I have come to dislike the way the word “authentic” is used. Nine times out of ten, it means the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to mean. When one says that the stage settings are very authentic, or that someone recreated an authentic ambience in a restaurant, we mean that the fake looks like the real…

Even as a compliment, it indicates an imitation of the original, as in, “her Russian accent was authentic.”

Very rarely is it used to denote what is real, as in, “the musician’s rendering of the raga was authentic.”

And…while in the US…I wonder what would happen if the phrase “you know” and the word “like” were removed from the English language…I feel that American conversation would, you know, like, collapse!