Aarghhhh...

The other day while I was walking down a road I was stopped and asked by some guy for directions to a certain place. It was about 4-5 kms from that place. So I suggested him to go to take a bus but he insisted on knowing the directions. Confused..also slightly irritated..I told him it was far.. He became sad and told me that he had been pick pocketed and he had no money and asked for help. Now I usually dont believe such stories. But the look on his face was convincing. I took pity and gave him 10 rupees. That was all the change I had. He didnt seem very satisfied in the beginning but later thanked me and left. Deep inside my heart there was this happy feeling of satisfaction. With this feeling I was walking and I had covered merely a hundred meters when some man spoke to me:

"Excuse me, I lost my wallet in the bus. Can you please help me...."

I could feel my satisfaction slowly ebbing away at that moment...

Its official ! Je parle francaise

I got my results for Delf A1 examination and apparently I passed! So officially I cleared the basic level exam. There are 6 exams in all. A1, A2 upto C1, C2. After the hard time I had wid A1, I am not sure whether I am going any further :P
Waiting for the certificate to arrive!

Cheers!

Literally speaking!

Few days back my little brother asked me the meaning of some common word. I can't recall the word right now but I was clueless as to what should I be telling him. I struggled and finally managed to explain the context that word is used in. He was satisfied.

I wasn't!

It drew my attention to a plethora of words I didnt know the literal meanings of and thats how it started! Since then I have fallen into the habit of finding out dictionary meanings of words and I am falling deeper and deeper into this whirlpool of my passion for dictionary meanings.

Of all the words you know how many do you think you learnt off a dictionary or a thesaurus? I am guessing very few. We learn words as we read - books, newspapers, magazine articles, editorials, advertisements, even the internet, or as we listen to them - news, movies, music, conversations. But with all these new words, we also learn the associated way of usage - the context where these were used! So we end up increasing our vocab but knowing only d contextual meanings. The literal meanings take a back seat and when asked what does a particular word mean, we fidget around trying to find out what exactly it meant!