Saturday, November 7, 2009

Pithy prose


I am never too enthused about grammar. There are those who ponder for hours thinking if a participle must be gerunded or if the adjective clause satisfies causal requirements for it to be one. I am not one of those. In fact grammar can go take a hike as far as I am concerned. This is not to say that I sentences constructs this like, but that as long as I can get my information across I am good.

Clauses and the like only serve to confuse the already bewildered writer, who has reached this state of bewilderment because of the many eccentricities that bedevil this English language. Anyone can attest to the fact that English is a minefield of traps of various forms, and the unwary are often causalities in its complex constructs.

Although in hindsight, professing to write without heed to grammar is like attempting to sing without following a raga, ie. Simply noise. A friend of mine, a grammar nazi, spends all his free time hacking away my beautiful prose with the axe of grammar and punctuation. I call my prose beautiful only because after all the grammar bashing I was left drained and my self confidence languished below a heap of incorrectly used adverbs.

Spellings are another grey area, or is it a gray area? I know not, but my friend the spell check that Microsoft so kindly provides wildly gesticulates with red undulating waves and lets me know of lexical malapropisms among other things. It also fancies itself by neatly underlining all of my prose with green waves. Apparently this signals bad bad grammar. Wren and Martin (who are to English Grammar what Rakhi Sawant is to the Indian Media) would frown with extreme displeasure.

Perhaps I must take to writing in French, although I am entirely unsure how the French would react to moi butchering through their pretty cedillas and cute accents. Also if memory serves right French objects carry genders, rather all objects when referred to in French, must be addressed respectfully by a gender, failure of complying to which leads to a report of sexual abuse and a stint in the prison linguistique in Montreal.

Which is when I realize the versatility, beauty and brilliance of ‘it’. It effectively desexualizes any lingering masculinity or femininity in objects and clears our obfuscation in addressing things. It also lets you insult subtly a male or female by referring to them as such thereby effectively rendering genderless (Although some species of homo sapiens may be too dense to get the intricacies of this, in order to insult them, just slap them. Once should do the trick).

Rambling along and ranting about positives and negatives has made me weary and wise

Off I go with the rest of my damaged poise

All of this dear reader isn’t just noise

I shall post regularly or may the Gods smite my voice.

PS: Apologies for the absence, and failure to reply to previous posts.

Regular programming hopefully resumes.

13 comments:

Liberal said...

Nice one...grammar nazi (too funny)..although I think you meant casualties not causalties in line 6 (oops!)...der aaye durust aaye!

buddy said...

i meant causal.
although now that i read it again im not too sure :P

kusublakki said...

as always, good to read your post :)

Unknown said...

good one :)

maami said...

I've got a new Windows 7. It offers Indian English for spell check too.
I the relax now and feel at home OK?
PS:Nee chumma eludhudikine iru raasa!

Swatimala said...

welcome back :)

Unknown said...

good.u have given a good run to mr.wren

Gradwolf said...

I know why max hasn't commented on this.

buddy said...

@kusublakki: thanks

@karthikk: thanks

@maami: than k the lord for spell check!

@swatimala: danke

@shyamala: :P

@gradwolf: err?

maxdavinci said...

@gradwolf: damn you're gettin to know me very well. Scary shit!

@buddy: non-thesaurus posts plz nex time se!

Anjana R said...

yabba!!

buddy said...

@max: will try!

@anjana: pudikalaya?

RukmaniRam said...

for a post that was meant to be slight grammar bashing, u used plenty words that would make u an english snob. so honest now, which one are you?