H.Kishie Singh is based in Chandigarh and has been a motoring correspondent for newspapers like The Statesman, New Delhi and The Tribune.His column ‘Good Motoring’, for The Tribune ran for over 27 years. He has been also been the contributing editor for magazines like Car & Bike, Auto Motor & Sport and Auto India. His latest book Good Motoring was published recently and has co-authored a book with The Dalai Lama, Ruskin Bond, Khuswant Singh and others, called The Whispering Deodars.


Sunday, 18 October 2020

LEARNING ENGLISH

 

Anyone who learned to type had to practice typing, “A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!”

 

This was a shortest sentence which had all 26 letters of the English language. It was accepted that ‘E’ was the most used letter in the English language.

 

This classic phrase today has been replaced by, “Pack My Box with 5 Dozen Liquor Jugs!”

 

It took many years and five dozen liquor jugs to improve upon an age old test sentence!

 

There are some advantages to liquor!

 

There are always exception to the rule.

 

Once Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Bengali poet and scholar, jokingly asked Michael Madhusudhan Dutt, an Anglophile poet of great repute; “As you are a Master in English, can you make a sentence without using a single ’E’?"

 

Dutt, the genius, wrote this:

_"I doubt I can. It’s a major part of many words. Omitting it is as hard as making muffins without flour. It’s as hard as spitting without saliva, napping without a pillow, driving a train without tracks, sailing to Russia without a boat, washing your hands without soap. And, anyway, what would I gain? An award? A cash bonus? Bragging rights? Why should I strain my brain? It’s not worth it!”