Posts Tagged ‘ English language ’

Pictured above: My mom playing Scrabble in her later years. Don’t be deceived by that little smile, she was a ferocious competitor. Actually, the gene is on both sides of the family. I can still picture my two grandmothers locked in Scrabble combat against each other. Scary! One of my mom’s Scrabble weapons may well have been Indian words. I read somewhere that 900 English words come from Indian languages–Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, and many others. At least …Read More

I’m still immersed in the letters of the Brahmin schoolteacher in Chennai with whom my dad corresponded for many years. Mr. Patch could be crusty. I guess he figured that his advanced age gave him the right to be so, and temperament played in as well. “I am in the habit of making no mental reservations of any kind,” he wrote. “I speak as it comes out of my mind.” One issue on which he was very outspoken …Read More