Lingo Bingo.....

When I was in school, the subject I enjoyed the most was English. Prose, Poetry, Punctuation, Grammar ... the variety was amazing. I think that is what made the subject so interesting. I always kept Wren & Martin in my bag, whether I needed it for the day or not, and loved reading random pages and doing exercise work when I had time to kill.

It is now, when my 5 yr old is trying to understand the subtleties of the language, that I realize how complicated and illogical English is. Imagine the work a child’s brain needs to do, if it has to remember that “loan” and “lone” sound the same but are spelt differently. “Bite” and “tight” sound the same, while the spellings are different. “Site” and “cite” sound the same, yet “sake” and “cake” show that “C” and “S” have different sounds. It is actually fascinating.

However, while I am not an expert, I struggle to understand why some seemingly educated people make very basic mistakes in spoken English.

The most trivial may be the mistakes in pronunciation or accent, which I am able to put up with: like “simbly” (simply) or “vaat” (what), which are relatively easy on the ear.

Then there are the badly worded ones, which could possibly stem from lack of understanding of the nuances in the language: “Suppose, if, in case this happens!” – Why would one use all three in the same sentence.   “Everybody are ok!” – I mean, like, Hello!!!! When Every or Each is used, the reference is only to one unit.    “I will explain you now!” – This changes the meaning to something different, and also makes it rather offensive.

But, the ones that grate on the ear the most, are those where people translate directly from their native language.

The other day, at a fast food joint, a couple of extremely well-dressed and fashionable girls were trying to grab the attention of a young boy behind the counter. When he started getting busy with some other customers, one of them shouted: “Why you are not looking at us? You are angry on us?”

When I was new to Mumbai and was trying to find my way home, I asked a colleague for directions; she asked me to take an auto rickshaw, and suggested a particular route, and said: “You go straight and then ask the auto driver to remove from left!”

I recently overheard a conversation between a mother and daughter at a spa, “Mamma, you get haircut done, until then I will be back!”

While I have been silently mocking at people who speak this way, I have to confess that my Hindi is subject to the same criticisms. The people who help me run my house do try their best to teach me every day, yet I found myself saying something last evening that had them in splits.

I wanted my coffee reheated in the microwave and told my maid “Coffee banaake rakkhi hoon, please mereko garam karo!”