English As She's Spoke

[Dhondy]

I was in my first few months of work as a junior doctor in this country when I heard the term. A senior nurse came up and said to me on a wintry Monday morning, "Your colleague is poorly. He's not coming to work". Poorly? In over two and half decades of growing up in India, I'd never heard of the expression. Then comprehension dawned. "You mean he is unwell?" The sister had other things to do, "Yes, that's what I said". Quite clearly I had some catching up to do. Check dictionary.com and it's very much an accepted expression of ill-health, but why had I never come across it before in a country obsessed with the English language? Our American Jesuit fathers had never used the idiom- it's a quintessentially British adverb. It was the first of a number of initiations. Over the ears I came across terms such as "mardy" (neurotic, e.g. Sorry to be mardy, but does this medicine have any side effects?), "fuddle" (particularly relevant to Christmas. Dictionary meaning- muddled, possibly due to drink, but in common usage, a group gathering where people pool items of food and have a party (huddle+food, geddit?) But there were occasions that I got my own back. On a ward round three years ago, I advised my team regarding a chap who was waiting for an endoscopy as an outpatient, "This chap needs the scope now. Can we prepone it?" The Scottish registrar had a slightly bemused expression on his face, carefully weighing up his words, "You know, there's no such word as "prepone". It's an Indianism". Slightly embarassed, I signed off with a sheepish grin. He was wrong. "Prepone" has pride of space in the dictionary and connotes the exact opposite of "postpone". So there! One up for the Indians. And then of course, there is the immortal "innit", I need not expand on. It can mean isn't it, wasn't it, hasn't he, didn't she...the list is endless- probably the most versatile piece of colloquialism to come out of the old country. Any similar quirky usage, "Americanisms", perhaps, you'd care to share?

[PaiN_KiLLeR]

Prepone doesn't find a place in the 8th edition ofthe Oxford dictionary (printed in 1996). It surely is a recent addition

[The Outsider]

Some good ones, Dhondy! I can never forget my first grocery shopping experience in the US. Had just moved into my studio and wanted to stock up my kitchen, so decided to walk it to the nearest grocery store.....it was called Thriftway in West Philadelphia, for the uninitiated West Philly is the hood and a walking distance from Penn, my university. After struggling around the store and filling up my grocery cart, I reached the check out counter and took out my "check card", a combination of debit and credit card only possible in the US, thankful to my parents for having given me enough money to survive till my first measly paycheck as a teaching assistant. I entered my PIN number, and was just about to feel proud of having a stocked kitchen when I heard some words I could not comprehend. I said, "I beg, your pardon".......she repeated the same mumbled words and I realized she was saying, "Cash back?".......Hmmmmm.....who wouldn't want cash back, so i said, "Yes".......she asked "How much?".........This was too good to be true and not being too greedy I clicked on the "$40" option on the keypad...by that time I finally realized it was going to come out of my bank account which was confirmed when I looked at the receipt.

[zubinpepsi]

My english teacher in my Xth std taught us there is no word called prepone and advance is the proper word to use for such a case.. and also i learnt that there is no word called paining.. i was actually surprised to know that.. but apparently many indians use paining... and a qn... i heard this from an english "i am sat here thinking" ..for me this is wrong english .. but is this common for english people to say.... ??

[flamy]

Any similar quirky usage, "Americanisms", perhaps, you'd care to share?

fap, shik, "Mashallah you haz been PWNED", ZOMGESHWARA :orderorder:

[Bumper]

Poorly ? I've never heard of it before. Here are some Americanisms that I found strange when i came to this country. "How goes it ?" -> "How do you do ?" "My bad" -> "My mistake" "It aint no good" -> double negative impying that its no good. "I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat" -> I saw my colleague use it in emails. Then found out after googling that he actually meant that "He has no idea what am talking about & would like me to elaborate"

[flamy]

Some good ones, Dhondy! I can never forget my first grocery shopping experience in the US. Had just moved into my studio and wanted to stock up my kitchen, so decided to walk it to the nearest grocery store.....it was called Thriftway in West Philadelphia, for the uninitiated West Philly is the hood and a walking distance from Penn, my university. After struggling around the store and filling up my grocery cart, I reached the check out counter and took out my "check card", a combination of debit and credit card only possible in the US, thankful to my parents for having given me enough money to survive till my first measly paycheck as a teaching assistant. I entered my PIN number, and was just about to feel proud of having a stocked kitchen when I heard some words I could not comprehend. I said, "I beg, your pardon".......she repeated the same mumbled words and I realized she was saying, "Cash back?".......Hmmmmm.....who wouldn't want cash back, so i said, "Yes".......she asked "How much?".........This was too good to be true and not being too greedy I clicked on the "$40" option on the keypad...by that time I finally realized it was going to come out of my bank account which was confirmed when I looked at the receipt.

lol ya cashback was new to me too :D

[zubinpepsi]

"It aint no good" -> double negative impying that its no good.

i always wondered abt this.. still wondering.. is this right?? i mean for me if i want to say its not good i wud say it aint good.. so wat exactly this it aint no good means?? how come it implies its not good.. two negatives make it positive innit?

[nikred]

How about "Have a good one." When i first heard it i was waiting for that person to finish the sentence but it never happened.:blink:

[Bumper]

i always wondered abt this.. still wondering.. is this right?? i mean for me if i want to say its not good i wud say it aint good.. so wat exactly this it aint no good means?? how come it implies its not good.. two negatives make it positive innit?

I think it came from Ebonics (African American English). There is no logical explanation for its origins, other than that, the double negative emphasizes the negation and leaves no ambiguity.

[Dhondy]

Pain Killer, and ZP, I do believe prepone is an Indianism. However, it's on dictionary.com. Take a look at this. :hysterical: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_the_word_%27prepone%27_is_not_in_any_dictionary This is precisely why English is such a rich language. It has borrowed the best from other languages and made those expressions its own. All of us have heard of zeitgeist and schadenfreude, but how many of us know that angst, rucksack and masochism are German words? Similarly apart from the obvious au pair, aperitif and fait acompli, there are the almost unnoticed blond, brunette, critique, souvenir, and fiancee borrowed from the French, aficionado, bonanza and bravo purloined from the Spanish, and words such as jungle, pyjamas, pundit, sentry, shampoo, doolally (with apologies to anybody from Deolali) and jaggernaut (from the rolling chariot of Jagannath at Puri) picked up during two centuries in India.

[Ram]

My first encounter with 'Non-Indian' sounding English was at Graduate school. My professor kept saying 'Zee', 'Zee'. Of course it didnt take me long to understand thats the way the Americans pronounce 'Z'. :D

[kumble_rocks]

The bigger question I have is , who decides what gets accepted in English. Is it just a bunch of old world white guys who pretend to be linguist and experts in Oxford English Dictionary .Case in point , In 2005 years , I distinctly remember comedian Stephen Colbert come up with the word "Truthiness". Truthiness was first used in its current satirical sense by American television comedian Stephen Colbert in 2005, to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.Colbert introduced this word during the pilot episode of his satirical television program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005, as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd". Truthiness was named Word of the Year for 2005 by the American Dialect Society and for 2006 by Merriam-Webster. And Stephen Colbert is hardly a linguist or a student of English Literature . Why can't Ebonics or Indianism be introduced more and more ! After all , English is spoken around the globe , the dialect control should not be confined to few elite white guys from the old world.

[Dhondy]

Actually KR, people have tried introducing words into the English language over millennia, often with similar results to the ones you highlighted above. Try googling, "failed English words" and see what you come up with. Here's another exercise. Try typing the following words in MS Word and see what happens: naive, cafe, protege, cliche and chateau The weird marks that appear out of nowhere are accent marks for vowels, used in almost all European languages apart from English. The accent marks change the way you pronounce the word. English of course has made no such considerations for its speakers, which is why it can be such an infuriating language at times.

[triam]

play it by the ear - means go by instinct apparently. sup - can mean anything really.

[Dhondy]

Poorly ? I've never heard of it before.

Bumps, neither had I, but more importantly, the usage sounded incorrect to me. How can an adverb be used as adjective? Not "he's feeling poorly" (which itself sounds pretty strange), or "he's in poor health", but simply "he's poorly". If we had spoken like that growing up in India, we'd have had our ears cuffed.

[Ram]

One of the best British usages I have come across is to 'Break Wind', which I later discovered was the Gentleman's way of saying 'Fart'. Commenting one of my friend's blog, I wrote something along the lines of 'I am really chuffed to hear that.....', intending to mean I was happy to hear blah blah... She very politely pointed out that 'chuffed' could also mean 'self-pleasuring' in some contexts. :D

[Dhondy]

The more I read Shwetabh's anecdote, the funnier it becomes. Land of opportunities...:hysterical:

[ludhianvi]

Some good ones, Dhondy! I can never forget my first grocery shopping experience in the US. Had just moved into my studio and wanted to stock up my kitchen, so decided to walk it to the nearest grocery store.....it was called Thriftway in West Philadelphia, for the uninitiated West Philly is the hood and a walking distance from Penn, my university. After struggling around the store and filling up my grocery cart, I reached the check out counter and took out my "check card", a combination of debit and credit card only possible in the US, thankful to my parents for having given me enough money to survive till my first measly paycheck as a teaching assistant. I entered my PIN number, and was just about to feel proud of having a stocked kitchen when I heard some words I could not comprehend. I said, "I beg, your pardon".......she repeated the same mumbled words and I realized she was saying, "Cash back?".......Hmmmmm.....who wouldn't want cash back, so i said, "Yes".......she asked "How much?".........This was too good to be true and not being too greedy I clicked on the "$40" option on the keypad...by that time I finally realized it was going to come out of my bank account which was confirmed when I looked at the receipt.

That is PRECIOUS!!:hysterical::hysterical: I think the following are probably categorized into slang... -wadup/wazzup/'sup===> how are you -say what ==> pardon me? -using 'fall' in terms of seasons, cant even recall the proper season..autumn? :tounge_smile:

[Rajiv]

Your Good Name? is very Indian as well, it seems like an insult here. What can I do you for :haha: You know British Airways ( back in 90's ) had a little pocket book of Americanism for students heading over there. It had everything from "what's up to hiya "