Friday, October 11, 2013

Just a thought

It is but natural that a native would be more acquainted with the nuances of his or her own language. Translating the thought into a language that you are familiar with but not rooted in often results in what I would call ‘grammar casualties.’ In India, English is one such language which is repeatedly raped and mutilated by the multitudes. Definitely not an offence, but in the global scenario, especially when we are talking of business documents that are not restricted to the Indian sub-continent, the least you can expect is a wee bit of basic knowledge of grammar. Religiously reading an Amish may not necessarily solve the intrinsic issue of dialectic differences and logical nitty-gritty of language. The mother or the parent from which respective languages have perpetrated from plays a vital role in determining common mistakes; those whose mother-tongues have diverged from Sanskrit can learn or pick up the logic in languages with a similar origin but English is rooted in a million tongues – Briton, Anglo-Saxon, Hebrew and even Indian. How many of us have ever bothered to read the origin of a word in an English dictionary; and if we have, words like ‘gherao’, that now feature in the Oxford English dictionary may have definitely caught our attention. A language which is as flexible as English would be customized and localized – so what initially begins as pidgin English slowly evolves to a more robust form, like it has in India. Given the Indian fascination with formality in written language the tone is generally not colloquial; and the lengthy convoluted sentences send out a loud and clear message that it is an Indian author.  

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