Re: Re: How to know if an Indian wrote the mail?
by Prakash Sharma on Jul 09, 2014 10:05 AM
and some indians trying desperatelt not to sound like indians... using 'cool' very often in almost every sentence.. :D
Re: The idea that we must ape British style English
by Subroto Neogi on Jul 09, 2014 11:38 AM
OK. So the alternative to slavish British English is to use incorrect English under the garb of Indian English? Nice thought, that!
Re: Re: Most common
by Subroto Neogi on Jul 09, 2014 11:39 AM
As if North Indians are always correct? Why always create a North-South divide? Mistakes are made by everyone.
Where you will fall, at the feet of MaCaulay ? Do you know, many many more words in English get twisted across the world, where English is not their mother toungue. Nothing wrong in it. Slaves of McCaulay still living in this country, de-glorifying own countrymen and own culture. Fate of India
Re: Re: Where you will Fall
by Subroto Neogi on Jul 09, 2014 11:44 AM
So the alternative is to use English but in wrong form? If you have such complexes in using the English language, why not go for some vernacular sites/magazines/newspapers? Of course,lest you get the wrong idea, I am not implying that using vernaculars is 'low grade' stuff. BTW all of us who use English language in an Indian environment can be labelled as brown sahibs. So please be careful of what you ask for!
Re: Where you will Fall
by IndieBoy Goswami on Jul 11, 2014 11:02 PM
Exactly. Funniest thing is river Ganga. British could not pronounce properly and called it Ganges. Our english elite repeat 'Ganges' instead of Ganga. Hope they live to see better days.
A uniquely coined term is "co-brothers", for husbands of two sisters, co-sisters are wives of two brothers. We have "marketing" for shopping or going to the market. So one goes marketing for vegetables! There is "make water" for urinate. We "return back" (?), we have "breakfast" at any time, rather than snacks. Our translations are great, "what goes of your father's ?" a typical one. We "take out" rather than take photographs. But we must take all these sportingly, language is essentially for communication.
Re: Some more Indianisms
by Subroto Neogi on Jul 09, 2014 12:16 PM
Nice to know that there are still some sensible people on Rediff, unlike those others who believe that they have been appointed by some higher power to find wrongs in others. Coming to your post - the 'co-brothers' one is new for me, though it is obviously amusing. The 'marketing' one is of course common. The 'make water' one is hilarious - never heard of it before; must use it myself now. The literal translations are the source of the problem. However, living as we do in a country where English is not the mother tongue and where a very small percentage of the population has access to good English teaching, such mistakes should be taken in our stride.
