The Art of Language

The recent acquaintance with the German language made me ponder about a basic human skill – Languages. While our close relatives, the chimpanzee can only make sounds, use sign language and facial impressions but cannot talk, it is amazing how we, the Homo sapiens one single species can talk in thousands of languages.

In India alone there are 200 registered dialects and 18 official languages. Infact it is the first country to ever do a linguistic study with Astadhyayi written for Sanskrit in 5 BC and Tolkappiyam written for Tamil around 2 BC. The Europeans started it a few centuries later.

I also noticed that the sounds among languages are shared, but not necessarily the meaning. For example in German there is this sound “au” where
                                  - “a” is pronounced as ‘a’ in apostrophe
                                  - “u” is pronounced as ‘u’ in noun

A similar sound is in Hindi and Tamil and a most of other Indian languages.

- In Tamil it is the 12th consonant

- In Hindi it is the 11th consonant

A similar sounding word in different languages would refer to different things. That essentially means in the same human mind at different location/ages/time the same sound reminded of different things. I guess it would be fun to learn linguistics for people who are intrigued by languages. With all that said, if any of you are interested in learning one of the oldest and alive languages Tamil here are a few links, you can even get a degree online :)

 http://pm.tamil.net/pub/pm0100/tolkap.pdf
 http://www.tamilvu.org/coresite/html/cwhomepg.htm

Our Medicine for Their Well Being

This is not a saying but the reality that is happening in India. All of us have been reading about the H1N1 flu virus and the rate at which it is spreading. The WHO has made predictions that a much worse strain of this virus would come back and can cause huge problems in a short while. In US it is still summer and flu generally spreads here in fall-winter seasons, so they are stocking up the vaccines for this virus. The Indian company Baxter has already produced its first batch of vaccines, that should be a happy news right? Well it is not! Here is the twist. These vaccines are going to be shipped to US and UK who already have contracts signed with this company and other Indian pharma companies. Indian government has not done anything about this yet. They have not even placed the orders for vaccines yet.
Somehow I am not able to assimilate this fact. The vaccines are produced in India, by Indians, with Indian resources but not for Indian use? Wonder what was this company thinking, may be their workers and family are immune to this virus or is it just the money or is it business as usual. This sounds like a suicide mission to me. Someone should stop this! For more info check this out http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/H1N1-vaccine-ready-India-napping/articleshow/4946865.cms

Happy Independence Day!

Yes it is another Independence Day holiday or celebration I would say, time for flag hoisting, patriotism and chocolates. Today I sent out wishes to all my Indian friends, colleagues and acquaintances at work, following that at lunch with my close buddies had a heated discussion on India. As always it was all talk and nothing productive happened to India because of that. Then I was casually browsing the News websites of India and found some interesting blogs regarding the Independence Day and India. Check this out if you like http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

You can even put in your comments for some of them. Interesting though how varied and different the thoughts of these people are. Reading all these I was thinking why not take a resolution you know like New Year's resolution how about Independence Day resolution. Nothing major, but we should be determined to follow it, so take practical ones. Like I wont spit on the roads, I will not throw any garbage on the road which includes the used bus ticket and the chocolate wrappers :), being courteous to old people, controlling my anger towards unknown people, being polite in public.. The list can go on but try making atleast one and see if you can stick to it. It can be even something no one would notice. There is a long way to get India into a good shape, but come on we need to start somewhere there is no use just talking about it.

So you must be wondering what mine is :) Since I am currently not in my country I decided to put out proudly the fact that I am from India and make sure to change the notion of anyone who comes and tells me, "I heard India is a poor country. The traffic is bad and people are mean" to "India is a prosperous country with great cultural heritage with strong family values where people strive for a better future."

After a long time I had a strong urge to write this blog today. I have a new determination to do atleast one post per month per blog of mine.

Over Protective and Concerned Moms

I was sitting at my desk and doing my usual coding stuff and heard the lady in the next cubicle talking pretty loud. I did not have my head phones so ended up hearing the conversation. I do get annoyed when people pick up personal calls at work, but this time it was not about that. Do you remember how protective your mom's had been, incase you had forgotten here is a few.
- Making sure you have breakfast before going to school.
- If you are late sometimes she would have run till the bus with you making
sure the driver stops for you.
- If needed pick up a fight with your teacher incase the teacher hurts you.
- Protect you from your angry Dad who is trying to hit you because of your
poor marks or simply because you talked back to him.
- Making sure you put Burnol (Antiseptic) on the wounds you got either from
playing or fighting with your sibling or from a fight at school.

There is more. The point is I was thinking this is the nature of Indian Mothers and to an extent Asian mothers. But this lady today shattered my idea. A simple issue of her daughter going for the volley ball practice. Looks like her daughter wants the same slot as her friend's. So this mom calls up the coach to find out the issue and that slot is fully booked, so she finds out if anything else is available. She is told that a slot during the month end is available. Now she asks him if the friend of her daughter's can move to that slot instead of the one she is currently in. The coach says that should be fine. Now she calls up her daughter, gets her friend's number and calls up that friend. It goes to voice message. She leaves a beautiful detailed simple message explaining it all! She makes sure that, the friend understands the fact that she needs to move to a new time slot to help her daughter. It was awesome seeing it happen from outside.

Of course the daughter would be embarrassed of the fact that her mother is talking to her friend, who cares, she gets to go to the practice now with her friend :). Well I am not judging here but thinking aloud a natural, instinct driven human approach. Be it in India or US or anywhere from this incident I now changed my idea to "All moms are over protective and concerned in their own ways!"