'M'power
Sunday, September 16, 2007 by Shreyas
What’s your favourite letter? Probably no one would have asked you such a question. Even I didn’t think of it until a week back. But somehow this crept up in my mind and pondering over that question for a while, I focused my thoughts on the letter ‘M’. On the first sight it might not look that appealing but some interesting facts may make one’s head turn around.
There are words that come into a language from others like Latin / Greek making generous contributions to English. But some seemingly unrelated words when scrutinized a bit, reveal mysteries. For instance in French, death is “mort”. In Hindi, it’s ‘mar’ and in Tamil ‘maranam’. Even ignoring the connection between Hindi and Tamil, the French/Spanish(morte) and Hindi/Tamil share the sound “mar/mor”. Similarly Mother/Ma/Amma/Me’re share consonant M. Life starts in the latter and ends in the former word discussed and Ma seems to pervade in both. Also consider Man/Manidhan – they represent the same entity - you get the idea.
‘Ma’ is also important in Indian classical music. This note divides the 72 melakartha ragas into two equal halves of 36. The first 36 with “shudha madhyamam” M1 and the next 36 with “prati madhyamam” M2. Rotate the letter M in all four directions you get something meaningful – M – normal letter; Rotate 90 degrees in the clockwise direction, you get 3. Another 90 degrees gives W and another 90 gives ∑, the summation symbol. M (neglecting W which is a 180 shift of M) is the only letter that gives the maximum notations for rotations.
M is also the starting letter of words like Majestic, Monumental, Mega, Million, Multi, Mountain, Monarch, Michael Schumacher, Myriad, Mighty, Matador which all signify domination and grandness.
So, how do you like ‘M’?
There are words that come into a language from others like Latin / Greek making generous contributions to English. But some seemingly unrelated words when scrutinized a bit, reveal mysteries. For instance in French, death is “mort”. In Hindi, it’s ‘mar’ and in Tamil ‘maranam’. Even ignoring the connection between Hindi and Tamil, the French/Spanish(morte) and Hindi/Tamil share the sound “mar/mor”. Similarly Mother/Ma/Amma/Me’re share consonant M. Life starts in the latter and ends in the former word discussed and Ma seems to pervade in both. Also consider Man/Manidhan – they represent the same entity - you get the idea.
‘Ma’ is also important in Indian classical music. This note divides the 72 melakartha ragas into two equal halves of 36. The first 36 with “shudha madhyamam” M1 and the next 36 with “prati madhyamam” M2. Rotate the letter M in all four directions you get something meaningful – M – normal letter; Rotate 90 degrees in the clockwise direction, you get 3. Another 90 degrees gives W and another 90 gives ∑, the summation symbol. M (neglecting W which is a 180 shift of M) is the only letter that gives the maximum notations for rotations.
M is also the starting letter of words like Majestic, Monumental, Mega, Million, Multi, Mountain, Monarch, Michael Schumacher, Myriad, Mighty, Matador which all signify domination and grandness.
So, how do you like ‘M’?
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