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How Good is AI Image Generation?

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Fun with wild Imagination!

I grew up reading poetry in both English and Tamil. While the vivid descriptions of natural scenery didn’t always captivate me, I was drawn to poetry that showcased wild imagination with skillful manipulation of words. Take, for example, the scene in Silappadikaaram (சிலப்பதிகாரம்) where Kannagi (கண்ணகி ) confronts the Pandiya king Nedunchezhiyan (நெடுஞ்செழியன்) to demand justice. The way Ilango…

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Bushism: Leading with Linguistic Gaffes?

Ever heard of a “Bushism”? George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, often mixed up his words or had verbal slips that left people either scratching their heads or laughing out loud. But these quirky moments gave us a new term. Bushism, similar to Spoonerism, refers to unintended verbal slips as opposed to the standard linguistic concepts like homophones or metonymy, which are…

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Wow, can you buy Kanchipuram?

You can, that is, if you take the metonymical meaning of the word Kanchipuram, as it is used freely by many Indians. Metonymy is a linguistic phenomenon where a word or phrase is used to stand in for another word or phrase with which it is closely associated. While other linguistic phenomena like homophones and homographs work based on similarity, Metonymy works through contiguity, meaning that…

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Linguistic Gymnastics

With the Olympics underway in Paris 2024, I can’t help but think about the sporty and challenging aspects of languages. As we watch our favorite gymnasts twist their bodies into a billion shapes, winning medals as a consequence, let’s twist our tongues to match their acrobatics. Tongue twisters are popular and fun activities that people of any language can engage in together. Designed to trip up…

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In which I talk about Spoonerisms. Of course, I reference one my favourite movies Panchathanthiram apart from Shel Silverstein and NSKrishnan...

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Ever hissed your mystery class?

I have! I used to hiss my mystery class often, especially when trying to talk as fast as my thoughts. These days, I’ve slowed down a lot, and I don’t hiss my mystery lectures when I want to miss my history lectures. That, dear readers, is an example of Spoonerism. A spoonerism is a linguistic phenomenon where the initial consonants or sounds of two or more words are swapped. This results in a…

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I talk about Anniyan and Anagrams, yet another literary device...

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Thirimuntakoba

In the movie “Anniyan” (dubbed in Telugu as Aparichithudu and in Hindi as Aparichit), DCP Prabhakar and SI Chari try to decipher a cryptic code written by a psycho killer. They decide to find the 6x5x4x3x2x1 permutations of “akoonpatham” (அகூந்பதம்) and verbalize the possible jumbled versions. This idea repeats itself a couple of times in the movie, with Vivek voicing the permutations of…

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Sound Twins

Now that we know about Word Twins, let’s explore Sound twins known as homophones, originating from ‘homo’ meaning ‘same’ and ‘phone’ meaning ‘sound’. While homographs are words that are spelt the same but sound different, homophones are words that sound the same but are spelt differently. For example, “bear” and “bare” both sound like /bɛː/. Similarly, “bawl” and “ball” sound like /bɔːl/. Many…

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In which I talk about homographs and their use in movies and literature.Kannadasan and Panchathanthiram are featured.

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Word Twins

In the post about false friends, our friend Ravi made a comment about words within the same language that have different meanings based on context. That is indeed a good observation on homographs. Homographs, deriving from the Greek words “homos” meaning ‘same’ and “graph” meaning ‘to write’, refer to words which are written identically but don’t share a meaning and are also pronounced…

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In which, I talk about 'false friends' or 'faux amis' - a common pitfall when speaking a new language.

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Beware of false friends

In an earlier post, I explained ‘portmanteau words.’ Here, I explain another kind of word, called a ‘false friend’ or ‘faux ami’ (a French expression of the same meaning, pronounced ‘fozami’). A ‘false friend’ is a word in one language that sounds similar or is spelt similarly to a word in a second language, but their meanings are different. For example, a ‘librairie’ in French refers to a…

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Do you know the word ‘portmanteau’? It originates from French: ‘Porter’ means ‘to carry’ and ‘manteau’ means ‘coat’. Originally, it referred to a coat rack, but over time, it evolved to describe a travel bag that opens into two equal parts. To be honest, I don’t find these bags charming, so I should clarify that […]

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The Charm of the Portmanteau

Do you know the word ‘portmanteau’? It originates from French: ‘Porter’ means ‘to carry’ and ‘manteau’ means ‘coat’. Originally, it referred to a coat rack, but over time, it evolved to describe a travel bag that opens into two equal parts. To be honest, I don’t find these bags charming, so I should clarify that I’m not referring to them. However, these travel bags have given their name to a…

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Captain Haddock wonders...

Recently, I came across a comic panel featuring Captain Haddock, which happened to be in French. Here I’ve translated the content: 85% of sailors know how to swim. It is a big advantage over the air force. None of them know how to fly! Hahaha! That’s typical Captain Haddock! If you are not familiar with this character, Captain Haddock is a central figure in the Belgian comic series “The…