Saturday, December 10, 2016

Muscle memory

My friend and my office operations manager recently asked me for help in writing out my organization's name in the Kannada script. I assumed it'd be a cakewalk; but when I started putting pen onto paper, my mind froze.

While I've been reading the odd Kannada book; reading whatever is written on buses, posters and hell even the occasional Government Order (GO) that some colleagues bring over for translation; when it actually came to writing my organization's name I struggled a lot, especially when it came to representing parts of words that are a combination of 2 or more letters.

Lack of practice, nothing else.

What happened next was something I can only credit my school teachers for. The years of dictation exercises, essays and exams ensured that my muscle memory just brushed aside the cobwebs in my mind. The words just appeared on paper and surprise, surprise they seemed correct.

I then discovered this transliteration tool http://kannada.changathi.com/ and verified that what I wrote was correct. Relief abounds :)