Barbers change

Heard about latest SRK movie? It was named 'Billu Barber'. The barbers' association demanded the name be changed on the context that the word 'barber' is derogatory. They prefer to be addressed as hair stylist or hair dressers. (Not sure what they call their association).

The word 'barber' seem to have gone through a phase of euphemism. It is going out. The word got enough negativity that it got to be pulled off. Another classic word in Indian context is about addressing the SC/ST community. Olden day nomenclature went with 'Sudras'. That is a big no no. Gandhian era gave a name as 'Harijan', to mean god's people. These days people get offended with harijan. Preferable word today is 'dalits'.

I guess there is nothing wrong in words. It is the context and meaning we fix the words. Many neutral words gather negativity and slowly the neutrality usage drops out. Only negative context associates with the word. After a while, we start looking for a new word to mean the old thing.

It is highly probable that the word 'style' becomes negative charged because of these barbers, oh sorry .. the hair stylists.

Languages and dialects

I was wondering why we have so many languages in the world. Some ancient, dead and few started recently, growing; some have written form and some dont ..

It is understandable if different languages spurn out at isolated geographical locations. However we see that many languages and dialects co-exist at a close region. One possibility could be that the people migrated and carried their language to an area where people had their own language.

There seems to be more to the story. Looks like socio-economic-political motives might have driven people to create languages. For eg, in a business environment, it is a great advantage for the salesperson to use some secret code words to discuss in front of the customer. Also, a language and a dialect could establish an identity of the customer and hence favor discounts.

Around the world, we are politically charged by emotions. We create artificial borders. These emotions are mainly based on faith or language.

In order to demark the dividing factors among human being, I would love to drop all languages and adapt a single universal language. When people start seeing language as a tool to communicate and not an emotional toy, then we may achieve this idealistic world.

Programming in local language

A professor at medical college requested me to write a small image processing application. He wanted to analyze any image and identify various color concentration and different ratios. I pitched in a java code that would read the bmp file and go thru pixel colors, count the rgb values etc.

Since the apps is a home-made, free-lanced small utility, I had lots of flexibility in scribbling to my heart's content. While doing so, I wanted to have convenient names for the classes and variables. I started using Indian words in coining class names.

I had to handle each color element and count their occurrences, manipulate the colors etc. The holder for such activities was named Varna which is color in Samskritam. The opposite color fetching function is from this class.
All colors from the image was extracted into a big double dimensional array. The huge volume of such colors prompted me to label it as VarnaSagar, ocean of colors.
A portion of image was handled at a time. So, I had to have some container which fetched colors from the VarnaSagar and processed them. The name for such small container is VarnaKalasam, pot of colors.
Even the screens were not spared. Image displaying modules and panels were termed Chitram, means a picture. The controls that open up the image is called by Darshan .. something to show up or see.



Would you like to guess the utility name? It is ChitraDeepam. Deepam is shine or light or glow. In our context, ChitraDeepam is a tool that illuminates more info about any chitram or image.


It was a nice experience to go thru in writing this utility. Using familiar names or related words made a lot of difference. It improved the way we conceptualize the problem domain. It also shows how powerful over native languages play even at a computer language level.

I remember few concepts I couldn't understand mainly because of the name. For eg, facet is one such topic. I never took time to understand the meaning of this word. Due to that I couldn't fully understand the topic, thou I attempted reading it couple of times. If I had known the meaning of the word, probably I might have been able to understand faster.

Anyway, here is the screen shot of the tool I wrote.

Using large numbers

The numbering system has reached trillions and centillion (which is 10^303).
In India we dont follow millions & billions, instead we go for lakhs and crores. However, we are for left behind without words for larger numbers. Already politicians had crossed thousand crore scams and more. It is time to coin words.

Instead of inventing new words, we can go through the Ancient words and see if they can be re-used, just like lakhs and crores.

Here are the words from Ancient India.
10 ^ 0      eAkam
10 ^ 1      dasha
10 ^ 2      shatham
10 ^ 3      sahasram
10 ^ 4      ayutham
10 ^ 5      laksham
10 ^ 6      niyutham
10 ^ 7      koti           <- this is the crore stuff
10 ^ 8      arbudham
10 ^ 9      vrundham
10 ^ 10     karva
10 ^ 11     nikarva
10 ^ 12     shanga           <- trillion
10 ^ 13     pathrama
10 ^ 14     sAgara
10 ^ 15     anthyam        <- quadrillion
10 ^ 16     mathyam
10 ^ 17     parArdham

These numeric words are preserved in a sanskrit poem.

Beautiful names Part 2

Like the vi- series in part 1, we have ni- words like Niroopa, Niranjana, Nirguna etc. This prefix negates the meaning of the root word. Hence the above three words could mean formless, beyond-desires and characterless(?!). These words has positive annotation to mean someone or something who is not restricted by the forms, desires and the behaviour; something that had transcended or overcome these qualities.

su is the prefix to indicate auspiciousness, goodness and prosperity. suguna - good or pure charactor, swagatham - agatham is to inviting someone, swagatham adds a wellness to it to become 'wel'come. swarna is auspicious or nice color, usually this word is used for gold.

Anirudh is a quite common name we hear these days. I was curious to know the depth of the name. Happen to read a book about Krishna, the flute guy. Krishna's grandson is Anirudh and Anirudh is the only survivor of Krishna's community. Rodhah is to block or stop something. Nirodhah is to imprison and stop the flow, and hence Nirodh is the right word for condom. Anirudh is someone who cannot be imprisoned and in this context, the one who didn't let the dynasty flow to stop.

Such etymological analysis helps us to understand the words better and also throws some light on the language/word creators. We will be able to extrapolate the ancient life style, social values, ideas and ideologies. That is a Science by its own with the name Semantics.

Thiruvasagam

Happen to hear Thiruvasagam as composed by Illaiyaraaja. A feast to ears and mind. It is a music blended with Eastern and Western instruments. The foreground goes with the classical Tamil lyrics, and mixed with English translated verses. The CD came with a booklet containing the lyrics. It is easy to listen the songs while reading them. My wife and myself used to pause at the end of each song and go through the meaning of the song. Overall nice experience and worth trying. Planning to play it frequently.

Reading classics

So far I had seen two classifications in Indian classical literature. The first category narrates some event, person or a story. Either events and person are explicitly named to identify or portrayed as generic characters like hero, heroin, mother etc.

The second category deals with morality/code of conduct/mannerism of people, social norms and ethics. There are many such books. Other day, one such book was lying in my desk. Friend of mine picked the same and glanced through it. He wasn't very happy about what he was reading. He felt those do s and donts were impractical; also a waste of time to go through such materials.

That was an interesting remark. Are all our ancient wisdom a waste of time? I was thinking in this line. Here are few thoughts came out.

In our modern age, we have hundreds of authors writing self-help, personality development books. In a sense, these books are the continuous progeny of the ancient moral texts. Most of the do s and donts of a by gone era may not be applicable today. However, we cannot throw away all of them as useless ideas.

If they are not applicable today, why should someone read them? I read to gain an insight into the ancient world. What was their social practices? Which are the pressing issues they had to address? Reading history itself has lots of advantage. A good reason for human being to go through history pages is not to commit the same mistake again.

Apart from these mundane reasons, there are recorded facts and findings which stands good in spite of the deadly factor called TIME. For example, recently I was reading a newspaper article about harmful effects of hot water bath. Due to regular usage of hot water for head bath leads to headache, memory loss and other brain related issues. This is due to sudden raise in the temperature during bath. Mainly this affects the brain. Since this info was new to me, I was surprised to read this; also worried because I am take hot water head bath on a daily basis. Found a remedy for the above situation in an ancient literature. Different protocols are suggested for cold water and hot water bath. Following that could reduce the effect of the above brain attack.

Suggestion to my friend is, to read books of wide range and variety. One need not follow everything written in the books. However, it is essential to expand our horizons by exposing to different ideas.

Indian and western languages

While reading the book Word Power, I was impressed with the etymology analyzing technique. Another surprise was to find Greek and Latin words to have similarity with Samskrit and other Indian languages. Tried putting few of the words here.

Most of the last column are Latin
eka each
onru, onthu one
dvi dual, two
tri tri, three
chatur quad
pancha pentashut
che sexa
sapta septa
asta octa
nava novem
dasha deci

Samskrit and Latin coincide amazingly for 11 to 29 (that is the last number I could find in the page :-)
vimshati viginti

Naama Name
naukaa nau (boat or sea thing)

upari up
adhaka under

jeevan genesis (life)

The 'a' prefix in Samskrit is to mean anti, for eg, avidya (without knowledge). Greek also used 'a' to mean anti, for eg, atom (that which cannot be cut).

The prefix vi in Samskrit has 16 meaning based on the context and the root word it joins with. Two common meaning it derives are negation and intensification. Examples are placed at Beautiful names. The Latin prefix "in" is a close cousin of "vi". The words indecent, injustice for negation and invaluable for intensification are note worthy comparison.

Guess an detail analyze of these two language might throw some more light on the similarity. I tried google to find any such work. Nothing noted in the first page of search.

Beautiful names Part 1

I like to scrutinize words and find the root words. Take for example, Girija. A simple and usual name looks normal. When we break up the word, we get Giri + ja, or Mountain + born. The mountain-born or born-in-the-mountain is the meaning and the word could indicate many things like timber, river, pebbles, wild life etc. Usually the indicative meaning take out of Girija is the another name of Parvathi, who is born in a mountain or as the myth goes born to the mountain king, Himalayas.

Most of the ja ending names are fascinating. Vanaja, Jalaja, Ambuja, Anuja, etc. Jala and Ambu means water. Water-born could mean lotus, conch, the moon(!), Lakshmi, fish etc.Anu is after or subordinate. Anuja is born-after or younger sibling.

My all time favourite name is Vikramadhithya. Breaking up the word, we get Vi + Krama + Adhithya. Adhithya being an easy one to decipher, means the Sun god. Krama is orderliness and punctuality. Vi is a prefix used in many root words. The meaning of vi should be understood as per the context; it has sixteen different usage. Certain context negates the original meaning. Like videsi, which means non-desi; compared to swadesi - our own desi and also pradesi - other than desi. vi also used to intensify the meaning of the root word, for eg: gnanam is knowing or understanding, vignanam is knowledge, wisdom and usually used as a translation of the English word 'Science'. So, an extra large burger can be coined as viBurger :-)

Coming back to Vikrama, this composition suggests 'intensified orderliness'. Perfection in punctuality. That seems to suit the Sun as the Sun is the most punctual among known entities. The word Vikramaadhithya also makes us feel awesome towards the Sun for the meticulous shower of bliss and prosperity.Out of many other meaning, krama also means power, heroic. So, Vikrama could also refer a great hero, valor power.

Apte online dictionary is a good one to learn many such words. Here is the book at Amazon.

Reviving the language

GA and myself went to Karikudi mess for lunch. He is very much into the study of Samskrit. I asked him the current growth and prospective of the language. He mentioned there have been good progress. In the study center he attends, there are lots of young crowd. That is encouraging to hear.

We shared our ideas on complete revival of the language. GA mentioned the hindrance in gathering the required attention deserved by the language. Foremost is the result-oriented society expecting some kind of monetary benefit out of any activity. Studying or reviving the language doesn't seem to have a direct result for a commoner.

Weighing the vast knowledge one might gain out of bringing back the language, justifies the difficulty in the process.