Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2009

Sign(Board) Language

All of us have seen roadside stalls selling 'Chinness' or 'Chinis' or 'Chinees' food or wine shops selling 'Child Bear'. They are not the only ones. Here is an assorted collection of others who brought a smile.

Where: Sector 62, Noida.
God knows what aafat (trouble in Hindi) befalls on the people who eat these parathas!


Where: Sector 62, Noida
He missed the word 'Chowk' but it is amply clear that he too dreams to make it big someday. Hopefully not like Akshay Kumar in that horrible movie!


Where: Aminabad, Lucknow
Now, this is taking honesty to extreme levels.


Where: Tribal Museum, Araku, Vizag
Wow, this is a crash course in euphemism writing I believe!


Where: Hogenakkal, Karnataka
A movie crazy parking owner?


Where: More store, Kondapur, Hyderabad
Just imagine if the X-Ray machine at some airport gets some snag and they put a sign like this one: "Due to technical problems, We can't scan you. Please Bare!" OMG!!!


Where: Mahabalipuram, Tamilnadu
They know that their stuff is not too good, so don't go overboard in praising ;)


Where: Juice shop, Kondapur, Hyderabad
"Pain Apple"?


This one truly brought a smile, not the sarcastic one, but one of real happiness. To see that some one in Railways was actually so compassionate and understanding that instead of using 'Physically challenged' or 'disabled' they used 'Differently Abled', which even Delhi Metro doesn't do.

Where: Kachiguda Railway Station, Kachiguda, Hyderabad.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Right and Wrong!

End of an illustrious career

I hardly ever write about anything related to cricket. Even if it is something as 'big' as Sydneygate. Due to essentially two reasons. Firstly there is hardly anything left to write after reams/TBs have been written/spoken on every conceivable aspect of the issue, and secondly there is a fatigue that grips me due to overcoverage of Cricket!

But I am making this exception to salute one of my most favorite and respected cricketers who said farewell from the game last week, and ironically while all of us were busy lambasting bad behavior on the ground the retirement of one of the most gentlemen cricketers hardly made any news, atleast in India.

I believe you will echo my feelings for Shaun Pollock, who showed us that you can be aggressive and competent without engaging in verbal slur. His records speak for themselves but, it was his onfield persona that made me his fan.

Good bye Sir. The game certainly owes a lot to you!

Correct Me!

A few months ago The Times Of India had a discussion on their edit page on the topic: Is it ok to allow SMS language in exams? The main argument supporting the issue (that yes it should be allowed) was that it is more important for examinees is to write correct answer. What use it is if someone writes a wrong answer in correct English? Fair enough! Only if I could find this supporter I would make him/her read all the crap that we Indians have started pasting all over the internet.

Don't get me wrong. (if you are getting me wrong in first place, that is!) I don't mean to be preachy but reading really terrible language even on technical forums is not a very enriching experience. (Read the comments on Rediff.com if you want to see really ugly face of Indians.) Instead of question you have to interpret the SMS words that poster has used. (Vaibhav and I have tried to be strict about language of questions posted on our C/C++/Java community on Orkut, and have had some success.)

And I am not even talking of grammatical and spelling errors here. Don't they have good old language writing classes in schools anymore? Or the students submit their answers through SMS only?

I think Firefox should start using something more than red dotted underlines to show people that perhaps the word they wrote does not exist in English!!