Misspelt Musings

from Nashik, India • introvert, student, writer • into linguistics • Marathi, English, Hindi-Urdu, Mandarin Chinese, etc.

[kanuorde]

About me

Thank you for stopping by! My name is Anurag Korde (अनुराग कोरडे).

I’m from Nashik, Maharashtra, India, and I currently live in Delhi. I study at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where I’m majoring in Chinese. I consider myself left-wing and agnostic. I’m into language, society, history, biology, etc., and my hobbies include reading, writing, learning languages, trekking, etc.

I speak Marathi, English, Hindi-Urdu, and some Mandarin Chinese. I also know bits of some other languages like Nepali, Bengali, Spanish, Tamil, Korean, Japanese, Sanskrit, etc. Along with languages, I like studying linguistics and writing systems and scribbling in different languages in my free time.

My profile picture is a photo of a coconut tree in Nashik I took in June 2025. Alongside Tumblr, you can find me on Instagram, Quora and Medium. If you like my writings, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi.

[kanuorde]

The renaming of Port Blair to Sri Vijaya Puram in September 2024 was not an anti-colonial move; it was merely another instance of the government’s constant imposition of Sanskrit and Hindi. It just changed an English name to a Sanskrit one, in spite of the fact that neither English nor Sanskrit have ever been spoken natively by the indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The indigenous languages of Andaman and Nicobar include the Nicobarese languages, Ongan languages, Great Andamanese languages, etc. If Port Blair had to be renamed, it could have been given a name from one of these languages. Worse, the people of Andaman and Nicobar (both indigenous and non-indigenous) didn’t even have a say in this matter; the decision was entirely taken by mainlanders. In the same way, the decision to destroy the Great Nicobar Island for pure economic benefit is being taken entirely by mainlanders, and the Shompen and Nicobarese, who have been living there for thousands of years, have no say in this matter.

[melonmard]

it feels so good to just sit down and finish homework

its so satisfying like a nice lil one shot

[kanuorde]

same, i often procrastinate studying, but once i start studying it feels so satisfying

[kanuorde]

Nepali, Chinese and Japanese are all spoken in cultures where politeness matters a lot, and something similar happened in them that shows this, but in the opposite ways. The Nepali word हजुर (hajur) (from Hindustani हुज़ूर /حضور (huzūr), “sir,” originally from Arabic via Persian) means different things in different contexts. It retains the original meaning, although it can mean both “sir” and “ma'am.” Moreover, it is also a polite way to say “yes” or “you.” The Japanese word 僕 (boku), meaning “servant,” is used informally by males (mostly boys) as a first-person pronoun (“I”). In Chinese too, 僕 (pú, the simplified form being 仆) means “servant” (僕人 / 仆人, púrén), and can be a polite or literary way for males to refer to themselves. So, in Nepali, a word for “sir/ma'am” also means “you,” and in Chinese and Japanese, a word for “servant” also means “I.”

[kanuorde]

One of those things about Hindi I find confusing is the word शेर (śēr). In Marathi, सिंह (siw̃hã) is a lion, and वाघ (vāgh) is a tiger. Hindi similarly has बाघ (bāgh), which means “tiger” as well. But apparently शेर can mean both lion and tiger in Hindi? When I read or hear शेर, I immediately think of lions, and I’m taken aback when I realise they’re talking about tigers.

[kanuorde]

If you say Aurangabad and some sanghi obnoxiously tells you it’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, you can tell them it’s actually Khadki (the original name of Aurangabad)

[kanuorde]

Will sanghis please do us a favour and use their brains for once? While the Parliament is indeed full of misogynists on both sides, the women’s reservation bill was rejected by the opposition because it was linked with the delimitation bill, which could have severely reduced the political power of the southern states. This is of course advantageous for the BJP, whose voterbase is mostly concentrated in the north. They claim to stand for Indian unity, and yet seek to weaken those who do not come from northern India. And do you really think the BJP, the party that regularly releases rapists from prison, stands for women’s rights? Au contraire, the women’s reservation bill could have been passed if the BJP hadn’t unnecessarily linked it with the undemocratic delimitation bill to their benefit; they did so because they did not want their male members to lose seats due to the 33% reservation for women in the existing seats. And now the BJP, misrepresenting everything as always, masquerades as a saviour of women’s rights. The party that allied with the likes of Prajwal Revanna in the 2024 election, the party that happily backs sexist godmen with rape allegations, the party whose members constantly pass sexist comments, the party that has not done ANYTHING for the women of Manipur, which has been burning for years, the party that constantly oppresses Muslim, Dalit, tribal and many other women, has the AUDACITY to claim to stand for women’s rights. But they are not fooling anyone for long. People are seeing through their lies.

[kanuorde]

I just (a while ago, actually) finished reading a complete research paper for the first time in my life! It was this one:

Tanka B. Subba, Living the Nepali Diaspora in India: An Autobiographical Essay, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (ZfE) / Journal of Social and Cul

[kanuorde]

I just created this chart showing some forms of the Marathi copula, असणे (asṇē, “to be”), in Pune (or “standard”) Marathi. Note that this only includes the forms of असणे, not होणे (hōṇē, “to become”), which can be similar. Here, 1st, 2nd and 3rd represent persons. The second and third person plural forms are also their respectful forms (both singular and plural).

[kanuorde]

Western tankies support autocrats like Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un because it’s easier to believe there are powerful alternatives to Western imperialism than the fact that most of the world is ruled by oppressive leaders

[kanuorde]

Sometimes I wanna describe a phenomenon in a language I know and I’m like I don’t know enough linguistics for this

[kanuorde]

In Marathi, both दिवस (divas) and दिन (din) mean “day,” but दिवस is the everyday word, and दिन is mostly used for public holidays like Independence Day. This is pretty much the opposite in Hindi and Nepali, in which दिन is the everyday word, and दिवस (divas/diwas) is used for public holidays. I suppose it’s the same case in Bengali for দিন (din) and দিবস (dibôs) and in many other Indo-Aryan languages. In Konkani, Gujarati and Sinhala, both purposes seem to be fulfilled by दीस/ದೀಸ್ (dīs), દિવસ (divas) and දිනය (dinaya), respectively.

[kanuorde]

The outrage about the UGC Bill 2026 is oh so satisfying. The casteists masquerading as the saviours of Hinduism have proved they don’t give a damn about the so-called Hindu unity unless their caste privilege is protected. What truly matters to them is flaunting their caste and abusing people from others. They’ve long accused anyone opposed to a government bill of being “anti-national,” and now, they’re the ones who have to clarify that anti-BJP does not equal anti-India. Even those who support rape-accused BJP politicians are angry, which again proves how much their caste identity matters to them. They’ve even reduced their god Modi to his caste. Even if false cases exist, those overtly concerned about them always have something to be afraid of. I hope all this severely impacts Yogi’s performance in the 2027 UP election, because I absolutely do not want him as a potential successor of Modi.

[kanuorde]

Koraput admn ban on sale of non-veg items on R-Day sparks row | Bhubaneswar News - The Times of India

Koraput/Bhubaneswar: The Koraput administration has imposed a ban on sale of meat, chicken, fish, eggs and other non-vegetarian items on Rep

How childish do you have to be to believe that if you don’t eat something by your own choice, it shouldn’t be allowed for others either? It starts with banning meat and eggs (not “non-veg,” an otherising term that conveniently excludes dairy) around the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, in the three holy cities of Punjab, and now, on the Republic Day, which is not even a religious observation. It’s perfectly fine to ban meat in your temple, but why on earth would you ban it outside? It seems like a way to legalise the sanghis lynching Muslims for not just beef consumption but even meat consumption, while India is the second-largest exporter of beef. If Hinduism truly forbade beef, it wouldn’t be consumed by Malayali Hindus and the other Hindu communities you ignore just because they don’t conform to your idea of Hinduism. And even if it did forbid beef, there is absolutely no need for a secular government to police the dietary choices of non-Hindus or even religious Hindus.

[kanuorde]

Postpositions are one of my favourite elements in languages and I love learning about them sm

[kanuorde]

Saying “white girl” instead of “girl” does not make you sound less misogynistic btw

[kanuorde]

It’s so much easier to eat many East and Southeast Asian dishes once you learn to use chopsticks