Lingual Journal

Recently we had a hailstorm. The papers referred to it as winter storm.
And an unpredicted rainbow too.

Hailstones the size of blue berries filled the little patch of garden like it has been sp(r)ayed with fertilisers.

I was thinking of how it is easy for us to subtract something and still make sense but harder to think of addition of something to bring out another meaning.

I was thinking like if there's an opposite. Epenthesis is the linguist's answer.

A while ago I was thinking how will I teach my child of Sandhi where two words add and at the juncture a different letter comes in. Epenthesis seems to retain all the letters in most cases instead of gobbling up some letters as 'service fee'.

My mom was telling that padava thargathi (tenth class) is now being referred to as pado thargathi ((still) tenth class). Spoken is taking the matter in its hands from the written.

I am worrying about teaching difficult concepts in Telugu, my mother tongue to my child but I am far losing touch with it. Few years ago, my uncle said that it was my accent, I am holding onto each sound. But now I know it even in the construction, I am filling in a lot of letters to communicate what I like to say but it all come sout in words that do not belong to the language except for the main verb. Makes for a good laugh. But what will the child learn from my garbled utterances? And Hindi, it is so taking the back bench in the brain. I am putting in English while speaking Hindi afraid to take the liberty of modifying it like I do to Telugu. I have learnt written Telugu only till 5th grade. I learnt written Hindi from 6th to 10th grade. I learnt spoken Hindi as a kid but forgot it by the time I came to high school. When I relearnt it, I didnt do learn it alright(Elision!).