Language in India:

"Synonyms Galore. It will be very much in place if, before ending this section of our discussion, I mention another major difference between the English language and many eastern languages. In English, most of things have only one word. Lion is lion, at the most also Leo. Mango is mango. In Hindi, they have many synonyms. In our main data bank of 5,40,000 records lion has 129 synonyms, cheetah 29, deer 55, elephant 165, wheat 30, mango 46, grape 34.... Among gods, we collected 2,317 names for Shiva! It may not be necessary to include all the synonyms in a thesaurus designed for day-to-day use. Yet, very many of them have to be included and special methods have to be devised to contain them. Let us look at the problem in some detail"

What is beher / meter ? : eBazm.com:


"I have been taught the bahers not in the words like 'mafaaul' and 'faiiLatun' but in 'l' which stands for the Hindi word laghu (small) and 'Ga' which stands for the Hindi word Guru (large). (The kind teacher who taught me was a Hindi speaking person and he knew more about Shardulvikridit and Vasant-tilakaa than he did Mutqarib and Ramal.)

Its also easier to transliterate two distinct single syllables than a myriad of words with multiple similar looking and sounding syllables within them.

'l' and 'Ga' are the universal representatives of the 'small syllable' and the 'large syllable' respectively. One would pronounce 'l' as in lakeer or lab or lamhaa or lashkar; 'Ga' as in Gaayab or Gaafil or Gaanaa each syllable can be classified as a 'l'- a small syllable or 'Ga' - a large syllable."

URDU METER : IRREGULAR WORDS:

"In dealing with such irregular words, it is often helpful to have a feel for which language a given strange word is likely to come from. Remember that the eight letters ;s , ;z , .s , .z , :t , :z , (( , q [;s, ;z, .s, .z, :t, :z, ((, q] originate mostly in Arabic. By contrast, the three letters p , ch , g [p, ch, g] are not found in Arabic, and words containing them will not be Arabic. The letter zh , [zh] quite rare in Urdu, originates only in Persian. The three retroflex consonants ;T , ;D , ;R [;T, ;D, ;R] come only from the Indic side, as do all aspirated sounds except that of sh [sh]."

Modern Language Association (MLA): Format, Bibliography, Style, Convention:

"Founded in 1883 by teachers and scholars, the Modern Language Association promotes the study and teaching of language and literature. "

MSNBC - Being bilingual may keep your mind young:

WASHINGTON - Two languages are better than one when it comes to keeping the brain young, Canadian researchers reported Monday.

Older adults who grew up bilingual had quicker minds when tested than people who spoke only one language, the researchers found. They showed less of the natural decline associated with aging.

The tests of people who grew up speaking English and either Tamil or French suggested that having to juggle two languages keeps the brain elastic and may help prevent some of the mental slowing caused by age, the researchers said.

Writing in the journal Psychology and Aging, Ellen Bialystok of York University in Canada and colleagues said they tested 104 monolingual and bilingual middle-aged adults aged 30 to 59 and 50 older adults aged 60 to 88.

Daily Times - Khaled Ahmed’s Urdu Press Review
...
According to daily ‘Insaf’ (26 March 2004), Multan Intermediate Board exam was disrupted when the examinees discovered that one question in Urdu ‘B’ paper said: ‘write the blessings of love (mohabbat ki barkatain)’. The students said that they were not trained to write on the subject and considered it obscene. After the exam was over, some boys had attempted the question while others had not, leaving the page blank. It was later discovered that the question actually was about blessings of work (mehnat ki barkatain) and was changed to ‘love’ through the misprint of a wrongly placed dot. The people of Multan appealed that no marks be deducted against students not attempting the question or writing the answer wrongly under love.

One misplaced dot turned a platitude into an interesting topic. (We don’t have written vowels in letters and we have dots that can wander around in a script that we have refused to reform. Some reforms in orthography proposed by Maulvi Abdul Haq and Sir Syed were not really accepted. The easier way of writing ‘zakat’ and ‘riba’ by our ancestors was also rejected as Pakistan went Islamic.) The fact that the examinees could not write about love is also a rebuke to us for an educational system that is strong on indoctrination but zero in autonomous thinking.
...

Comma (,)

1 Commas for lists

This is probably the first thing you ever learn about commas, that they divide items in lists, but are not required before the and on the end:

The four refreshing fruit flavours of Opal Fruits are orange, lemon, strawberry and lime.

The rule here is that the comma is correct if it can be replaced by the word and or or.

Special note: Oxford comma (the comma before the and in a list) - check the book (p 86)

2 Commas for joining

Commas are used when two complete sentences are joined together, using such conjunctions as and, or, but, while and yet:

The boys wanted to stay up until midnight, but they grew tired and fell asleep.
I thought I had the biggest bag of Opal Fruits, yet Cathy proved me wrong.

Meanwhile, words that must not be used to join two sentences together with a comma are however and nevertheless. [...] The requirement is for either a new sentence or one of those unpopular semicolons.

It was the Queen's birthday on Saturday; nevertheless, she had no post whatever.
Jim woke up in his own bed; however, he felt great.

3 Commas filling gaps

Annie had dark hair; Sally, fair

4 Commas before direct speech

This usage is likely to lapse. Many writers prefer to use colons; others just open the inverted commas. [...]It would be a shame to see it go.

The Queen said, "Doesn't anyone know it's my birthday?"

5 Commas setting off interjections

Blimey, what would we do without it?
Stop, or I'll scream

6 Commas that come in pairs

The first rule of bracketing commas is that you use them to mark both ends of a "weak interruption" to a sentence -- or a piece of "additional information".

John Keats, who never did any harm to anyone, is often invoked by grammarians.
I am, of course, going steadily nuts.
Nicholas Nickleby, published in 1839, uses a great many commas.

Special note:
If the clause is "defining", you don't need to present it with a pair of commas. Thus:

The Highland Terriers that live in our street aren't cure at all.

If the information in the clause is "non-defining", however, then you do:

The Highland Terriers, when they are barking, are a nightmare.

From Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Apostrophe (')

1 It indicates a possessive in a singular noun:
The boy's hat

When the possessor is plural, but does not end in an "s", the apostrophe similarly precedes the "s":
The children's playground
The women's movement

But when the possessor is a regular plural, the apostrophe follows the "s":
The boys' hats (more than one boy)
The babies' bibs

2 It indicates time or quantity:
In one week's time
Four yards' worth
Two weeks' notice (Warner Brothers, take note)

3 It indicates the omission of figures in dates:
The summer of '68

4 It indicates the omission of letters:
We can't go to Jo'burg
She'd've had the cat-o'-nine-tails, I s'pose, if we hadn't stopped 'im
[...]
and most famously the use of "it's":
It's your turn (it is your turn)
It's got very cold (it has got very cold)

However it is generally accepted that familiar contractions such as bus (omnibus), flu (influenza), phone (telephone), photo (photograph) and cello (violoncello) no longer require apologetic apostrophes.

5 It indicates strange, non-standard English:
A forest of apostrophes in dialogue conventionally signals the presence in a text of a peasant, a cockney or an earnest northener [...]

6 It features in Irish names such as O'Neil and O'Casey:
[...] The "O" in Irish names is an anglicisation of "ua", meaning grandson.

7 It indicates the plurals of letters:
How many f's are there in Fulham?
In the winter months, his R's blew off

8 It also indicates plurals of words:
What are do's and don't's?
Are there too many but's and and's at the beginnings of sentences these days?

Special note:

Current guide to punctuation (including that ultimate authority, Fowler's Modern English Usage) state that with modern names ending in "s" (including biblical names, and any foreign name with an unpronounced final "S"), the "s" is required after the apostrophe:

Keats's poems
Philippa Jones's book
St James's Square
Alexander Dumas's The Three Musketeers

With names from the ancient world, it is not:
Archimedes' screw
Achilles' heel

If the name ends in an "iz" sound, an exception is made:
Bridges' score
Moses' tablets

And an exception is always made for Jesus:
Jesus' disciples

However, these are matters of style and preference that are definitely not set in stone, and it's a good idea to not get fixated about them.

From Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.