Friday, September 19, 2008

Vignettes from a Bibliophile



Groucho Marx said," I find television very educative. Everytime somebody turns on the set, I go to the other room and read a book." Reading is, indeed, a wonderful hobby. I find it enlightening and often, amusing. The trivia collected by reading is always mind boggling.
I remember reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. In it was one of the longest sentences that I have ever read. It had eight hundred and twenty words, ninety three commas, fifty one semi-colons and four dashes. Presently, William Faulkner's novel Absalom holds the Guiness Book of World Records for the longest sentence. It has one thousand, two hundred and eighty seven words.
Want to know which is the longest and shortest name of a railway station in India? The longest one is "Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta" and the smallest is "Ib". Got anything to add?
Do you enjoy the word monsters? If you suffer from the following phobia "Hippopolomonstrosesquipedaliophobia", halt and read no more, because it describes the fear of long words. The longest word is a forty five lettered word known as "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis". It is a lung disease caused by tiny parts of volcanic dust. Quasihemidemisemiquaver is a hundred twenty-eighth note in music. Tongue tied huh?
A diepnosophist is one who is an expert at dinner table conversations. This reminds me ,the longest after-dinner speech was given by Dr. Donald Thomas, at a city college in New york, about Vegetarian Athletic Nutrition. It lasted thirty two hours and twenty five minutes.
I came across these words whilst reading. Borborygymus is the noise which our tummy makes when it rumbles and sternuation is the act of sneezing. The dot above the letter "i" is called tittle. They say there are no words in English language which rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
A Zorse is a cross between male zebra and a female horse. A Swoose is a cross between a swan and a goose. A Lemato is a tomato that is genetically modified to give hints of lemon and roses.
I thought , correctness of language was my forte, now I know for certain that there is still a lot of room for improvement. As Josh Billings said ,"The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain't so."


[The above is an article written by Sharbella Fernandez]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm glad that i'm the first one to comment on this....its like an honour...i've only good things to say abt it cuz it simply flawless...nice work...u shud really try to publish books now...u'll definitely win a pulitzer or sth of that sort...

Child Of Adam said...

@ anonymous
I think u missed the last bit... this article was written by sharbella fernandez.... but am sure, these comments would definitely encourage her to write more such articles (IF she reads them on my blog)...

mly said...

wat WAS this...
i stopped readin wen i reached th second longest word n jqe;irqw3utvhwedfbjkhWDFVBWHF
WATEVA

dkfnwekthwerhtrjtl; rkthjqrtgiwrgti
erfgbti5gt45vy4

YEA This is all i hafta say !
m pretty mch outta words