Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Notes on Dravidian Words - vii

In Kasaragod Malayalam, the word for 'housewarming' is 'porakudi'. Where pora means house and kudi also means house but probably takes the verbal form 'residing'. I was fascinated by this compound word. The verb form of kudi is hardly used. The other meanings, farmer or house, are more mainstream.

Then I started analyzing its Kannada equivalent, manehokkalu, where mane means house and hokkalu means entrance. I felt something was wrong there. If I go by the Malayalam format, it should be 'maneyokkalu' (mane+okkalu), where okkalu means residing.  Then I confirmed from a born Kannada speaker that the word was indeed maneyokkalu.

However, similar to kudi, the popular usage is okkaliga -> farmer. I suppose because of my unfamiliarity with its multiple usages, somewhere in the past, I over-corrected the word to hokkalu from okkalu. It's unclear whether the term hokkalu is itself correct or not. I most likely modified the term 'hokku' meaning enter.

It's interesting that the same idea has been implemented in the compound word in both languages using all different words.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Road to True Capitalism - IV

I support Food Security Bill as it has rudimentary proposals for making women the heads of the households. There are government schemes which provide free houses to the poor. I hope the ownership of those houses also rests with the females.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Oh, those Russians

"We are Russians. Maybe we are different than European people, than other people from different lands. We have our law which everyone has to respect."

- Yelena Isinbayeva , via BBC