Back to the Pet Peeve

Read the editorial "English Endures" in yesterday's Times of India and couldn't agree more with it. It deals with how English as a language is going to be "the lingua franca for success in an interconnected world" to put it in the editor's words and that the parochial politics must be slapped down hard.

With the editorial as support, I take up on my pet peeve yet again – Bad English/SMS lingo. After all, no matter how well we as a country are placed in terms of no. of English-speakers, it's of not a very great use when the proportion of those who speak fluent (and may I add correct, grammatically sound) English is very low :-(

I never give up a chance to ridicule bad English. At my best behaviour, I'll let it go with a suggested correction. Needless to say, I'm not a very popular editor among my friends.

"SMS lingo" is an instant turn off, Facebook updates have to be at least grammatically correct, e-mails have to be properly punctuated and letters definitely have to be indented, justified and well-written. Information redundancy, the use or rather disuse of articles, improperly placed prepositions and unpunctuated sentences are all manifestations of poor language. There is no way I can say all of this without sounding like a snob. But then, if preferring a sandwich toasted isn't uptight, then why should preferring a semantically apt sentence be? The English language as I learned it from Ajoba, Baba and I dare forget my school Abhinava Vidyalaya, is dying slowly. I want to be all revolutionary and try to save it, but other than the occasional correction, I don't do anything.

I've begun to tolerate words like wat, wot, plz, bcoz, whr, fer, da, ma (Carnatic overtures?), rotflz, lolz (What is with the random letter addition at the end? How about lolg, rotflk?), skl (school), cud (not what the cow chews), wud (Scottish influence much?), l8r (I know alphanumerical, but whoa there...) and the icing on the cake -  b, d, k, r, s, u, ur, v, y (be, the, ok, are, yes, you, your, we, why); just checking to make sure it takes me exactly one millisecond more to type the actual word! Even in the times of the telegraph, where each word cost the sender more, people didn't mess with spelling so much as we are doing it know.

With the advent of the computer, one would think that since it takes less time to correct mistakes (with software actually prompting spellings and offering grammar checks), people would make less of them. Baba was right in asking me to not expect things, especially from the technologically pampered. I still remember one of the earliest gifts he gave me - a Wren & Martin + a huge old lexicon which has been in circulation in the family through generations! For fear of it going out of publication, I have mine tucked away safely in a chest with other classics like Pu La's Vyakti aani Valli, Mario Puzo's The Godfather and such…

The day isn't far when there will be two types of English - official and colloquial. Further down the lane is a twenty page dictionary. Maybe a couple of hundred years from now we'll resort to hieroglyphics! Reminds me of this article that I wrote several months back about "Save the Vowels and the Spellings movement".

I know the 'Marathi manoos' is bound to jump on me after reading this propaganda; but be rest assured for my love and proficiency for Marathi isn't affected even one bit. Moreover, it's time for those with an insular attitude towards other languages (leave aside foreign languages, local languages too) to really ask themselves the question: How good are you people in Marathi then? Can you come up with a single flawless paragraph in it - written or spoken? Can you go beyond a certain vocab in Marathi? Are you even aware of any Marathi literature? Any of you even bother to read a Marathi newspaper? I know people opting for a Michael Jackson over Hridaynath Mangeshkar or Shrinivas Khale or Pt. Jeetendra Abhisheki. What more, people even give me the raised-eyebrow look for praising Saksham Kulkarni's acting prowess in the Marathi film Pak Pak Pakkak and least bothering about watching 2012. Phakta Jai Maharashtra mhanun kam nahi hot. "Nachta yeina angan wakda", asa jhalay thoda!

PS: Mala attach janavala ki lihinyachya oghat, me eka dagdat don pakshi marle"! :-)

Hundred Percent Guarantee!

Here's an interesting notice seen in Newspapers or at numerous places in Pune... Translated into English, it would mean - Courses for Spoken English with 100% guarantee. In the event of failure, full money back guarantee! So then what exactly does 100% mean? Typical, where we live happily with ambiguity in every aspect of life. Often 100% doesn't really mean "truly 100%"; but we understand the sentiment behind the statement and let it pass. PS: The title to the post just prompted me to listen to PuLa's Hundred Percent Peston Kaka for the umpteenth time :-)

Save the Vowels and the Spellings!

Are you tired of reading 'code' language like "hws u", "i m gr8, sup wid u?", "mes m immd"? Well, I am. 

Why are most of the people hell bent upon destroying English? Why don’t they use the grammar someone made with so much of pain? Have they already forgotten all the trouble they had learning tenses and other syntactical rules? Well if they did spend so much time in learning and improving their English, why not spend some more in typing it? 

Most of the people have totally shifted from a clean English to a totally full of slang and hard-to-digest English. The SMS seems to be the root cause, I believe. Imagine somebody SMSing you "Hpy Brdy" on your Birthday and you having to devote time to actually decipher it! (somebody actually wished me this way :-X) In my opinion, these people are just lazy. They use it to save themselves time and effort, yet it takes me double the time to read what they are saying. So I have to spend more time/effort, just because they are lazy? In trying to save time and money, they've compressed the sentences and words like they're some pathetic little .zip or .rar files. Please remember that the rest don’t have WinZip and WinRar fitted in their brains to decode this kind of a language; at least I don’t! 

Now what this has done is, severely affect their English spellings and pronunciations. I, myself, completely hate messing up with my spellings and grammar; not that I'm perfect with it, but at least I make a sincere effort in trying to be close to one! Again, I'm not expecting everybody to spell Connoisseur or Phlegmatic or Repertoire or Trousseau with sheer ease, but for god's sake at least don't goof-up with Definition or Grammar or Occasion or Vacuum! It just irks me when somebody misspells 'easy' words in spite of having all the tools in the world to check and correct them (read: use the Spell-Check option after typing anything, for once, please!) 

Hence, I'm a part of "Save the Vowels and the Spellings" movement - doing rounds on the Internet! It expects no flashy, flowery or snazzy English - A simple, not-so-hard-on-the-brain usage - without omitting the vowels and no spelling mistakes will be just fine :-) Join in.

It's A Punny World! :-)

My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned because I couldn't concentrate. Then I worked in the woods as a lumberjack, but I just couldn't hack it, so they gave me the axe. After that I tried to be a tailor, but I just wasn't suited for it. The job was only so-so anyhow. Next I tried working in a muffler factory, but that was exhausting. I wanted to be a barber, but I just couldn't cut it. I attempted to be a deli worker, but any way I sliced it, I couldn't cut the mustard. My best job was being a musician, but eventually I found I wasn't note worthy. I studied a long time to become a doctor, but I didn't have any patience. Next was a job in a shoe factory; I tried, but I just didn't fit in. I became a professional fisherman, but discovered that I couldn't live on my net income. I thought about becoming a witch, so I tried that for a spell. I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining. My last job was working at Starbucks, but I had to quit, because it was always the same old grind. After many years of trying to find steady work, I finally got a job as a historian, until I realized there was no future in it. And after reading this post, you're probably going to experience Déjà Moo - the feeling that you've heard this bull before!

A Lil Grammar...

Somewhere I read that the usage, for eg. "taller than me" is supposedly wrong and we're supposed to say "taller than I" or "taller than I am". Same goes for all kinds of comparison! Well, seems logical and I have tried to consciously imbibe that into my lingo and ensure that I don't go wrong there. Suddenly when I decided to post this, I began to have my own doubts, regarding the authenticity of it all. So anyone care to enlighten me on this? Anyone having better language sense than me or should I say better language sense than I? HELP!