the

If you happen to be one of those hawk-eyed readers they talk about, then you'll have noticed the rather interesting title of this post. Before you give in to the impulse to instantly scroll down and post a dozen comments on this subject, you might wanna read the explanation below...

Some time back, an interesting chain of events transpired, with the result that I began to notice the filenames that Blogger gives my posts. For example the URL of the post that brought this to my notice is http://abstractwhiz.blogspot.com/2005/06/i-can-see-finish-line.html. For nontech readers, the thing I'm talking about is the bit after the last slash. Apparently they took the title of my post, cut it down to lower case, stuck '-' characters between the words, and(this is the most important thing) removed the word 'the'. A little study of the previous posts showed that this is normal policy.

It should be obvious where I'm going by now...If all 'the's are removed, what happens when the title is a big fat 'the' itself? I don't have any idea now, but I should know once I publish this post.

Since we're on the subject of definite articles, I have to mention an interesting phenomenon. For some reason, Indians have a huge amount of trouble with 'a's and 'the's - the latter is especially misused left and right. I once had a prof who could not string a sentence together without using 'the' at least 3 times. At least two of them would be wrongly used, and that was on a good day...There are rumours that he once used over a thousand in just half an hour. Example: "Why for you are the late? Is this the time to make the entry in the class? You will find the great difficulty in the exam..."

We waited for an entire year to hear him say "Get the out." Sadly it never came. Sigh....

The other extreme is represented by a guy who taught me Marathi back in school. At one point he was explaining some sort of passage in which some guy picks up a grain of rice. His translation: "He picked up a rice." WTF?!!!

Then there was the other guy who taught me maths and never pluralized anything. When he wanted a bunch of people to stand up, he would say "Stand up boy." In fact, his entry into the class went something like this....

Him: "Stand up boy."
(We stand up)

Him: "Say good morning boy."
(We resist the temptation to say "Good morning boy" and manage a weak "Good morning sir")

Him: "Sit down boy."
(We sit down and start hunting under our desks for pens that have *accidentally* been dropped. An observer with good ears might have noticed the faintest sound of stifled snickering from beneath the desk. Why this observer would be in a seventh standard maths class, I cannot say.)

There was an interesting incident when he caught some guys chatting nineteen to the dozen while he was trying to teach us congruence of triangles. This is what happened:

Him: "You boy, get out."
(One of the culprits sheepishly slinks out. He seems almost happy...)

Him: (to another of the offenders) "Why are you still here? I told you to get out."

Offender: "Sir? I thought you were talking to him."

Him: (roaring with rage) "I was talking to both of you! And that fellow behind you - both of you boy, get out!"

(The proceedings are interrupted by someone who can no longer take this and gives a devastatingly loud SNORT! Thankfully he manages to convert his guffaws into hacking coughs just in time to avoid detection...)

Of course, once you could translate his *singular* argot, he wasn't a bad teacher after all...

This isn't entirely restricted to non English speakers. My 10th standard geography teacher, who certainly never spoke a word of anything but English, once said "Please may I have the this?"

And to top it off, I myself am not immune to the odd attack of linguistic ineptitude...

Ah well, off I go to mess around with union-find algorithms...

Current browser name: Mozilla Seaturkey.