Mind your Hindi!
From the
NYT Book Review,
1/28/07, p. 6:
Editors' Note
If readers of the Book Review have been considering picking up a little
conversational Hindi, they would probably do well not to begin with the
sample list of words in the Jan. 7 review of "Sacred Games," a novel by
Vikram Chandra that sprinkles untranslated Hindi throughout its English
text. Indian readers pointed out that while most of the Hindi terms in
the review were innocuous, several were in fact obscene -- suitable for
Chandra's tough-guy characters, no doubt, but not for the Book Review,
where editors failed to check the meaning of the words in the novel's
glossary.
Just another item in the annals of taboo avoidance, in the "Oops!"
subcategory. The price of modesty is eternal vigilance.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at January 30, 2007 10:10 AM