JOST A MON

Conventional wisdom is that classical music is the demesne of geriatric audiences, suited and gowned and rich women and men, attending staid opera houses and applauding symphonies, listening to complex and unhummable works, and thereby putting off the young.

Sales of the genre are dwindling all around, and even if young Chinese and Koreans and Japanese comprise entire graduating classes at Juilliard, there does not appear to be much of a pickup in revenues from classical music either in the West or in the Orient. The occasional superstars such as the Three Tenors and their imitators notwithstanding, if an artiste sells 10,000 records, he or she is considered a blockbuster. So what does the industry do to expand its appeal to the youth of today?

Enter a steady stream of photogenic and nubile performers, posing sexily and photographed provocatively. The finest violinists and sopranos pout and simper, made up to kill, undressed to ravish. They are entirely comfortable with their physicality even in the face of the utterly cerebral nature of their art. Some, like Linda Lampenius, have posed in Playboy. The likes of Nicola Benedetti strike sultry attitudes in promotional photographs. Some, like Bond, the Spice Girls of classical music cross over to popular (classical-lite) and aided by CD covers sizzling with sex, achieve platinum blockbusters. Of course, it is not just women who are commodified in this fashion. The Croatian pianist Maksim has posed his hunky self in a bid to attract a wider audience.

But are sales of true classical music improving? Sex is said to sell, but does it risk alienating the core audience?

I am afraid that even talented musicians can suffer a backlash. Sales may pick up in relative terms, but lovers of the arts might stop taking them seriously. Lara St. John's Bach album did see a spike in numbers, chiefly owing to the pictures of her naked breasts barely obscured by a violin. Yet serious aficionados unable to get past the cover, would have devalued her efforts, and her career might not have progressed quite as much as she deserved. The venerable Gramophone, for example, while praising her remarkable technique, scoffed that St. John (who appears vamping in heavy makeup and see-through dress in a booklet fold-out on a poster-size pin up) has no need to engage in such ignoble marketing ploys.

In a world of increasing objectification and of commodity sex, the wow-factor needs to be quite severe to be of consequence. The initial shock of a classical artiste's decolletage quite quickly wears off. We may have eye-candy galore, but the domain remains intellectual, high-brow, with heavy barriers to entry. And so interest remains flat. As astutely pointed out in the Boston Globe, we live in a visual culture, but it is good to remind ourselves occasionally that music is still primarily addressed to the ear.

Our view of monochrome sculptures of the Romans and Greeks has been biased by Victorian neoclassicists who praised the austerity and purity of the white marble and deprecated the discovery in 1815 that the statues were vividly painted. The study of chromatic restoration languished as a result of this consensus view, and active research into the matter of original colouration only took off in the 1980s. The most assiduous of the investigators are the husband-and-wife team of Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, who now present their results at an exhibition in the Sackler Museum, Harvard.

Renaissance artists were inspired by the classical world, and they associated beauty with the austere perfection of Greek and Roman statuary. But had Michaelangelo studied classical sculptures closely, he would have known that his statues of David or the Pieta would have been considered unfinished by his illustrious predecessors, who would have missed in his work the bright colours and pigments that illumined the art of the ancient world. We can see the immense difference between reality and biased perception in the following images. Consider, if you will, the statue on the left - the original Peplos Kore from the Acropolis in Athens. There are traces of paint on its lips, hair and eyes, but most of the pigmentation has faded, and it is difficult, with the naked eye, to tell what its coloration used to be in 530 BC, when it was finished.

The image on the right is the restored statue. What a spectacular contrast! But how do we know that it is not mere fancy, a result of the imagination of the researchers? This recent article points out that the Brinkmanns display photographs of how UV light revealed each of these details on the weathered and faded original. Indeed, their restoration techniques are a a veritable arsenal of modern technology. They used raking light to reveal incised details as well as subtle patterns caused by the uneven weathering of different paints on the stone surface; ultraviolet (UV) light to bring out slight surface differences; and techniques such as X-ray fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy to analyze the types of pigments employed.

Postscriptum:
Similar classical statues in full colour can be seen at the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University.

Does anyone remember Tea City, that New Delhi-based chain of tea stores where customers could blend their own personal creations? This was a brief vogue in the late 1980s. My friend Guru, a tea maven, used to frequent it, mixing an Assam with a Sikkim and a Ceylon with a Clonal, and various Platinums and Golds. He would then retire to the college residence and make himself a fine cuppa, and wax eloquently on its bouquet and delicate flavour, its colour and its dynamic range. He made it sound like a Montrachet propelled via a graphic equaliser.

I don't think the outfit lasted very long. There had been branches of it all over Delhi. When it was first launched, the well-designed interiors were impeccably clean. Automatic dispensers allowed customers to select their choice of leaf, and mix and match as they liked. Housewives and interested salary-men would flock to it to grab a couple of hundred grammes of their favourite infusion. Slowly, however, dust began to accumulate. The crowds dropped off and the branches closed.

About a decade later, every street corner now is crowded with Starbucks clones and Barista chains and similar exemplars of coffee culture. Certainly there are chai bars popping up all over as well. I don't think anyone can make personal blends any longer, though. A little bit of creativity once open to a consumer has been now eliminated.

Meanwhile, tea is becoming a fancy competitor to coffee in the decadent West. A few years ago, a Chinese friend, Jenny, took me and the wife to a tea bar in San Diego. It had been started by some Taiwanese expats, and was popular mainly among the Orientals in the area. It purveyed such interesting tipples as boba, a milky tea with tapioca balls. The usual masala chais were available too for the occasional desi visitor. Slowly, the fame of the bar and its cousins grew.

California, as usual, was ahead of the curve. Perhaps the overwhelming presence of rich tea-drinkers drove the market quite unlike in the rest of the country. Now I find that Chicago is getting its own chain of exotic tea bars. Called Argo Tea, it has been quietly (with enthusiastic word of mouth) spreading its influence over the Windy City with its iced teas and Armenian mint infusions. Interestingly, the people behind this venture are not of the ilk of your popular view of tea-drinkers. They are Armenians, ex-software types who decided to get into the business when they realised that the dot-com bust meant they needed to look at fresh avenues to make their millions.

In London, too, there are fine tea outlets. Of course, tea is a long-standing tradition in these parts. One of the first places where the cup that cheers but does not inebriate was available was Garway's Coffee House on Change Alley in Cornhill. From 1658, men (but not women) were able to procure a cup and a newspaper there for the princely sum of a penny.

A couple of years ago, there was a lot of buzz about the India Tea Board intending to advertise its products worldwide. They talked of opening outlets and bars, and creating a cutting-edge brand in tea, wanting to make it the tipple of choice for every discerning person. I suspect the effort fizzled out rather quickly. Indeed, today, the best-known Indian tea bar in London is possibly the only one: part of the famous Chor Bizarre restaurant, it is cunningly named Chai Bazaar. It is fairly expensive, but does a nice selection of interesting teas. The Darjeeling is especially delicate and well-made, and the two or three Nilgiri blends are pretty flavourful as well.

Not to be undone, the Orientals have staked their claim. Yauatcha in Soho has set the standard for your oolongs and Jasmines, while East Tea in Borough Market purveys fine Japanese greens and fermented Pu-erh, a rare Chinese tea.

Postscriptum:

Sad to report, however, that tea growers in India are getting poorer, malnourished and a target for human traffickers. Tea prices worldwide are declining, and there's competition from East Africa and Sri Lanka, where labour costs and more efficient operations undercut India's vast plantations. As ever, things will have to get a lot, lot worse before they get any better for the impoverished tea-pickers in desh. I am not too optimistic.

While we are on the subject of currencies, the US dollar is now at an all-time low against a basket of currencies. When I say all-time, of course I mean since Bretton-Woods was dissolved.

For the Canadians, long the poor country cousins of the Americans, this is superb news. The Loonie is stronger than the buck for the first time in yonks. Droves of Canucks are braving long immigration queues at border crossings to shop till they drop in the USA. Frontier towns on the Canadian side of the border find that their shops are struggling, tourism is affected and there are worries about funding the next Winter Olympics, while American dealers in cars, electronics, food are thrilled to bits.

How long will this last? There's talk of a decoupling between the CAD and the USD. Till May this year, the Loonie acted as a turbo-charged dollar: essentially correlated with the latter, but moving up or down faster than it. Since then, the Canadian economy, driven mainly by rising commodity prices, has lessened its dependence on the US. While the US struggles with a credit crunch, dropping real-estate prices (and therefore net-worths of its citizens), and its various deficits continue to remain enormous, the market expects that the Loonie (and other commodity currencies like the Australian dollar) will continue to appreciate.

To counter this argument is the fact that US imports are dropping. Some economists argue that this would act as a natural floor for the USD as demand for foreign currencies drops because of the smaller need among American consumers to go out and buy.

The Saudis have intrinsically loosened their peg against the dollar by not responding to the recent Fed cut in the funds rate. They are worried by their domestic inflationary pressures caused by the rising cost of imports while their earnings from oil remain flat, despite the increase in oil prices. The dollar is the reserve currency for the planet, which means, in essence that the Americans can print as much of it as they want to buy anything they want. Especially oil. They know that the world will soak up their currency excesses. But if the dollar's value keeps dropping, people will find that their reserve holdings lose purchasing power, which might drive them to diversify into other currencies: they will sell the dollar, buy the other currencies, leading to a further depreciation in the reserve currency.

Are we seeing the end of the dollar as the world's favourite money? Your guess is as good as mine.

What happens if you take a basket of currencies, allow both long and short positions against the Euro, compute the weightings on the portfolio on a monthly basis to target an expected return corresponding to an interest rate of 0% and minimise its volatility? Why, you end up with an Ebu!

Move over, Emu and Ecu and SDR and such-like funding animals. An article in today's Financial Times presents Barclays Capital's new world view: we need a new funding currency because the traditional ones such as the Yen and the Swiss Franc are too prone to exchange rate risk to act as a truly low cost unit of borrowing. So, being quick to seize a market opportunity and helpful to boot, Barclays Capital introduces the European Borrowing Unit.

Gone are the days of carry trades unwinding! Up are the days of triumph for Barclays! Perhaps they'll fund themselves with this newfangled unit and manage to gather enough moolah to finally acquire ABN Amro.

All in all, rather neatly putsched, I think.

Early September finds the clan in the sunny Provençal town of Nice. Everywhere we look, we see traces of Italy. It manifests itself in the smells and colours, and the food and even in the occasional warm smile directed at the boy. There is little wonder that this, the fifth largest city in France, is so Italianate. Nizza was, in fact, an Italian possession till 1860, and Italian heroes still name the streets in this town. For most of our stay here, this knowledge and readily available Provençal pizzas and pastas are what keep the boy and the wife going, grass-eaters both.

As has become de rigueur for us on our holidays, we aim to take walking tours. If there are interesting guided walks, we might choose one or two. But with an impatient boy always ready to run off or scream if restrained, these days we prefer to grab a map and plan our perambulations ourselves.

We start our walk about Old Nice at the square named after the greatest of the Italians, Place Garibaldi. There is a lot of construction going on at the moment, so much of the charm is hidden by dirt and bulldozers. Nice is about to get a swanky new tramway system, five decades after the old routes were closed down. We catch a momentary glimpse of the statue of Garibaldi and and even briefer view of the Chapel of St. Sepulchre, all occluded by dust. The stately houses surrounding the square are in the Italian Baroque style. The architect Antoine Spinelli designed them and the Chapel in 1782. An order of lay brothers, the Blue Mendicants, known for providing succour to orphans, own the chapel. Interestingly, the choice of blue for the order, signifying devotion to the Virgin, was necessitated by the price of the colour: it was the cheapest possibility after white and black, both of which already were taken up by older mendicant orders.

Rue Catherine Ségurane followed by a quick right into Rue Sincaire brings us to the Place St. Augustin, and the Church of St. Martin and St. Augustine. Built in 1689 in the Baroque style, it has survived more or less intact over the years. It boasts an impressive chancel, whose panelling and decoration is due to the painter Brea. The complex comprises a church and a monastery, the latter converted to a military barracks after the anti-religious fervour of the French Revolution drove the brothers out of the building. The church originally had two bell-towers, one of which had to be demolished after a particularly strong earthquake in 1887 rendered it unstable.

Across the square is the Hospice of the Providence, built between 1669 and 1674. Originally a convent, it was taken over by the military in the late 18th century. In 1819, under the aegis of the canon Eugene Spitalieri de Cessole, it became a charitable institution providing board, lodging, and a solid religious foundation to abandoned girls, and teaching them various skills and trades.

We continue down Rue de la Providence and arrive at the lovely little Place de Sainte-Claire with the Convent of the Visitation. Initially, the nuns of the Order of St. Claire used to be housed here. The convent took three years to build and was completed in 1607. During the terror following the French Revolution, the Clarisses were driven out of the convent, and the order of the Visitation took it over. (This sequence of occupiers causes the present confusion of the names for the building: Chapel of St. Claire as well as the Visitation Convent.)

We see steps leading up to the old Castle of Nice here, but we do not take them. Instead, we huff and puff as we carry the boy's push-chair - the little fellow sitting regally and making appreciative noises at our effort - down Rue Ste. Claire. A look left into the pretty Rue des Serruriers (three North African children playing ball and deftly avoiding the piles of the everpresent dog-poop give us timid looks) suffices before we proceed straight and left onto Rue de la Croix, where we arrive at the Chapelle Sainte-Croix of the White Mendicants. Yet another Baroque beauty, this was established in 1767 by our man Spinelli in place of an older building that stood here since the 16^th century. Its plan is very simple: three juxtaposed rectangles: for the nave, another with sides cut for the choir, and a third for the sanctuary. A rich floral decoration runs along the pilasters and the planks. The sanctuary is dominated by a decorated half-cupola with fresco. A cycle of paintings of the XVIIe century (Arrest of Jesus, Descent of the Cross, burial tomb, Invention of the Holy Cross), coming from the preceding vault, evokes episodes centered around the worship of the Cross.

A right turn onto Rue de la Loge brings us to the Palais Lascaris, a Baroque palace built for the Lascaris-Vintimille family, bigwigs since before the 13^th century. These days it is a museum with an interesting collection of household items owned by the lower classes, Flemish tapestries, a trompe l'oeil depiction of the fall of Phaëthon, and not much else.

The narrow streets that radiate in all directions in this part of town are seething with locals, tourists, bric-a-brac, restaurants, galleries, shops of all description. The houses on either side seem to lean towards each other; there are clothes drying, wooden shutters banging in the wind, elderly folk looking down at the crowd from their windows. Above them are towers and steeples, some with flags atop. There is a sense of vitality and life here, and the people maintain a somewhat unhurried pace, yet confident and comfortable in their long history.

The rest of this leg of our walk takes us onto Rue de la Bougherie, leading to Rue du Marché. This is a fairly touristy part even by the standards of Nice, especially since the grand Place du Palais opens up right by the markets. Caparisoned canopies dot the square with garçons darting about and looking harried. There are fruit being sold, as well as not very good paintings by indigent (and possibly illegal) immigrants. I see Chinese and Romanians standing forlornly by their gimmicky water-colours and free sketches of the locality. A more fortunate (professional) photographer seems to do better: several Americans are buying from him.

All around us are the great palaces of Nice. Facing the Palace of Justice and turning counterclockwise, we see the Palace of the Spitalieri, the Rusca Palace, the Héraud Palace, and - behind the flower market - the Palace of the Ongran.

Who are all these people? The Spitalieri were a Piedmontese noble family who acquired the plot of land on which their palace stands in 1542. The palace was built in 1768, and later housed the French Consulate (remember, the city was Italian at the time). After the French Revolution, one of the first hotels in the city was set up here. Presciently, it was called Hotel York. It hosted, among others, Garibaldi. An elegant iron gridwork enhances the stairwells, the balconies and the carriage door of the edifice.

I have no clue who the Rusca are, but this palace - in a striking pink that makes the mouth water in anticipation of strawberry ice-cream - built in 1776, was used to shelter the Nice garrison; later it was an armoury, and later still - in 1990 - became an adjunct to the courts of justice. As for the Héraud, this palace, built in 1757 by Barthélémy Eraudo, ended up in the hands of the Lascaris-Castellar family, due to which it was confiscated during the Revolution, and sold off piecemeal to various types. All very nefarious, no doubt. The palace passed to the Malaussena, and thence by marriage to Raiberti, to whose descendants it belongs till today. The palace is worth visiting for its monumental embossed porch, the incredible virtuosity of its extraordinary voluted stairwell, and its vast interior gardens. (The photograph of the Rusca Palace is by Tony M.)

The Ongrans are even more obscure. The construction of this palace was delayed owing to some alignment issues with the adjacent Héraud mansions. The owner, Joseph-Antoine Hongran, took possession of it in 1772, but was soon imprisoned for something or the other and the building was divvied up. In 1838, the library and municipal museum were situated here; previously Napoleon was put up (as commemorated by a plaque) here. As seems to be traditional among the palaces here, the grand stairwell seems to be the main point of attraction nowadays.

Rue Gassin takes us to the flower market, and when we pass underneath the buildings to the south of it, we see the Riviera unfold before us. We are now on Quai des Etats-Unis, a promenade following the pebbly beaches of the Nice. There are lifeguards on some stretches of the (mostly) public beaches, looking nothing like the Baywatch hunks; almost every square metre is occupied by sunbathing Europeans. The older and uglier ones, wrinkled and shrivelled, are the ones more likely to take off their tops; stunned by the sight of one spectacularly ancient woman, orange skin, paunchy and white haired, with nipples near her navel, we beat a very very hasty retreat eastwards, towards the Château of Nice.

We can see people slowly ascending the hill leading up to the castle (or rather, what little remains of it), taking laborious steps up a cobbled rise. The boy, after one look at the castle (and having some time ago been allowed to run around wherever he willed), decides he would much rather play on the beach. We distract him from this intention, and he darts hither and thither, merrily yelling and pointing out dogs, buses and other kids, in a cheerful, if somewhat unintelligible stream of consciousness, uttered in what passes for English for a two-year old. It is all very delightful for us, but not so much for the rather dour dog-walkers, who wince every time he runs screaming towards one of their animals.

There's a lift taking the lazy and the handicapped up to the castle, but we don't find out about it till much later. The wife decides that we should strike for Cours Saleya, the famous strip of markets, and to do so, we cross the Quai des Etats-Unis (the traffic actually stops at the traffic light, much to our surprise), and get into the Rue des Ponchettes. There is evidence that the oldest part of the city is built around here and towards the castle, dating from ancient Greek times. The double-terrace of two-storeyed houses lining the southern boundary of the town used to be occupied by fishermen, but these days host fancy galleries and tourist shops. We ignore these, marching steadfastly towards Cours Saleya, and pass in front of the Palais Caïs de Pierlas. Matisse dwelt here from 1921 to 1938 on the third floor, from where he painted his Baie des Anges series. The building itself, painted a brilliant yellow, is not in a superb condition. It dates from 1782: take at look at it here.

The Cours Saleya market is the most famous in Nice. Famous for flowers and famous for fresh produce, and certainly famous for the pricey food served piping hot as you wait. We are sniffily informed by inveterate market goers such as this woman that 6 am is the best time to visit. We turn up just before lunch and ponder the possibility of a quick feed before we make our progress back towards Garibaldi's square. The fowl and fish put the wife off and I am much too nice to insist that - sinful carnivore that I am - I would like to partake of the local delicacies, so we nip into a nearby restaurant thinking to order some pasta. The boy is asleep in his pram, but that does not dissuade the stern waitress from informing us that the pushchair would need to be folded up. There is barely anyone inside the restaurant, but she insists that the pushchair will be in the way. So we get out, muttering curses at her obstinacy.

Did I mention the Chapel of the Misericord on the Cours Saleya? No? Well, I am not going to. If you are interested, take a look at this. The Black Penitents, to whom it belongs, as far as I am concerned are complicit in that woman's refusal to let us relax in that damned restaurant. Miffed, we continue past the completely over-the-top Opera House. This is so fruity an Italianate building that my bruised feelings are immediately restored. The wife, however, is still livid. It's all I can do to take a quick snap of it before she kicks me in the shin and urges me home.

Our walk back takes us into the heart of Old Nice again. We go up Rue Raoul Bosio, right onto Rue de la Prefecture, and left onto Rue Droite, a long narrow street that winds all the way to Place Garibaldi. I would kill for a bouillabaise now, but none of the restaurants we pass offers this delightful stew. The wife is getting hungry, and you don't really want to cross her when she is hungry, so I don't stop for any more pictures, and regretfully ignore the

Eglise Sainte Rita

Loge Communale Communal gathering places are a continual aspect of Mediterranean life, originating from the Greek agora and the Roman forum. This one, established beside the Church of St. Jacques, dates from 1574, and served as a notice-board for the municipality, various legal matters, and indeed as a dancing place for the nobility during the Carnival.

Jesuit Eglise du Jesus Okay, I lied. I did manage to take one of this Baroque beauty. The Jesuits have been the object of awe, suspicion, respect and rivalry since this militant and scientific order was established by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540. In Nice, their history parallels their fate elsewhere in Europe: initially revered and popular, their powers were steadily cut down by kings and popes, till the order was dissolved in 1773. In Nice, their presence dates from 1606, and even today, there are many houses displaying the legend IHS (Iesu Homini Salvator), their motto. The first church, a modest construction, was built in 1612. The current edifice dates from the 19^th century, when the tower in the Genoese style was added, as well as embellishments to the frontage.

Palais Communal and Tour Saint-François. On the square of St Francis stands one of the last possessions of the Franciscans: the bell-tower. The Communal Palace, dating from the 16^th century is now a labour exchange. On the pediments of the windows, there are images of faces, grinning on one side and grimacing on the other. Clearly, this represents the difference between good and bad governance, especially since the municipal offices used to be located here in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. A dolphin fountain in the midst of the square reminds one that there has historically been a fish-market here. I guess the locals didn't know that the dolphin is not a fish.

And on that note, we end the walk.

References:

1. Mendicant orders and their chapels in Nice.
2. A Nice travel blog.
   

An idle moment and a forwarded mail from Guru elicits this post, completing a trifecta of notes on linguistic matters. The animated GIF below shows the evolution of the Latin alphabet from the old Phoenician.


Click on the image to see the animation.

Shortly after my brief rant about the legitimacy of the likes of Spanglish and Hinglish as a replacement of the teaching of English, I came across (yet another) distressing article ruing the death of the planet's linguistic diversity.

This is not a new thesis. Languages have been created and have died across the span of human existence on Earth. In the early part of human history, most people continued to live in fairly isolated communities, providing the possibility of linguistic drift and local innovation. As communications improved and man's essential warlike nature exerted itself, languages could (and often would) get wiped out by the victors in conflicts. In more recent times, bilingualism and the increased dominance of a few tongues, and the slow diminishing of cultural diversity, cause more and more languages to expire.

Several books have documented the languages on the verge of extinction. Notable among them is Helena Drysdale's Mother Tongues: Travels Through Tribal Europe is a readable example of linguistic death, revival, parochialism and passion in modern day Europe. She covers - among others - Basque, Occitan, Sami, Frisian, exploring why their speakers are restive, marginalised, angry and facing a long defeat. Mark Abley's Spoken Here - Travels Among Threatened Languages is another good account of linguistic death, an elegy to the diversity of languages and their beauty, and describes the tragedy that saps our collective humanity when they perish. He argues persuasively that people must fight to preserve their linguistic heritage, and do so not just by speaking it, but by adopting modern technologies to propagate it (for example, this), and by being flexible and adaptable. Languages are living things, accreting new concepts and vocabularies and words from other sources; if this is prevented and the language is treated as fixed and immutable, it is doomed to failure.

Languages die because their last speaker dies. They die because younger speakers move away and find little use for the old tongues. They fall into disuse because their communities emigrate and jettison them out of embarrassment, and out of a desire to fit in the new homeland. Dictatorial governments force new languages on ethnic groups as a way of destroying their identities, or to promote loyalty to the larger nation. Each one of these deaths is a tragedy. We find ourselves diminished in the vanishing of a way of thinking. The disappearance of cultural and literary tradition costs us the wisdom of ages. A particular gestalt and wonder is gone.

There are worldwide efforts, both big and small, to record languages before they die. National Geographic's Enduring Voices Project is one. Enthusiastic (and scary) evangelical Christians make some of the world's best linguists, as knowledge of disparate tongues enables them to propagate the word of their God. Secular and academic organisations such as the Foundation for Endangered Languages do their bit.

Very few languages have recovered from the brink of extinction. Hebrew is one example, Welsh another. Yiddish was almost completely wiped out in the Holocaust. The few speakers of it in the USA stopped using it soon after the Second World War. It now survives in Lithuania, where it is beginning to be revived by the small Jewish communities. Likewise, the once politically dominant Manchu language in China is now being resuscitated.

There is still hope: faint and forlorn, but hope nevertheless.

Much has been made of the steady encroachment of English into the world's languages. While conservative bodies and national academies rue the use (and abuse) of their native tongues with the addition of English, the youth seem to think it is cool to adopt Anglicisms.

For instance, introducing the odd English word into conversation is considered hip in France. Of course, the counterculture lampoons this (e.g. the immensely popular film Brice de Nice). The Académie Française pompously bemoans these foreign accretions, as does the equivalent academy in Spain (which faces occasional rebellion from Spanish-speakers in Latin America anyway). It appears that the Russians are now falling prey as well.

I know several Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel and speak a Russified Hebrew quite at odds with the rest of their countrymen. They have forgotten their Yiddish, but find that Russian serves as a neat enhancement to (and differentiator from) their Israeli compatriots. To the purist this is similar to the appalling Hinglish that passes for popular speech amongst, say, newsreaders at Zee.

In Britain, that solid bastion of political correctness, various worthies want everybody to be allowed to speak (and indeed teach) whatever form of English they like. After all, think-tanks such as Demos who propose this free-for-all have grown up on a steady diet of postmodern criticism and hermeneutic theory, so every interpretation is as valuable as any other. Bring on therefore your Ebonics, your Spanglish and every other pidgin, and let Babel flourish!

Now I think that accretions to a language enrich it (after all, where would English be without Norman French, Greek, Hindi and so on?) But what's the point of teaching Ebonics or Hinglish instead of standard English? Bring up a generation of people who are mutually unintelligible? What bollocks.

When I lived in the USSR as a kid, and saw the various incarnations of the local currency, I asked my father about them. He gave me my first glimpse into the principles of arbitrage, explaining how black markets worked, and showed me why, despite whatever I might have been taught at my local school about the excellence of the Soviet way of life, the Russians were desperate to escape it.

In the whole of the Eastern Bloc, local currencies were non-convertible. For matters of Communist pride, the governments would announce official exchange rates versus the hard currencies favourable to themselves. The Russian rouble, for example, was worth about $1.50, while the Ostmark was pegged at parity with the Deutsche Mark. Naturally, these were nothing like the fair values of the currencies, as any Third World diplomat worth his salt and the locals were aware.

In Moscow, at least, there used to be frequent shortages of common goods, such as fresh vegetables, shoes, fruit. More frivolous items like chewing gum were unavailable. As for perfumes, high quality skis, fine alcohol (other than vodka and kvass), electronics and other luxury items, these were pretty much impossible to find in shops open to the general public. To stock these high-end items, the Soviets introduced shops called Beriozkas, where most diplomats and Russians with connections could make their purchases.

But these were imported goods, so what did they pay with? They used a hard-currency, or coupon rouble, whose notional worth was approximately the same as the standard rouble (unavailable to the masses), but whose real worth was much, much more.

Under the terms of the Vienna Convention, foreign embassies are financed by hard-currency transfers (even in the pre-liberalisation period in India when our foreign reserves were minuscule). For instance, in Moscow, the Indian Embassy personnel were paid out of the convertible currency account of the Embassy, by transferring the sum into their convertible individual account. Then, one could draw local non-convertible roubles or the convertible coupon roubles which were legal tender only in Beryozkas, for buying either essential goods or luxury goods - of course, when they were available.

The local people had lot of roubles to spare but they could not get any imported goods or food items or toiletries. Indians, being a thrifty and business-minded sort, saw an opportunity to provide these items to the locals. A black market was thus tapped into. Some of our people would liaise with Indian students at various universities. Whenever sought-after goods were available at the Beryozkas, the person in the embassy in touch with the students would go and buy these items and hand them over to the student contacts. They, in turn, would sell them to the local contacts who would pay in roubles at the rate of one convertible rouble equivalent to say, eight or ten, nonconvertible rouble. The student would take his cut, say 10%, and hand over the balance to the contact at the embassy, who would retain the balance. Usually, the owner of the coupon roubles who initiated this transaction would end up with four to six nonconvertible roubles for each convertible coupon rouble he had started with. Sometimes, depending upon the availability of goods or eagerness of the local people to possess something special, the ratio used to be 1:6 or 1:8 at the hands of the person handing over the coupon rouble. In essence, the desi's salary could thus be multiplied fourfold in local currency terms.

Some of our people used to go to West Berlin and buy music records and items of scarcity in Moscow, and sell them in Moscow for a sizeable profit. People used to say that they could cover their costs of travel (whether by own car or by train) and other expenses as well as make a profit at the end of it all.

These transactions were known to the local governments who frequently ignored it. Occasionally, though, some students or some other middle-men would be caught or charged for these illegal transactions.

I had often wondered how it was many of my father's colleagues managed to buy cars (VW Beetles for the chota log, Mercedes Benzes for the senior diplomats) when they all complained about the laughable salaries. I guess the black market was the solution to their problem.

Here's a poem by Felix Chuyev which renders some of the bitterness of the time.

Perestroika

The people are milling around
The kiosk and getting angry.
And the saleswoman shouts coarsely:
– What sort of vegetables
Are these ?
The rabble of perestroika,
Gor-ba-chev-shchi-na!

I recognise you at once
By your mug, Veteran?!
On which front, in one blow,
Did your feeling of fellowship wear out?

.... And in the 'Beryozka' shop without coupons.
The boor smiles
At foreigners and bows,
Like a hippopotamus.
I will not be sorry one whit
For any one of us,
Who have wasted at these counters
All of the gold reserves.

Cigarettes are rationed by coupons,
Life is controlled by passports,
Everything - governed by the rationing rules,
As if in a cell.

If only you may reduce yourself to a particle
For a long period so that you would be
Well-provisioned with commodities
From head to toe.

I have just returned home from work, had dinner, put my little boy to bed, and I am wondering what to do next. At such a quiet time, the idle man's brain turns to Babelfish, that translator of texts from language to language. I would like to see what happens when I translate a text from English to French and back.

Je suis juste retourné à la maison du travail, ai dîné, mets mon petit garçon au lit, et je me demande quoi faire après. À une heure si tranquille, le cerveau de l'homme à vide se tourne vers Babelfish, ce traducteur des textes de la langue à la langue. Je voudrais voir ce qui se produit quand je traduis un texte d'anglais-français et d'arrière.

I am no expert at French, but this seems to be a fairly accurate, if laborious, translation.

Back to English:

I am just turned over to the house of work, dined, mets my little boy with the bed, and I wonder what to make afterwards. At one hour so quiet, the brain of the man with vacuum turns to Babelfish, this translator of the texts of the language to the language. I would like to see what occurs when I translate a text of English-French and of back.

Okay, so that is not execrable: just a small confusion of vocabulary. The grammar, for the most part, is fairly accurately rendered. The reason would be that French and English have pretty similar syntaxes.

What if I were to translate from English to German?

Ich bin gerade nach Hause von der Arbeit, zu Abend aß, setze meinen kleinen Jungen zum Bett zurückgekommen, und ich wundere mich was, zunächst zu tun. Zu einem ruhigen Zeitpunkt wendet das untätigen Gehirn des Mannes an Babelfish, diesen Übersetzer der Texte von Sprache zu Sprache. Ich möchte sehen, was geschieht, wenn ich einen Text von englischem zum Deutschen und zur Rückseite übersetze.

Now, I know no German whatsoever, and I would not be surprised were this text completely cringe-inducing to a Teuton.

Back to English:

I am straight home from the work, to evening ate, set my small boys to the bed returned, and I am surprised which, first to do. To a calm time that turns dormant brain of the man at Babelfish, this translator of the texts from language to language. I would like to see, what happens, if I translate a text from English to the German and to the back.

Worse than with the French. Truly has it been said that the Norman invasion saved English from the guttural (and painfully word-ordered) Saxon tongue. (I just made that up, but you get my drift.) On the plus side, German and English are on the same branch of the Indo-European family, whereas French is on a different branch. Why, then, is the former translation better than the latter? I have no clue.

What if we took two dissimilar Indo-European tongues, say English and Greek?

Επέστρεψα μόλις το σπίτι από την εργασία, είχα το γεύμα, έβαλα το μικρό αγόρι μου στο κρεβάτι, και αναρωτιέμαι τι να κάνει έπειτα. Σε έναν τέτοιο ήρεμο χρόνο, ο μη απασχόλησης ανθρώπινος εγκέφαλος γυρίζει σε Babelfish, εκείνος ο μεταφραστής των κειμένων από τη γλώσσα στη γλώσσα. Θα επιθυμούσα να δω τι συμβαίνει πότε μεταφράζω ένα κείμενο από αγγλικά στα γαλλικά και την πλάτη.

This is all Greek to me, and I doubt that my friend Romina will forgive me for slaughtering her mother tongue quite so brutally.

Back:

I returned as soon as the house from the work, I had the dinner, I put my small boy in the bed, and wonder what it makes then. In a such calm time, not employment human brain turns in Babelfish, that translator of texts from the language in the language. I would wish to see what happens when I translate a text from English in the French and the back.

Not much worse than German, I guess. Let us, then, try two dissimilar languages. English and Japanese?

私はベッドに仕事からちょうど、食事をした、置く私の小さい男の子を家に戻り、何を次にするために疑問に思っている。非常に静かな時に、遊んでいる人の頭脳はBabelfish の言語からの言語へのテキストのその訳者に回る。私は私が英語から日本語及び背部からのテキストを翻訳すると起こるものが見ることを望む。

Don't you just love these fonts?

And back:

The boy where I where I in the bed exactly, did the meal from work, put am small it returns to the house, in order to make what next it thinks in doubt. Turns brain of the person who plays at the very quiet time, to that translator of the text to language from the language of Babelfish. I when I translate the text from Japanese and the back section from English, desire the fact that those which happen see.

Holy Molly!

I dare say that the worsening translation may also be due to somewhat clumsier semantic analysers, and possibly programmers less expert in the languages more distant from English.

But this is fun! So let's try a tour. English -> French -> German -> English.

French:

Je suis juste retourné à la maison du travail, ai dîné, mets mon petit garçon au lit, et je me demande quoi faire après. À une heure si tranquille, le cerveau de l'homme à vide se tourne vers Babelfish, ce traducteur célèbre des textes de la langue à la langue. Je voudrais voir ce qui se produit quand je traduis un texte d'anglais-français à l'Allemand et de nouveau à l'anglais.

German:

Ich werde soeben am Haus der Arbeit umgedreht, habe zu Abend gegessen, stelle meinen kleinen Jungen am Bett, und ich frage mich, der danach zu machen. An einer so ruhigen Stunde dreht sich das Gehirn des Leeremenschen gegen Babelfish, diesen berühmten Übersetzer der Texte der Sprache zur Sprache. Ich möchte sehen, was sich produziert, wenn ich einen Text von englisch-französischen am Deutschen und erneut am Englischen übersetze.

And back:

I am turned at the house of the work, was just eaten to evening, place my small boys at the bed, and I ask myself to make for it. On a so calm hour the brain of the emptiness human being against Babelfish, this famous translator of the texts of the language turns to the language. I would like to see, what produces itself, if I translate a text again of English-French at the German and at the English.

Whew. This is now tedious, so it ends here.

Looks like the Scots decided to join the great land grab that exercised the European powers in the 17^th century. Fortunately for the lovers of the Spanish imperium (if any), they failed, otherwise, as Jim Malcolm, Scot and former British Ambassador to Panama said:

Those of us who grew up on the fantastic adventures of the Musketeers (both on paper and on the screen), Brigadier Gerard, Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Kayamkulam Kochunny and other kalaripayattu exponents from the Ithihyamala, would be cheered by the exploits of Erast Fandorin and Captain Alatriste. For these, we have to thank Boris Akunin and Arturo Perez-Reverte.

Fandorin, in his early incarnation, is not really a swashbuckler. A stuttering and astute detective in the 19^th century with a tragic life, he tends rather to parody various genres of detectives that solve cases from espionage, closed-room, to serial killers and grand conspiracy. But as the series progresses, he learns the Japanese martial arts and becomes fiendishly strong, agile, springy and buckly. Women, attracted by the air of grief and tragedy that surrounds him, invariably fall in love with him, but he, courteous and chivalrous, allows none to come close to him.

Truer to the spirit of Dumas's heroes is the Spanish gallant, indigent tercio and consummate swordsman, Captain Alatriste. His story is narrated by his page, Íñigo Balboa, and covers the period of Spanish history in the 17^th century when its glory days were behind it and its long decline was beginning. Alatriste, although a fairly humble man, has friends in courtly places and equally exalted enemies, and the six novels (in Spanish; only the first three been translated into English) tell of his honour and pride, his skills and his loyalty and (of course) his loves. The prose is appropriate to the times, flowery, bloody and evocative. The action gallops from old Madrid and the Inquisition to the bloodbath of the Eighty Years' War in Flanders, from gold-laden galleons of the Indies, to the corsairs in the Mediterranean. Femmes fatale of incredible beauty and wickedness stalk his and Balboa's footsteps at every turn, poets and counts fight duels on his behalf, and the feckless King Philip II presides over a waning Spain.

There are films based on Akunin's books, which have proven immensely popular in Russia; and Viggo Mortensen, fresh from his Numenorian role in the Lord of the Rings, stars in the Spanish Alatriste. I think it is time I got these on DVD and sank back on the divan for a weekend of swords, capes, and twirled moustaches.

What have I spent the past 24 hours doing? Obsessively checking out blogs and issuing comment after comment.

We have just got back from a fairly hectic holiday and I have been plonked in front of the computer, Firefox open, multiple tabs, searching for reviews of computers (seeing as I am in the market for the new laptop purchase impending), ignoring the boy, following link after link to blog after blog, seething with envy at the quality of the writing I have found, and wondering how to overcome my inertia to start off on my latest travelogue.

Seems far easier to just surf and comment away.

I had no idea! Them Europeans had long heads, which then became round heads, and then reverted to long heads - all in a space of about 200 years.

Why did this spherocephalism (to coin a word) affect only men? Why did it revert? The current hypotheses are that immigration from Scandinavia brought in new physical and racial characteristics in mediaeval Europe. Simultaneously, the general cooling in local climate is said to have led the change from long to round - round heads have smaller surface areas, leading to less radiative loss.

Discoveries at Wharram Percy, an isolated hamlet of some 700 souls in Yorkshire, seem to demolish both these viewpoints. Firstly, the village is quite remote and appears to have been a sink-hole of plague and sheep blight. Next, immigration, contributing to the gene pool, should have affected both men and women, as pointed out in this report. (I wonder, though: what if the causative gene was on the Y-chromosome? This is perhaps answered by the fact that women's heads were also affected in other parts of Europe? See, e.g., the Bronze Age section here), whereas at Wharam Percy, only men's skulls show the transformation. Furthermore, average temperatures in Yorkshire during the 11^th through the 13^th centuries were half a degree Celsius higher than those today. And lastly, the heads went back to their long shapes at the end of the thirteenth century.

I saw several curious contributions from commentators to this report: helmets were placed on the infants' heads to ward off the plague (but did they think the girls needed no protection?); long heads were caused by genes that also conferred protection against the plague (again, why did this not affect the women?); etc. to varying levels of glibness.

So the puzzles remain.

References:

The Archaeology of Human Bones, Simon Mays.
Wharram Percy: Investigative History, English Heritage.