THE REASON BEHIND THIS BLOG

I rejuvenate whenever memories of those feted and relished moments of past life come to my mind. At the same time I feel aghast of loosing touch with my sidekicks (buddies). I fell in search of means to counter this feeling. Then I found that a blog could prove to be a powerful means of keeping myself updated with everyone. There began the thought of creating a blog of my own.

Well, I spent a slew of days thinking of how to start this welcome note. But then I could only find that I will never end up writing one. Since, I always felt that it can be done in an even better way, which actually might not have existed. For now I have decided to tide over this dilemma and to shun the idea of thinking for a better start.

Please do hang-out with this blog, which will encourage me to update it from time to time. Finally, every effort has been made to bring this blog without an iota of a fault. Even then if you find any, do bring to my notice at the mail id provided beneath the suggestions tab. Hope you will be enthralled visiting this blog. And keep writing your comments, so that you can find your name in the “top commentators” list.

29 July 2009

FUN IN INDIAN ENGLISH

28th July, 2009.

Through the recent years, a lot of Indians are opting to speak English language as often as possible. The reasons being many, may it be for obtaining a good job, may it be for pursuing higher studies etc. What ever the reason may be, we have to agree the fact that in this contemporary world, good language skills are of utmost importance.

Albeit, at times we manage to speak in English, that too with averring fluency, we are incognizant of the blunders we make while speaking so called Indian English. There is a famous peculiar message circulating among the mobiles across India, stating that “British destroyed our country for 150 years, so let us destroy their language forever”. Very truly said. Only exception being that there is no need of ‘let us’ in the message, for knowingly or unknowingly we have always made fun out of the language. This I felt because of the few examples which were cited in my CAT class today. Few of them I would like to discuss below.

Firstly our mother tongue has a great deal of effect on the English language we speak. For instance once a person approached my sir and advised him, “Be careful with his spoonerism”. My sir, then baffled, asked him what he meant by spoonerism. He then replied in Hindi ,“chamchagiri” sir. How funny, right. Actually the word spoonerism has got some other meaning in English, which means slip of the tongue. For example, if we speak ‘down trained’ instead of ‘town drained’, this slip of tongue is called as spoonerism. Further few more such sentences to make you interested: “I am talking to him, why are you coming center center or middle middle(beech beech main)”. “He went to the village to sell his property along with his wife”. Read this sentence carefully, you will find something irresistible to laugh at. Keep going.

Secondly, we tend to frame our own words with the limited knowledge we have. And moreover we use them with such confidence as if it is a general word. K, let me ask you a question, rather simple one. What is the opposite of postpone? 99% of the Indians will answer it within a second as prepone. But in reality, atleast until 1998, there is no word called prepone. It is in the new oxford dictionary in 1998, the word was included, but with a note i.e, (from india). So must be feeling proud of being an Indian now, but in contrast to this, we use many other words that do not exist.

A few more instances to perplex you. “Walking on the road, a stone fell on me”. Most of us infer from this sentence that you were walking on the road and the stone fell on you. But actually it means that the stone is walking on the road and it fell on you. “Having gone to the market, all vegetables were bought by my father”. Now you can understand, who actually went to the market.

Here finally to make you involved, I post to you a few questions. Please do answer to find out the funny side of it. “The river is flowing _____ the bridge”, “ I am sitting _____ the shade”. Hope you had fun reading this post, and wish to see your replies in the comments section. Thanks for sparing such time. Have a good day.

5 comments:

satish said...

rey 4 both the answer is "UNDER" r "BENEATH"

harish said...

both r "UNDER"

Anonymous said...

ya , i agree with harish, and a very good post infact,but make sure that u post frequently, and keep rocking.......

ramesh masula said...

ya , i agree with harish, and a very good post infact,but make sure that u post frequently, and keep rocking.......

surajreddy said...

The answers are as expected. Though, the answer for the first question is absolutely correct, the answer for the second one is absolutely wrong.

The river is flowing under the bridge is correct whereas, the river is flowing over/across the bridge would have been wrong..

I am sitting under the shade, is wrong. The correct would have been, I am sitting in the shade. Whereas i am sitting under the tree would have been correct.