Dear Eugene, Many thanks for the enlightening discourse on the English idiom. Although I am familiar with the idiom, much of what you have provided was not within my knowledge. Obliged for that. To my humble knowledge, "this is all Greek to me" is an idiomatic way of saying "I dot understand this at all" or, to use other idioms, "this has gone over my head" / "I cannot make head or tail of this". And you presume this is what Tony meant. But please reread Tony's original sentence: "Konkani? Looks more like Greek to me. I think I have to re enroll for Std II! :/". Do you still hold the same opinion? Does "looks more like Greek to me" fit the idiom format? I don't think so. To me, his statement it means: "This is not Konkani. It appears as if it were Greek. If this is really Konkani, then I should go back to school to learn it!" I presumed he could not understand a part or the whole of the poem, especially because there were some transliteration errors in the the form it was originally posted in, which garbled the meaning somewhat. Hence my request to Tony. But what was Tony's response? In stead of complying with my request, he went completely off the rails with, "While Sebastian Borges may 'claim' to be an expert in Konkani (a view certainly not supported by a faction of Konkani cognoscenti), I personally, have my doubts about his knowledge of the English language as demonstrated by his remark above!!!!!!!!!" Is this warranted? Even assuming I have made the claim that he suspects I have, does it matter to the issue at hand? Did I give my opinion on the poem? If my translation was faulty, he could have pointed out the errors. And what has my knowledge of the ENGLISH language got to do with getting the meaning of a KONKANI poem? I would still request Tony to let us know exactly what it was that he could not understand in the poem. If Tony went off the rails, the baby-doctor went into orbit with his puerile, nay infantile, logic as usual. Better ignore the incorrigible. Mog asum. Sebastian Borges On Sat, 16 Jul 2011 Eugene Correia <eugene.corr...@gmail.com> wrote: <<I think the debate over this (or is it "in this"?) has gone off tanget. Tony obviously used an English idiom (explanation below from Wikipedia) and Borges seemingly took Tony's words literally. Unless,Borges explains that he understood the idiom. I think Tony was outright wrong in questioning Borges's expertise on the language. However, no one in Goa or elsewhere is the last word on Konkani. For the doctor from Bahamas to jump into this fray with his usual cockeyed view and also hit Borges below the belt for the latter's support for Devnagiri was uncalled for. But the good doctor dishes out his own brand of medicine for all the ills that goanetters suffer on this forum (ha, ha) .I hope I had the last word... chapter closed :-)
Eugene>>
