Fivi, did I get the script right?

I had learnt Tamil once about thirty years back. So, this one was a lot easier. Farsi has been the hardest so far. You can see how uncomfortable I am with writing right to left. I take more space per letter and cannot keep a straight line…

Every year, like clockwork, I wish you enough. It is an outstanding perspective-setting story from Bob Perks that reminds us of all the blessings we already have and how, to truly enjoy the benefits of life, we have to endure the pains too.

Even against that backdrop, it appears to me that wishing you enough this year is not enough any more. Not in a year that enveloped each and every one of you with the dreaded pandemic that upended your and your family’s lives as you knew it.

In a year when the person who had originally wished me enough got the dreaded cancer affliction, in a year when I came to the realization that the goodbye I had waved to my mom earlier in the year was going to be the last goodbye to her ever, in a year when I got cut off from my friends in the hospice – worse each one of them died without even being able to see their near and dear ones thru as much as a glass window, it seems it would be blissfully insensitive just to wish you enough.

This year, therefore, I wish you more than enough.

Whatever it is that makes you happy, I wish you a little more than you yourself are wishing for.

And in that pursuit of happiness of yours, should you be looking for some company, I wish myself that you will accept me in that journey – at least for a while. For, the best answer to the question of “What is more important – the destination or the journey?”, I have learnt this year, is “the company”.

Now learning Tamil. I used to be able to read Tamil in the late 80’s. Should be a faster learning cycle this time…

Acquired a passing acquaintance with Farsi letters. To be sure, I still cannot get the right pronunciation for “ghein” or “qaf” (identical pronunciations, I am told). And I know only isolated letters. But it was good enough to read a signboard inside the local Bezoria restaurant yesterday. (Needless to say, normally I would have no idea what the word meant but the context was helpful in understanding the word “shawarma”).

So, here are the six language alphabets that I have learnt arranged reverse chronologically of when I learnt them.

Thinking of learning Thai letters next. They almost look like notes on a music sheet (another thing I cannot read, of course).

Have now learnt all the Farsi alphabets and how to write them. To be sure, when I say “writing”, I mean as the letters would be written by themselves. When actually written in cursive handwriting, the shapes can differ depending on whether they are the first letter, somewhere in the middle or the last letter in a word. I have not learnt those. I need more practice still. (If I can rattle off and write backwards – meaning last letter to first letter, I feel I have memorized well enough).

The two letters in red have the same pronunciation but I cannot pronounce them. See a funny suggestion from Anand here.

Took the motorbike to Ballground for a ride and coffee. While there, had a call with my good friend Anand’s wife Firouzeh (who is from Tehran, Iran) to fine tune the proper pronunciation of the Farsi alphabets. I think I am within striking range for most of them. Other than the two alphabets “ghain” and “qaf”. They are pronounced identically – and I can’t get it.

In Bengali and Hindi, we have a letter for “gh”. There is no single English letter for it but it is pronounced like “gh”ost. I asked Anand (who knows Bengali and Hindi pronunciations) if he could gauge how close the pronunciations were.

He said something to the effect of if Sharmila were to strangle me and I were to try pronouncing “kh” (the second letter in Bengali/Hindi), then I might come close. On second thoughts, I will give it a pass…

My usual coffee places were closed (today is Thanksgiving Day in the USA). But found a Starbucks that is open and is allowing customers to sit outside in the open (also can use the restrooms).

Nobody else was around (other than some drive in customers in their cars). Very quiet and cloudy morning.

As I mentioned last night, I learnt about “ambigram”s while reading a book by Alex Bellos. For our purpose, we can say an ambigram is a calligraphic writing such that when you hold the paper upside down, you get the same writing!

That is quite an achievement! I looked up the internet and found some free ambigram generators. I am trying to learn how to write an ambigram of my own name.

It does get your mind to think in a different way when you are practicing every stroke. Basically, you have to think how that stroke will look when you hold it upside down and is it going to build up the other letter you need to build up. (The letter that is as far from the end as is the one you are writing from the beginning). So while writing my first “R”, I have to do it in a way that if I turn it upside down, it should look like the last letter “y” and I have to draw the exact opposite of how I wrote “R” in the end to write “y”.

You will see that after half an hour of trying, my output is still amateurish. You can even spot the mistake I made in the last letter. I also realized that I need to get a thicker nib from the calligraphic pen set than I did this morning.

After storm Zeta and learning the Greek alphabet, I had this crazy idea – albeit not too crazy as far as my ideas go – what if I tried to learn the script of another language?

I remembered, while in Mongolia, I had great difficulty reading their language. So, figured maybe I should try some language with a Cyrillic script. Settled down on Russian. The language has 33 letters and 10 vowels. Eventually got the hang of the upper case and lower case. The pronunciation was a different thing though. There are lots of sounds that are not there in English language (some are there in my mother tongue Bengali). A lot of the letters look like English but have nothing to do with the corresponding English letter. I am still struggling with the difference in pronunciation of “Й” and “ы”. All in all, was interesting to pick this up. I am going to keep trying to identify the letters in words and pronounce them thru the end of this year.

So, with English, Bengali and Hindi (based on Devnagari script), that makes it 5 different scripts for me. (I am not counting German and Spanish since they are too close to English).

Thinking of picking up one more. Tamil has a very different script. At one time, I had taught myself the script (back in 1985). Maybe I will brush that one up…