How is you?

- A post by Nitrodamus, the 16th Century pre-incarnation of Aswin

Shame on the English world! I write this post in English, so that many of you can read this and understand what you have done to the language I once fought for against my own countrymen. In case you wonder where I am from, you haven't read many of Aswin's previous posts, have you? I wouldn't blame you, some of them are sick anyway. I am from this beautiful country we call France. I am a native speaker of the most beautiful language in the world, Francais. Some of you know it as French, and a few others as 'Frenchie'. I assure you, whoever came up with an idea to name undergarments 'Frenchie' must be from an old English royal lineage who wanted to wipe out Francais from this world. Aswin reminds me that is similar to the story of a recent movie, Aayirathil oruvan.

Francais is among the most beautiful of languages, but not among the most practical of them. English, on the other hand, along with Aswin's Thamizh, feature among the most practical of languages. 'How?', you may ask. To seal the argument with one statement, well, these are few languages that don't assign genders to things that cannot mingle or reproduce on their own. Fairly practical? I don't see any point in thinking that a house is feminine. Except a few jokes, of course.

The purpose of this post, going back to the first line ('Shame on the English world'), is how people nowadays follow the language religiously and not practically, taking away the entire charm! If you love English, you might know the difference between the statements 'How is you' and 'How are you'. No, the first one is not wrong! That is how you should address one person in front of you, of course when he's not the Emperor. Not 'How are you'! It is most impractical to do so. By reading or hearing a query or a statement, at least in the present tense, one should be able to guess how many people that statement is addressed to. 'How are you' and other uses of the contemporary 'you' give us nothing!

Think about it. Did you even ask your teacher why this is so? Or did you just accept what was thrown at you?

Ah, the shame.

Oh... My... God !

I will begin by defining the word "Nitro-damn" - Any saying from the legendary Nitrodamus that wishes harm upon anyone else's feelings. I came across a few such nitrodamns which I intend to share with you in the near future.

So, I really got bored watching movies during this vacation that I started a poll. "Which FRIENDS character do I resemble the most?" with a single intention. To blog. I had just recently concluded my first ever viewing of all ten seasons of the series in order and loved it. So, came up with this poll just to see what people would say so that I can write about it. Ash de Notre-dames (the above mentioned Nitrodamus, if you are part of the majority who didn't read this) mentioned something about a funny-dumb-poll in his book "Prophecies? Do you care?" (Available in black market for a hundred bucks!) I am not sure if he was referring to this poll or the voting they might do before giving the Nobel Peace Prize, but I have my theories.

I believed that the outcome would be so heroically Joey that I could start this post with "How you doin'?"
It didn't turn out that way, though. Without much ado, the results!

Character  Votes  Percentage
---------    -----   ----------
Chandler    22.5      80.35%
Ross          2.5         8.93%
Gunther     1             3.57%
Mike         1             3.57%
Joey          1             3.57%


To begin with, most 'Chandler' voters confirmed that their choice was based only on the asocialness of his character and 'the way he speaks' (Note: Nothing else). Some went great lengths to assure me that they chose Chandler only because the question was framed in such a way that they had to choose the closest character, however far that may be. The sadder part is that I've hardly spoken to the only person who voted ~Joey~ (a super senior of mine from college).

Two votes were not counted in this exercise. One voted for a 'feebee' because it was the only character he knew. :) The other vote was for Cassius, whoever that may be! (Yes, that was Poochi's vote). One interesting observation is that the two girls who participated in this survey accounted for 1.5 votes for Ross and the other Ross vote was from a guy who talks to girls twenty seven hours in a day, and hence subject to taking girly decisions. Interesting, no? Girls believe I am the geek who can't flirt. Got to admit, I should have known I had that coming.


Anyway, Looking forward to Monica! :)


PS: Chandler's supposed to want to be like Joey, no?