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Top WKND Reads: Dodging the full stop, techno-colour dreams, and why we write…
Check out the best WKND reads.
In this week's best WKND reads, we've the curious case of isolate languages, how colours got more complicated, and the reason we are driven to write.
1) Capital Letters: How isolate languages are dodging the full stop
We’re so used to languages borrowing from each other that it’s hard to imagine how an “isolate language” would work. Some do end up standing entirely alone, however — often because all the tongues they borrowed from, and lent to, have died away. Piraha, for instance, is the last surviving member of the Mura family of languages spoken along a tributary of the Amazon. Other isolates include Burushaski, which is spoken by the Burusho people in a few valleys in the Pakistani territory of Gilgit-Baltistan. And the Gilyak and Ket languages of Siberia. Read more.
2) Techno-colour dreams: New recipes are making hues deeper, darker, brighter
When did colour get so complicated? Historians would argue that it always has been. In the ancient Mediterranean, there was only one way to produce a certain royal purple, and it took thousands of Murex sea snails to make 1 gm of the dye. Vermilion and scarlet have similarly dramatic origin tales (read the story alongside for more on this). But things are heating up now, quite literally, and amid the climate crisis, the race for colouring agents has turned into a race for paints that can do more. Read more.
3) What is it that drives us to create: Charles Assisi asks, in Life Hacks
There’s a question I am asked fairly often, by friends and even family: Why do I write? It is difficult to explain the “writer’s high”, if I may call it that. As I set out on this task, my screen stares back at me, blank but for the blink of the cursor. It will start to fill with ideas, if I begin to write something coherent. And then those ideas will be beaten into shape. I will see inconsistencies and seek consistencies. The battle in my head will be a silent but busy one. An intense one too, as the thoughts are honed until they acquire a shape that feels convincing. Eventually, all this will be transmitted to a larger audience, whose minds I hope to sway and shape. To me, eventually, writing is an act of rebellion against silence. Read more.
4) The Quiz
Burglars stole valuables from Tamil director M Manikandan’s house. Then they had a change of heart. One item was returned the next day, with a handwritten note that said, “Sir, forgive us, your hard work is yours.” He won it in 2021 for Kadaisi Vivasyi. What is it?
a. An Oscar
b. A Dadasaheb Phalke Award
c. A National Award
d. An Emmy
