english

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.

The sound of an English accent distracted her and lifted her spirits. She associated English accents with singing teapots, schools for witchcraft, and the science of deduction. This wasn't, she knew, terribly sophisticated of her, but she had no real guilt about it. She felt the English were themselves to blame for her feelings. They had spent a century relentlessly marketing their detectives and wizards and nannies, and they had to live with the results.

The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you__l never succeed.

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless... speciesless.

And so we went. And so it went. And, slowly, I began to learn: speaking in the same language does not equal communication, especially when there is a cultural divide.

Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, articulate understanding of death.

People speak broken Swahili on purpose. Business people for instance will speak Sheng _ a mixture of Swahili and English _ because that__ what people want to hear. And what is the government doing? They speak broken Swahili most of the time. Swahili is getting lost and I am really sorry for the future generations.

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.

Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words __illage_ and __ge_ whatsoever.

Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable.

It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like _(OO)_, it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to '_oo'.

Shani Chalisa॥द_ा॥ Doha_-_ शर शनिद_ रभ, सनह विनय तरा__ह _त ह रव तन, रा_ _ _ ला_Shani Maharaj, glory to you with sincerity,Listen to my prayers I request humbly,Bestow your grace and protect me fully,Keep respect and honour of your devotees.- 341 -

॥द_ा॥शर_र _ सर_ र, नि त _र सधारि।बरन_ र_ तत _, _ दा त _रिDohaWith the dust of guru__ lotus feet having,I cleanse the mirror of my soul sparkling,Raghuvar__ spotless glory I be singing,The four fruits of life it ever is giving.- 303 -

स_ _ हन_ानाष__ततत_ __त सम रब _ लि तब तनह_ ल त _धितर।ताह स तरा त _ _ त स_ _ह स _ _र।द_ _ _ तनत तब __़ि दि रब __ निवार। नहि _नत ह _ _ स__ ना तिहार॥१When as a child you lapped the sun, darkness on triple world fell,The worlds so got into trouble and a crisis that none could dispel,Gods then prayed to you to spare the sun and you did so quell,Who doesn__ know in this world your name `Problem Solver_ bells?- 294 -

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.

It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life.

Are you one of those people who uses words more for the sound than for the sense of them?