Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Words


It’s a pity that there’s this misconception that blogging is just an online wail-bucket diary, and I suppose I should apologize to people who actually like diaries… or wail-buckets. After all, Things I Hate About My Flatmate is essentially that, but still a great read. ("Terrible... but great.") Sadly also, is that there are some blogs out there that promote the misconception. They should be called wailing logs, or wahlogs. And leave our blogs clear of it. The problem is I *sigh* have to cop to the occasional wahloging. The compromise is to do it with style, I suppose.

Seriously though, the grand thing about blogs is that it does connect you to so many people, and allow some introspection too – and reading Seong Hong’s blog did both (thanks!). It is remarkably honest, and talks about stuff which matters. As one gets more into parts of the classical music culture (hey, let’s admit it, the stuffed-shirt index is rather high) and well, all that training into all the news that’s fit for flint, one sometimes forgets to bring out the stuff that really counts. Religion. Belief. Beef. (Not always the same thing). Being Malaysian. Transience. Cutting out weird words.

I’m thinking of relaxing the G audience rating of this blog in language use – just slightly anyway; so, if my younger students and their parents are reading, do let me know you do actually pop by here and I’ll work accordingly.

Discussing the topic of swearing is something else… and it was actually the subject of my masters in linguistics thesis before I scrapped it to go to Thailand. Etymologically (ok, the weird words thing will take some time, it seems, old habits die hard) we’re in the most unique period, where 1. the words we use have little direct reference to their intent and 2. informally used as in with friends, it’s more ameliorated than pejorative (ok, old habits are freaking immortal).


Of the more crafted ones in history, is the ancient Arabic curse, “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.” So effective, and as a bonus, no weird words too.

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