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Senthil's Notes Posts

Jane Eyre and the Sound of A Language

An interesting perspective about growing up in an erstwhile British colony, is that we fail to truly absorb how illogical the spellings and pronunciations in English are.  Sanskrit, and a number of Indian languages such as Malayalam and Marathi, possess a long history of codified grammar and detailed pronunciation. So, reading and pronunciation in many Indian languages is almost wysiwig.  This is of course not true for English. It is hard to see know the pronunciation differences in words (say, tough, cough and dough) before hearing them.

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2019 Essay

I’ll begin with a story that is one of my favorite essays, from Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa) by Yoshida Kenko a world-wise Japanese monk from 1331.  Kenko writes:

When I went to see the horse racing at the Kamo Shrine on the fifth day of the fifth month, the view from our carriage was blocked by a throng of common folk. We all got down and moved towards the fence for a better view, but that area was particularly crowded and we couldn’t make our way through…

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Sights & Sounds 2019

Things I loved in 2019 on Big screen/TV/Streaming, Podcasts and Music. The Guilty (Danish) is a beautifully acted, taut thriller.  A demoted police officer assigned to call-dispatch gets an emergency call from a kidnapped woman. The call is suddenly disconnected, the search for the kidnapper begins.

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