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Today, 4th of July, is USA’s Independence Day. It’s a day which will be celebrated with fireworks, parades and fare sampled outdoors – beer butt chicken, Louisiana crawfish boil, Cajun fries, and the regular hot dogs.  If you’re like me, most of these dishes probably sound as mysterious as they sound tempting. Except hot dogs, […]

Whenever we speak with someone whose native language or culture is different from ours, we are essentially translating. Good translation requires much more than a vocabulary – it takes a nuanced understanding of both language and culture. Japanese, for instance, has different verbs for the same action, and using a less respectful verb in a […]

Sometimes, students who are getting ready to go abroad to study have apprehensions about using words to describe race or ethnicity that may offend someone. Here’s a rough guide to talking about race. What is race? There is no scientific basis for race. No DNA defines black, white, or any other people. Some populations share […]

Last Monday, we argued about how language rules aren’t just for fools. This week we are going to look at 5 mistakes which are common and contrary to rules of good English usage. Language rules work like traffic rules – a combination of widespread practice and good sense. But common as these 5 errors might […]

Recently, a friend who is a professor of Italian language and culture expressed her frustration that an English-language textbook had translated “ricotta” as “cream cheese”. I remarked that it was like Indian cookbooks wrongly translating “paneer” as “cottage cheese”. She said that this was different because the author was a scholar of Italian cinema, and […]

We sometimes talk about globalization as if it happened because of two decades of economic liberalization in India. In fact, it has been going on for thousands of years. In the 4th century BCE (Before Common Era), some of what is now India was part of an empire ruled by a former pupil of the […]

We Indians are used to sneaking in the occasional English word when we speak in Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, or some other Indian language. But it wasn’t until I shared a home with an Iranian roommate in the US that I realized how much Farsi I already knew, without ever having learned the language. My […]

Spring means many things to many people: cute little lambs frolicking about, flowers, spring fever, Easter…. For people who suffer from pollen allergies, it may mean staggering about in an anti-histamine stupor. For couch potatoes, it means this: Above: Spring has sprung, and a couch prepares for rebirth Of course, “spring” can also mean a […]

In an article on feminist vocabulary, a reader commented that the subject matter had “obviously become too hyperacademicated.” This makes it sound like the words had both tonsillitis and pneumonia, and were in need of research drugs. The other interesting fact to note is this reader was using an imaginary word that he (or she) […]

We would all readily associate the First World War with catastrophe. But, it was also a time of creativity. Trenches, tanks, steel helmets, poisonous gases, blood banks, and mobile x-ray machines were some legacies of the war. As was the emergence of Poland, the Soviet Union, Turkey and other nationalities. However, what emerged from the […]