NOVEMBER 2025: The World Through Words – ELEMENTARY.

Words have traditionally been the backbone of intelligent communications. Some researchers suggest that humans began using spoken words, anywhere between 50000 and 70000 years ago. Words then were often just a collation of sounds, but they seemed to have served their purpose. How they managed their communications in their worlds so long ago can only be imagined!

Today, in the second millennium of the common era, as per Ethnologue, which is a language catalogue and resource site, there are around 7111 languages in the world (not including dialects, sign languages) with an estimated 840 million words.

And with such a surfeit of languages and words, our world should naturally (if not certainly!) be a very interesting one for those of us who will only take some time from our busy routines, to peek into the world of words.

This time, the random word that has surfaced is ELEMENTARY.

If there is any doubt that a phrase has been popularized in English fiction, one needs to look no further than to recall “Elementary, my dear Watson” that Sherlock Holmes often said to his biographer and dear friend.

That phrase, so humorously used, and indeed the word elementary itself, have been a cause of inferiority complex in many.

Innocuous as it may sound, something elementary is scathingly indicative that it is essentially simple and fundamental to be reasoned out, and the absence of understanding what is being referred to, suggests a lacuna in intelligence!

Culturally, most human societies, and especially those of the East have strongly believed in the five natural substances - earth, water, fire, air, and ether - as elementary or foundational substances of human existence.

Interestingly, right through the spectrum of human societies, five other elementary aspects – values/beliefs, languages, symbols, norms and rituals - have defined the structure of their cultures and have glued their civilizational bonds.

With this word having so much to brag about, one may be excused for not further expounding on such aspects, but to bask in the most elemental quality of having a good laugh at it – the smile made all the more warm when one considers the precious elements.

Gold and Silver haven't seen each other since elementary school. They decided to meet up at a bar. Silver walks in and sees his old friend and calls out to him.

"Aey, you?"

Gold gets excited and shouts back, "Aey, ji!"