Consonant Aspirations - Archive

Many English speakers would be familiar with the construction 'X cum Y' (where X and Y are nouns) to designate something or someone with two different attributes that are combined , e.g. model-cum-actor or restaurant-cum-dining room . The word cum here comes from the Latin preposition meaning 'with' or 'together with'. In writing, the words are often joined by a hyphen. In spoken English, it's not something I hear that often (at least outside South Asia), even if people know the construction. Few people I know would talk about an actor-cum-model , and would probably say something like  actor slash model slash waiter (effectively spelling out the punctuation marks used to divide up the different categories) or just actor model waiter . It's also no surprise that when I was doing the crossword in one of the local papers here the other day, I was puzzled by the clue: sofa-___-bed (3).  You guessed it, the answer was 'cum', but most people I kno...

While  many parts of Northern Britain have also been hit by severe weather and flooding , the headlines of all the local papers here in Assam have been about one thing the past week: the massive flooding happening all over the Brahmaputra valley which has displaced thousands and killed more than a dozen people. Floods sweep more areas  (Seven Sisters Post, 24/09/2012) Flood scene worsens in State, 18 dead   (The Assam Tribune, 25/09/2012) Note that severe flooding in July already displaced more than a million people and killed more than 100 people (as mentioned in  this BBC article  about the current flooding situation ). Most of Majuli Island, the world's largest 'river island' (which used to have an area almost twice that of Singapore) is underwater as well. Up till the past few days, the situation was mostly in Upper Assam, but now the flood waters have started to enter parts of Guwahati: Flood situation turns critical in central, lower ...

About three weeks into my current stay in Guwahati, I discovered an absolute gem on GS Road, just two bus stops away from where I'm staying in Paltan Bazar. It's a little patisserie in Lachit Nagar (opposite the KFC) called "Patisserie Operaa". It's named for the famous  'opera cake' . I can only assume the double 'a' in Opera is to prevent any confusion as the pronunciation of the last vowel (since a single 'a' is often used in transliterations of Assamese for the vowel /ɔ/, similar to the vowel in English 'hot', not /a/.) I'd seen the patisserie each time I'd gone down GS Road, and I was immediately attracted by the interior decor. It's one of the few places here I'd actually feel comfortable sitting around in for hours. Of course, I've been to places here with nice interiors, but simply awful food (which I tend to put up with anyway just so I have somewhere to sit and read or do work). But the pastry...

Apologies if posting hasn't been very frequent. I just spent the week in the Varanasi attending the 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium which was hosted by Banaras Hindu University.  And here are some obligatory shots of the Ganges. And more photos from the obligatory boat ride on the Ganges. Popping over to Varanasi from Assam presented a mild cultural shock to me. While in Assam, I can usually go about my day-to-day activities generally unnoticed (people do look at me, but they just assume I'm from somewhere in NE India like Nagaland), the instant I arrived in Varanasi, I was instantly given the 'foreigner treatment'. Everywhere I went, people would say, "Hello!" or  "How are you?" or "Where are you from?" as I walked past them, and I'd get touts and beggars coming up to me. The other thing I had to get used to, was that when I'm in Assam and show any trouble understanding Assamese, almost everyone immediately swaps t...

While Assam is considering banning bandhs for the rest of the month , following violence during Tuesday's bandh (including some incidents here in Guwahati), Nagaland hasn't quite reached that stage yet. I arrived on Saturday in Dimapur to what was called a 'lightning bandh', a term I had never heard before. Note that is also spelled ' lightening bandh', although this is certainly a common misspelling of 'lightning', as there is nothing about this sort of bandh that 'lightens' / is 'lightening'. The term was used in relation a bandh that was called on Saturday in Dimapur. You can see it reported here in the Nagaland Post: Aug 31 incident sparks inter-tribal clash in Dimapur  and also in the Eastern Mirror: Clashes erupt in Dimapur . From what I gather, the term refers to a bandh that's called very suddenly and often violently, since business owners aren't given enough notice, bandh supporters go to them and forcefully make them...