Tchah. That's just stupid.

Maybe it's journalistic license for "breaking the news (to you)". But that's even worse. You deliver the news, you bring people news, you tell them news, you pass on the news. How does breaking come into the picture?

Or is it supposed to mean "breaking up the news into digestible bits of information"? That makes some sense - but only if used in personal conversation ("I slowly broke the news about his father's death after he had settled down"). That meaning is quite unrelated to the "Breaking News" or "a story that's just breaking" that gets flashed across our screens.

So just why has this phrase become the norm?

That said, the alternatives aren't any better.
"Happening News"? Sounds like a pseduo attempt to gain hip-hop popularity.
"This Just In"? Sounds so....archaic.
"Fresh News"? Makes it sound like it's woken up, gone for a jog, had a long shower, and is now ready to face the world*.

Maybe they should just go "Alert! Alert! Alert!".


* Although, the Hindi alternative is strangely appealing. Taaza khabar. Such zing. But even there, quite a few Hindi news channels flash the words "Breaking News" in the vernacular. Doofuses.

Friday fripperies

Say quiet,
say quite,
say quite quiet,
say quite quietly,
say them all quietly.

Write quiet,
write quite,
write quietly,
and then write them quietly.

Say write,
write say.
Say write quietly,
quietly, and quietly
write say quiet.
Say quietly write quiet,
write quietly say quiet.
Say write quietly say write,
Write say quietly write say quiet.

Write right,
say right, rightly.
Say quite right,
write rightly quiet.
Say write right.

...say what?
Quite.

And when was the last time you said "Pyrrhic"?

Often-read, but rarely-heard words.

Those weighty polysyllables that crop up so often in text, but which you've probably never heard being spoken aloud. Do they occur because of the potentially difficult pronunciations? Or is it because they are so...unwieldy? Is it just one of those differences between the written and the spoken language? Do pink turtles float on isotonic rainbows?

The Muse of Writing claims it's a mark of how lazy the tongue is, throws in a snippet or two about shortening attention spans, and then mocks the entire concept of accents. The Muse of Speech scoffs that such fanciful words were only invented by writers to fluff out their output, and which they use as a tool to expand their literary pretensions, knowing that using them on a face-to-face basis would expose them as silly little poseurs.

Then the Muse of Language asks whether it really matters, and demands to be passed the orange-scented hot chocolate.

Anyways, a short list of some of the more common examples -

Execrable
Renege
Inexorable
Supercilious
Affable
Utilitarian
Inexorable
Antediluvian
Expostulation
Didactic
Confabulation
Dissemination
Unbridled
Impassioned
(and, of course) Pyrrhic


More oddities to mull about. Add your own.

Think.
Thunk.
Clunk.
Clank.
Flank.
Flunk.
Bunk.
Bank.
Crank.
Crack.
Crackle.
Cackle.
Tackle.
Tickle.
Fickle.
Pickle.
.......

Think.
Thank.
Spank.
Tank.
Tang.
Bang.
Bung.
Rung.
Ring.
Bling.
Bing.
Bong.
Dong.
Dung.
Dunce.
Once.
Wince.
Quince.
.....

Think.
Wink.
Blink.
Stink.
Stick.
Wick.
Wok.
Rock.
Spock.
Dock.
Deck.
Neck.
Speck.
Trek.
Track.
Truck.
Truckle.
Knuckle.
Buckle.
Belt.
Welt.
Melt.
Malt.


hmm...one was mentally doing this, and one had got from Think to Klutz...but one's fingers seem to have life of their own. And one keeps ending with food.