Word pairs revisited

[rcscwc]

Gangesha, the foubder of Ultra Logical School of Navya Nyaya, posited that when a pair of words is used, the shorter one precedes the longer one, as a rule. Of course he did recognise a few exceptions, which went to prove the rule.

Apply it to Englisjh Man-woman

Man-wife. { I pronoune you as MAN and wife}


For Indian Languages, the rule is modified a bit. When GENDER is known, female name precedes.

Sita-Ram
Radha-Krishna.


Pals, there are IMMORTAL love legends in Punjabi. In all of them woman's name is first, EXCEPT Mirza Sahiban.

A tragic tale, but where Sahiban clearly betrayed her lover Mirza. Both died at her brothers' hands. Its BTW.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

In English we teach the construction known as the tricolon: a monosyllabic word, followed by a polysyllabic word, ending with a multi-word phrase. This has a very powerful effect on the listener/reader and all good orators and writers use it. The most famous example in the USA is:

. . . . life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But every language is different. There are very few monosyllables in Spanish and almost none in Italian, so this technique is impossible to use. And even in some languages with many monosyllables such as French and German, a noun is almost never presented without an article (le, la, les -- der, die, das), so it doesn't work.