Court Rejects Maruti Plea For More Time

Read further only if: you have a weakness for bad puns; you thought in Burgess' fictional language for weeks after reading A Clockwork Orange; you're the Boggle champion in your time zone; spoonerisms, portmanteau words and palindromes make you shiver with desire.

The litmus test of hopeless addiction to language is the ability to wallow in the unusual and truly useless pleasure of the onomatopeic pun (my term, for want of another). This little trick depends upon a seemingly nonsensical string of perfectly legitimate words with no apparent grammatical meaning. When that string is recited smoothly, with attention to sound, the ear uncovers an aural logic straddling the syllables and the spaces between words. The point is to listen for sense; that is, for meaningful words created purely out of the noise and rhythms of the meaningless ones.

 

Knowing the trick in advance destroys the delight of discovering it, but in deference to busy readers, here's a clue: the heading of this column reveals the phrase `A test of intelligence'. If you're going to nitpick about exact pronunciation and accent, the exercise will bring you no joy. But if you're wheel enter eggs pediment a ladle, dare a roll saucer coo languish op-ed dune eddies whiten foyer. Toucan player tit: a few rioted, doe news propane aims, senses chewy sea. Demo worsen wonder bitter. Endure starry rightens kills wallaby shorter hail. Tinker free dinghy tout chewy orchids: "Wants auburn a dime inner seedy bide accost dare leafed a fee shaman weedy swipe. Day wore various toot ended nut west thyme gat enrich." Butter warder core shin: aureole raid a foray posse bullet diction?

(But if you're willing to experiment a little, there are all sorts of cool language opportunities waiting for you. Two can play at it: if you write it, don't use proper names, since it's too easy. The more words in one the better. And your story writing skills will be shot to hell. Think of reading it out to your kids: "Once upon a time in a city by the coast there lived a fisherman with his wife. They were very astute and did not waste time getting rich." But a word of caution: are you all ready for a possible addiction?) description" content="A large organisation, left to itself, tends to grow inexorably in unwanted directions; the governments in India are a case in point. So did the World Bank in its halcyon days. Development aid was used by the non-communist world as a way of attracting the allegiance of developing countries, so it was generously funded. Backed by the major industrial countries, the World Bank enjoyed matchless credit rating. So it could borrow cheaply and lend at attractive rates to poor countries.">