I just got back from one week of training ( yes, I din’t have to work at all this week!!). It was my first truly cross-European experience, as the training had representatives from almost all the European countries. Add to it the fact the faculty who taught the course was comprised of an American, a…
Category: Culture & Languages
Guess who else was feeling out of place!
“I have been a queer mixture of the East and West, out of place everywhere, at homenowhere..I cannot be of the [West]. But in my own country, also, sometimes, I have an exile’s feeling” – Jawaharlal Nehru.
Confusion O confusion
There are certain things that most people take for granted that I have to think for a moment. Like for example, the floor that I need to go to – do I count the ground floor as 1 or 0? I rem when I was a kid, we used to count ground as 0, and…
Languages or Dialects?
When I tell people that my mother tongue is Malayalam, first they look at me like I am playing a tongue-twister game and then a good % of them follow up with ” Oh, so that is an Indian dialect”. And I ever so patiently try to explain that Malayalam is not a “dialect”, it…
Mark Twain, Aint u the best!
‘The Awful German Language’ by Mark Twain is a must-read for anyone who knows anything about this language! It is hilarious! And I am just at that learning-German-phase where I can absolutely empathize with whats written there. Its a bit of a long read, so for the not-so-interested, try these excerpts: 1) Every noun has…