Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Plenty of people can relate to characters from fiction. Some take it a step further and start “conjuring fanciful biographies for the characters”, as Alan Jacobs puts it . Heard of fan-fiction? It’s the fiction written by fans of serials/books write based who then post it on the Internet. Lev Grossman describes it thus: “They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.” A few years back, when the last of the Harry Potter books was released, the “Is Dumbledore gay?” question became red-hot on the Internet. Author JK Rowling’s take on the question was very interesting: “My truthful answer to you…I always thought of Dumbledore as gay…Yeah, that’s how I always saw Dumbledore.” I personally agree with Jacobs’ comment on Rowling’s response: “Rowling see...

Until I visited China recently, I never paid any attention to their script. I assumed the basic approach would be similar to either any Indian or European language. You know, vowels, consonants, put together to form words. I could not have been more wrong. My first sign was when I noticed that all white guys at office are given Chinese names for use on their nameplates. No, this isn't a cultural curiosity; it is a necessity! A white guy called Don Beduhn was “renamed” Da Ba Du! But why is a name change even necessary? To answer that, you first need to understand that Chinese characters are of many types : 1) Pictogram: the symbol denotes an entire object; 2) Ideogram: the symbol represents a concept, like “up”; 3) Radical-radical compound: each element of the character (called radical) hints at the meaning; 4) Radical-phonetic compounds: one component indicates the general meaning of the character, and the other hints at the pronunciation; 5) A few other types t...