Oh, wow, the visit counter has crossed the 30,000 mark without my noticing it! That means a goodly number of people are reading this blog, too. It's a pity that comments are few and far between. I guess most visitors just come to this page, get their daily laugh or grin or grimace, and then leave, without bothering to let me know what they felt about it. I wish some would share a few laughs now and then...
By the way, how do you carry on teaching English in a country where a college prof says something is called 'bizarre' because it makes a 'bizz-ing' noise, and a schoolteacher says 'I have two daughters and both are girls'? And only this afternoon I saw an astrologer advertizing 'gnyaan-tips' on TV. I kid you not.
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9 comments:
Dear Sir,
Our games teacher in twelfth standard used to say - "Boys, stand in a straight circle." or "Boys, form a line. Stand in front of my back."and stuff like that.
With regards,
Saikat
I missed the 30,000 cross-over! I don't know how. Must have happened when I'd been sleeping.
That 'bizarre' one still makes me laugh (hysterically) or makes me feel insane or a bit of both. 'bizz-bizz'. I still can't quite believe it (I know, I know you said it's true but I'm wondering what the students in the class did; just saying something isn't good enough). Got nothing to say about the school-teacher (what does the school-teacher think the word 'daughters' means though?!). I've got nothing to say about 'gnyaan-tips' either (what did the astrologer mean?). At least that's an astrologer, that's all I can say. He's not parading as a teacher or a college prof.
I'm sorry but I can't think of a thing to add for this post (when/if I do, I'll add something)...I don't quite know how you carry on but please Carry on, Suvro da. It's what you say about being a blazing torch and more in the blinding darkness...
Dear Sir,
I remember you mentioning the 'bizz-bizz' business. And it makes me laugh just as hard even now, when I should have started getting used to common Indian-isms like "good name", "anyways", "Chinees and Conti food", "lunch timming", "cycle repairing shop", "fooding and lodging", and a whole host of other -ings, as if Indians were fetish bound to the continuous tense! Not that anyone cares. A favourite condiment that is added to the -ings is the much lamented 'only' - "I am sitting only!" "I am talking only!" God forbid that the 'toh' or 'nah' should be missed out on at the end of it all!
Of course, it is bad form to have urges to correct misspelled words on someone's facebook status, phone text message or even a restaurant menu (all of which I am ashamed to say I have done on certain unbearable occasions, with far-reaching consequences in certain cases), but how is one supposed to react when one witnesses the English Language being abused and mauled as violently as is done in our country? Indian English is one thing, ungrammatical English is quite another. Let alone syntax and capitalization, if someone can actually string a few words together to make some sort of sense, we "Grammar Nazis" are expected to be grateful for their consideration towards the beloved language. I have actually been told by someone I had hitherto considered a decent human being that he didn't have any use for English grammar since when he starts earning big bucks (which he assured me he would, very soon) he would 'hire' some English Honours graduate like me to do his bidding should the need arise.
Incidentally, in recent times, standards of the usage of grammar have been falling drastically in other English speaking nations as well. An interesting example of this crops up in an episode of the 2011-2012 BBC television series Sherlock, where the titular hero, now in a 21st Century setting, while interrogating a filthy rich wife-murdering Englishman, has to correct the accused's grammar at an interval of three words per interruption. It was quite hilarious!
Jug Suraiya had written in an article for The Times of India three years back that outcries in recent years about doing away with the English language in the primary level might not hold flak for perhaps no other reason than the fact that you cannot do away with what does not exist and maybe it's high time we gave a proper burial to the long dead English language. Maybe it is too high-handed a claim to make regarding the status of a language supposedly in as high demand for higher education and employment as English, but when one reads something like "i m wut i m, tk it or lv it!" on public forums over the internet, not once, not twice, but repeatedly, one wonders if those of us who still cling on to the language for dear life, are fooling ourselves after all.
Many thanks for commenting, Urna. What will eventually happen to English at the hands of Indians only time can tell, of course. No standard official Indian English is likely to evolve, I am sure, because local variations and peculiarities are simply too many. As for English being 'long dead', I don't know what Suraiya meant: it's definitely the most used language in the world, its literature is flourishing, and I am certainly doing very well teaching it! Hahaha about the Indianisms you quoted. Look up the Reader's Digest now and then; the editor often writes about these things. And as to your friend who is aiming to make big bucks soon and therefore doesn't need to know grammar, I hope you told him just where he can shove his boorish snootiness?
Oh, quite Sir! Perhaps not in exactly the same terms but my intent was clear enough. Thank you so much for voicing my thoughts on that matter! You see, I have found it highly advantageous to not talk to people who make me feel bad about myself. And someone who is so abysmally arrogant and short-sighted definitely is one of them.
The problem with english is that the language is extremely incoherent, inconsistent and illogical. So a lot of people have given a lot of suggestion on how to eradicate this incoherence. I think we all should have fallen in line with Mark Twain as suggested in http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html long back.
Dear Sir ,
A professor in my college comes up with almost 10 howlers per class. In these two years , had I noted down all of them , it would have been a huge list . To mention a few :
He pronounces halves as "havells" , Burrowing as "borrowing" and on being told that what he was saying was wrong , all he said was - " Aami erokom e boli....etai aamar obhyesh...kichhu korar nei...!! "
( I did not even mention the countless mistakes in construction of sentences and grammatical errors...!! )
Regards,
Shameek.
Neither Mark Twain nor Bernard Shaw, who tried the same thing later, nor those who once pushed Esperanto as a much 'better' substitute for English ever made much headway, Santanu, not just because the public is stupid, but because English, for the same reasons that it is 'incoherent, inconsistent and illogical' (as opposed to, say Latin or Sanskrit, very 'efficient' languages now long dead) is also so endlessly interesting, challenging, ever changing, infinitely malleable and robust enough to take every kind of cultural/technological change in its stride. As for it being a 'difficult' language to master, I shall only say two things: only 'difficult' things are worth achieving, aren't they? and secondly, haven't lots and lots of Indians, from Raja Rammohun Roy to yours truly, adequately demonstrated that it can be mastered if one really wants to? Whose fault is it that most Indians are happy with sloppy quality so long as it doesn't demand much effort on their part: surely not that of the English language?
Dear Sir,
Today, one of my students told me that his English tutor said that 'hag' is the synonym for 'an old woman'. Imagine, someone writing "I saw a hag standing in a bus and offered her my seat"...
Warm Regards
Rashmi Datta
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