{"id":1939,"date":"2013-05-22T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T18:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcurocks.wordpress.com\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2013-05-22T00:00:43","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T18:30:43","slug":"my-hovercraft-is-full-of-eels-%e0%b0%a8%e0%b0%be-%e0%b0%b9%e0%b1%8b%e0%b0%b5%e0%b0%b0%e0%b1%8d%e0%b0%81%e0%b0%95%e0%b1%8d%e0%b0%b0%e0%b0%be%e0%b0%ab%e0%b1%8d%e0%b0%a0%e0%b1%8d-%e0%b0%85%e0%b0%82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/22\/my-hovercraft-is-full-of-eels-%e0%b0%a8%e0%b0%be-%e0%b0%b9%e0%b1%8b%e0%b0%b5%e0%b0%b0%e0%b1%8d%e0%b0%81%e0%b0%95%e0%b1%8d%e0%b0%b0%e0%b0%be%e0%b0%ab%e0%b1%8d%e0%b0%a0%e0%b1%8d-%e0%b0%85%e0%b0%82\/","title":{"rendered":"My hovercraft is full of eels: \u0c28\u0c3e \u0c39\u0c4b\u0c35\u0c30\u0c4d\u0c01\u0c15\u0c4d\u0c30\u0c3e\u0c2b\u0c4d\u0c20\u0c4d \u0c05\u0c02\u0c24\u0c3e \u0c08\u0c32\u0c41 \u0c1a\u0c47\u0c2a\u0c32\u0c24\u0c4b \u0c28\u0c3f\u0c02\u0c21\u0c3f\u0c2a\u0c4b\u0c2f\u0c3f\u0c02\u0c26\u0c3f"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/untitled.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-1964\" alt=\"Untitled\" src=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/untitled.png?w=130\" width=\"130\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>In 1971 or thereabouts, with what now seems to have been considerable prescience, I purchased a copy of the modestly priced &#8220;<strong>Telugu without a Tutor<\/strong>&#8221; by H. R. Rao (Sahitya Siromani, Etc.) from Higginbotham&#8217;s bookstore in Madras. My aim at that time, if I recall correctly, was to learn enough Telugu to appreciate some of the more common carnatic music compositions. That never came to pass, and for 40 years the book languished, unread.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">I brought it with me to Hyderabad when I came here two years ago, but it still is something that I only dip into, since the book was written in another age when there were rupees and annas, and when the pace of life was very different. There is a charm to it, of course, and I can now easily find my way around the Aden dockyard, should I be surrounded by Telugu speaking lascars&#8230; It does not have the infamous\u00a0\u0c28\u0c3e postillion \u0c2a\u0c3f\u0c21\u0c41\u0c17\u0c41\u0c2a\u0c3e\u0c1f\u0c41\u0c15\u0c41 \u0c1a\u0c46\u0c2f\u0c4d\u0c2f\u0c2c\u0c21\u0c3f\u0c02\u0c26\u0c3f phrase, but there are similar gems on many pages.\u00a0<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/eels.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1947\" alt=\"eels\" src=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/eels.jpg?w=150\" width=\"150\" height=\"112\" \/><\/a>In recent weeks I have taken to learning some conversational Telugu, and my progress is hastened by having a tutor, a conscientious one at that. Each day I struggle with<em> adi<\/em> and <em>idi,<\/em>\u00a0 the specious similarity with Tamil and my decaying <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Language_module\">language module<\/a> that confuses\u00a0<em>nenu baagunnaanu<\/em>\u00a0with\u00a0<em>genki desu. <\/em>Hopefully in some time I will be able to understand, \u00a0and to an extent, be understood, but I think that with passing years, learning languages gets more and more difficult.\u00a0<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">And then there is the seductiveness of technology. Searching for some phrases the other day, I came across the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/language\/phrases\/hovercraft.htm\">Omniglot site<\/a> which lists the very useful translation of &#8220;My hovercraft is full of eels&#8221;: \u00a0\u0c28\u0c3e \u0c39\u0c4b\u0c35\u0c30\u0c4d\u0c01\u0c15\u0c4d\u0c30\u0c3e\u0c2b\u0c4d\u0c20\u0c4d \u0c05\u0c02\u0c24\u0c3e \u0c08\u0c32\u0c41 \u0c1a\u0c47\u0c2a\u0c32\u0c24\u0c4b \u0c28\u0c3f\u0c02\u0c21\u0c3f\u0c2a\u0c4b\u0c2f\u0c3f\u0c02\u0c26\u0c3f (naa hoavarkraapht a\u1e45thaa eelu chaepalathoa ni\u1e45dipoayi\u1e45dhi). Ah! to live in a Monty Python universe where this was a common enough occurrence&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1971 or thereabouts, with what now seems to have been considerable prescience, I purchased a copy of the modestly priced &#8220;Telugu without a Tutor&#8221; by H. R. Rao (Sahitya Siromani, Etc.) from Higginbotham&#8217;s bookstore in Madras. My aim at that time, if I recall correctly, was to learn enough Telugu to appreciate some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[119],"tags":[209,277],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-language","tag-telugu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paG6mN-vh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}