A man wanting to get rid of snakes in his garden decided to buy a mongoose. He went to a pet shop where he saw two of them, put up for sale. He was quite confused ' should he ask for two mongooses (that didn't sound quite right) or two mongeese (after all, the plural of goose is geese). He opted to take the safe way out. He told the shop keeper ' "Give me a mongoose .actually, make that two"!!!
Well, the mallu would have actually been actually asking for his simian ancestors, had he said mongeese! And if he has learnt from the school where MG annan did, then surely he knows that adding an "s" to the end of a word makes it plural. So, if you want to refer to one member of the audience, you would say Audien!!! J I almost fell off the chair laughing!!!
In India, we speak Indglish ' a language that has as many accents and dialects as there are Indian languages! Like Wardle's search for the Average Briton, we'd probably end up hunting for a needle in a haystack to find a "propah" Indian English accent! Not that there aren't any variations in the way the Brits themselves speak - Boycott being our most famous example!
Audience in its strictest sense should refer to something that is auditory or aural. Like the lovely word which Vani's father used "Shroddha" ' the sense it affects "Shravan" is there in the word itself. However, as the language gets vulgarized ' we see instances of people using it to refer to other kinds of gathering of people (e.g. spectators). However, I do not expect The Hindu to debase itself thus ' not yet! And yet, we had S. Dinakar reporting for the Hindu on the first Test match between India and Pakistan held recently at The Kotla grounds talking about how Tendulkar regaled the audience with his delightful stroke-making! Bathos is the word that comes to mind!
My friend Mohan Ram would perhaps be crying with shame! He recalls with pride an incident that happened in the early 90s when The Hindu had just started their Delhi edition. He was in some small town deep in Uttar Pradesh when he came across an elderly gentleman sitting with a copy of The Hindustan Times and marking out errors ' both spelling and typos. Mohan went up to him, handed him a complimentary copy of The Hindu and told him "I'll come back tomorrow to collect your subscription ' I'm confident about the quality of my newspaper". Surely enough, the man was extremely pleased with the content and quality of paper and promptly switched over to The Hindu. I'm not sure if my friend would venture out now to challenge someone thus!
I guess the advances in technology have brought along with it an equal number of problems too! Where people used to pore over text to make sure there are no mistakes, now we just run a spell check. And so while we end up correcting flavour to flavor (to suit the American dictionary), we oversee mistakes like flower for flour!!! Worse still, people blindly accept suggestions from the speller resulting in humorous situations ' Anoop Shekhar allowed his name to get changed to Snoop Shaker!!!
Well, looking at the bright side of things, it at least gives us reason to laugh after all, English is a funny language, don't they say!!!
why blame spell check when the users don”t have a clue what they are checking!!
English lies in the head of the speaker??!!
Enjyed reading this one. Reminded me of many funny spell checks and hilarious substitute words……PGR
What you have said is fine but don”t you know that India is a land where almost half of its population lives in villages and how can you expect people from villages to be perfect,though India is a progressing nation but none of our teacher are most willing to go to villages,than how do expect their accent to be perfect.If people like us come foward and correct what is wrong at the right time then don”t you think it would make a great difference.for e.g.We have people around us,in our offices, neighbourhood who speak wrongly,may be they did not have the right guide when they learnt the language,rather then criticizing or laughing at them we can go a step ahead and correct them I know it’’s not possible always but you can give it a shot,If you try it with ten people you may succeed atleast with four people.Do try it?
You have said it. But English is not a funny language. We make it. The biggest culprit must be the Yankees….
While writing about a jugalbandi of Bismallah Khan Ji and Girija Devi where she sang a thumri the words were ” babul mora in nainan ki ” . The spell check suggested moraine etc. And my clerk suggested I change it .What say you!
ya u r right english is a funny language
you know what cow talk in english very well all day
how?
are english bolo to pura munh idhar se udhar ho jata hai
& cow din bhar apna munh hilati rahti hai
to i am right na!
yes, this is good stuff
There are as many accent as speakers these days. But then that is the success of the universality of English. And these days who cares about phrases and spellings? Just get the news and entertainment. thats all.
yah! its a funnu language indeed!
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very nice post……….
Just remembered the song from “My Fair Lady”, where Prof. Higgins asks :- Why can”t the English learn to speak?
(check out the full song at http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/myfairlady/whycanttheenglish.htm)
Really enjoyed reading this post.
Talk about the funny language…..a direction board to a family planning centre in a hospital read “Use Rear Entry For Family Planning.” Need any more examples to prove the point??
An immediately recall after reading this post is the Board outside the toilet at the Interstate bus terminal in Delhi, which read”Toilet -Two rupees; Urine-50 paise”
indeed a funny language this english is! and we all revel in in enoying it! i agree, The Hindu is certainly going downhill. i had this boss, who was very particular about grammar: what he used to do was, he would get The Hindu Editorial typed out without the definite article and insert inappropriate prepositions in the text. the typed out version would then be circulated among his staff; later, he would ask all of them to go through the printed Editorial to make them realize their msitakes!
Enjoyed your post :):)
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his, and him;
But imagine the feminine… she, shis, and shim!
Courtesy..http://www.rajeun.net/index3.html
Some more of the FUNNY language…..
If the singular’’s this and the plural is these,
Should the plural of kiss be ever called keese?
I remember one of my collegue from orissa asked few years back, whats ur hobby?…and with all energy i was just listing my hobbies..but he was just repeating the question again and again…till someone explained that he asked whats my hubby? and not what i understood.
Few more lines to prove english is a funny language.
Mother in a Hotel
Waiter, Could you bring me some kidnaps, please?
heard a student asking the professor when he got an handout at the end of the lesson:
Sir. Is this the last shit for today?
Hmmm:-) my vote goes to english a funny language….
The great singer MG is, he surely can correct his ”oice”. English is surely a funny language. I saw a name board that read Snake bar( for snack bar) and thought I was in China land.