Happy New Year

Another hour and a half before the clock strike new year.

1.30 AM

2010

It's the New Year.

Went outside to see if the eclipse has happened. No eclipse. But moon was full. Bathing everything in silvery cold light. Throwing dark menacing shadows all around. Funny how the shadows scare me so now. Unlike six years ago when I first moved in. The silver light was the same but the shadows grew.

1.30 PM

Twelve hours into the new year.

I haven't finished this entry.

Today is 11th. Eleven days into 2010.

How do one say 2010?

Well, coming off 2009 I would naturally say two thousand ten.

I read on Yahoo, that some guys who called themselves the National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG) decreed that 2010 should officially be pronounced "twenty ten" and the subsequent years should be pronounced twenty eleven, twenty twelve etc. The '20" should have been pronounced "twenty" all along because every year in the 20th century was pronounced "nineteen something". "Twenty" follows "nineteen". "Two thousand" doesn't follow "nineteen".

That's LOGICAL, claimed NAGG.

However, a noted linguist, Professor George Lakoff of UC Berkeley said it is not wrong to say "two thousand ten" because 'twenty ten" is not the right way due to cognitive reference points, standard of speech and the anachronistic recognition over the notion that grammar can be right or wrong as people and cultures evolve.

Thus, the master linguist and the grammar police agree that "Twenty-ten" is going to take over because it is the shortest and easiest to understand.

NOTE!

People and cultures EVOLVE !!!

Hence the field of pragmatics is getting more prominent.

And here we are in a deep polemic over the word Allah.

Some time in 2008, I attended an interfaith dialogue held in KL. At the end of the dialogue, someone asked how many Christians in the audience would say "There's no other god but Allah". A good many did but one person didn't.