Here is a new label "reflections" to our blog. These had been earlier exchanged over mail. I decided that it will be nice to put these in blog. Here is the first.
All of you must be familiar with Amitabhs famous dialogue in some film ..... "english is a funny Language" I was reminded of this when I came across the word "Scholarship". I am not sure if like Samskrit where a word has umpteen different meanings and each has it's own logic (kind of) behind it, English language is similar.
The word "scholarship" would be ordinarily be refering to one's learning or knowledge on any subject , derived from "scholar". But another common meaning and usage is "award of money" towards education. How did this latter meaning come about? What has money to do with lofty "education"?
Take the words "Shameless" and "Shameful" What's the difference? And when you feel these, you are "ashamed" . Normally when you prefix "a" it negates the original import of the word; for instance say "political" the moment I prefix "a" the word "apolitical" means non-political. So why "ashamed" rather than more logical "shamed"?
Take "awe" . When you suffix "some" to denote the quality, it means "fantastic" (Kind of) but prefix "ful" to again denote the quality of awe, it becomes "terrible" .
In the mail I had called these "time-pass". These will be "reflections" in the blog.
Love
Vichu
Comments from Cypress floks
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting collection of English words looked at "in a time pass" mood.Just some quick thoughts:
There are instances where a tool used to perform a function takes the name of the function itself. I cannot recall offhand a word in English but there is one in Tamil. Vilakku means to throw light like "vilakki chollungo". And the word for lamp is also vilakku!
A scholarship in as much as it helps a deserving one towards acquiring scholarship may be taken to be in that category. Yes,the English language calls the fluid that "lifts" one's spirits as spirit.(It is a different matter that alcohol is the number one killer of Spirit, but that will bring in seriousness!).
"Shameful" describes an act,"shameless", the person who engages in that act with a lack of sense of "shame"."Shamed" seems to be a transitive verb in that someone shames someone else who has a sense of shame say by a superior behavior. Ashamed could then be the passive sentiment in that human interaction. Any more ideas?
As for "awesome", awe stands both for reverence and fear,interestingly feelings that keep alternating in our hearts whenever we encounter something grand and mighty. It appears when reverence or admiration is the dominant feeling, awesome is used. Awful is an adjective associated with fear.
It is mostly in the matter of pronunciation that English undeniably is arbitrary, may be not so much in regard to etymology.I had received some time ago a mail from Nageshwaran on the funny English language.I will forward that to you.
And before I sign off,a serious reflection on money and education.Through history mankind has looked down upon money as degrading and as undeserving to be associated with any pursuit or occupation that we consider noble.So when we wish to convey that someone is really,really rich,we call the person filthy rich! Our value judgement is BTW on the wealth not on the person.So Madona makes millions while teachers get paid a pittance.It would be well that we renounce our ideas about the incompatibility between filthy money and lofty education.Scholarships would then receive our ungrudging appreciation.
God bless us all.
Gulpa