Breakdown may not be an end of the road, a blind alley. There always exists a doorway. If found, breakdown ends up in a break through!

Consolidation and desertion look alike, but are distinctly distinguishable. Former lends strength, latter weakness!

Well, I don't know nothing !

Few means 'not many' but if preceded by 'a', the whole meaning is reversed.
Not in colloquial sense but in loose utterances , this minor aberration occurs like in US two negatives are wrongly used but isn't wrongly understood when it is stated 'well, I don't know nothing ', implying he doesn't know anything . A researcher justified even this so called aberration to be erroneously perceived as an aberration. Do you know, what logic he gave. He asked one to take down the sentence. It was taken down as below :-
'well, I don't know nothing'.
The researcher said, you have committed the error , in taking it down wrongly , skipping a coma, which is not uttered, but is only implied by the pause. So he corrected the wronly taken down sentence, this way, 'well, I don't know , nothing'.
And lo and behold, the aberration got mitigated.
But in case of few and a few, this kind of circumlocution might not seem effective.

Sophistry - 1
The skill , called sophistry, has made new highs, more surprising spikes than stock market nifty - sensex ever made or can imagine of.
TV debates are the best example . Each day we see this skill displayed audaciously, as though slapping viewers' cheeks with impunity.
Higher than the sophistry levels must have soared high another thing , inconspicuously, I thought. That is tolerance level. Viewers'. Years ago, kids used to laugh, asking me what made me staying glued to the TV screen when the serial 'Chabdrakanta' used to be telecast. I curiously watched it to gauge the possible height of stupidity that a story could outpour. That was my reply which never convinced the kids who, as grown ups tell me that sophistry has its roots in the products which the electronic media has systematically trained it's viewers to get conditioned to.
(Cont.   )



Sophistry -2

Just the other day, I got my answer. A visibly matured counsel who claims to carry out arguments across the country , in district and high courts besides tribunals, was making submission before an ex judge of high court, presiding an arbitration tribunal.
The counsel referred to a police closure report ( not charge sheeting a criminal case) filed before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, and argued that the issue of civil dispute with regard to that would be barred by res judicata (previous adjudication of the same matter).
Police Report constituting res judicata? Flabbergasted I asked, questioning whether even  an Adjudication (which a police report is not) by a criminal court could have any bearing, far less res judicata, in a civil proceeding where nothing at all would be cognizable out of the criminal proceeding, save and except it's factum.
The judge didn't react, either way, unlike a law academician engaging a law student in a viva vice burst out when the candidate had answered in the affirmative, justifying this way. An adjudication was a case decided any way, no matter , in which jurisdiction, criminal or civil.
But I, for one, did not burst out but simply quizzed whether an argument of this kind could be tolerated by the courts he said he addressed?
Even to this , no sharp reaction was registered.
That made me realize, finally , that sophistry is all set to make new highs.
(Concluded)

Marketing versus Shopping.
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Knowledge may not be the exclusive province of the knowledgeable. That is especially so when it comes to colloquial usage of the English language.
This struck me recently when a friend of mine on an evening walk asked me with reference to a brief telephonic  conversation he had with a learned Professor engaged in English teaching,  who had earlier mentioned his brief inability to spare time because he was in the market doing his errand. After a while the two again got in touch on phone. The first thing my friend ,on walk with me, asked was whether he had finished his 'marketing'. Pat came an advice, instead of an answer, 'shopping, not marketing'. Marketing, he advised, implied selling activity, whereas the buying activity is called 'shopping'.
Having thereby been hit somewhere , as if below the belt , my friend turned to me, asking whether 'marketing' was a wrong expression for what is actually intended to mean 'shopoing'?
My instant reply was that marketing was not wrong but I preferred putting up this question to one retired Professor of English who was available around the walking track with whom we often chat matters of current interest.
When questioned, the learned Professor concurred with what the other Professor had said, mentioning the same logic that marketing was essentially a selling engagement whereas the buying replica thereof was appropriately termed as shopping, not marketing.
So? Even I was wrong, for I thought, marketing is a term in usage which conveys both activities, buying as well as selling , depending upon the construction of the sentence in context with how and where it has been used.
That led me to search and to discover that the dictionary meaning (attached herewith) vindicated my stand.
Stand vindication is quite a trivial issue. The substantial part is the knowledge of the knowledgeable whose audacity in the cover of purported enthusiasm to correct what may ,or may not at all be wrong , is indeed astonishing.
Why at all tend to correct others without yourself being sure? More so,   if something seems to be an aberration in the use of exact terminology ? That too in loose or casual conversation?