Usage of English in India

Public Interest Litigation (PIL) vs Public Interest Petition (PIP)

2011-11-20T16:33:00.001+05:30

Actor Imran Khan has taken on the state government for raising the drinking age to 25. The actor plans to file a public interest litigation against the new regulation.(Times of India)
The city-based NGO Aapla Parisar will file a public interest litigation (PIL) demanding reinstatement of former municipal commissioner Mahesh Zagade and probe into the NCP's role in the transfer.(ibid.)

A petition is as an official document in which you ask a court to take legal action (Macmillan Dictionary) whereas litigation is the use of the legal system to settle a disagreement (Macmillan Dictionary) or the process of taking legal action (Oxford English Dictionary).

Hence, one files a public interest petition (PIP), not a public interest litigation (PIL).

_______________________________________________________________

Here are a couple of links you might find interesting:-

1. Going forward http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2011/aug/30/mind-your-language-going-forward

2. Name that thing is a visual vocabulary quiz in which you are shown an image an object and you need to choose its correct name (or the name of a specific part of an object indicated by an arrow) from among four options. A quiz consists of ten questions and at the end of it you can choose to take another quiz with a new set of images. You will certainly learn new words but it is unlikely that you will use many of them. It is interesting, nevertheless.

Diabetes

2011-11-14T06:00:00.000+05:30

Today is World Diabetes Day. The WHO estimates that more than 346 million people in the world suffer from this disorder and this number is increasing at a worrying rate.

Diabetes mellitus is the proper medical term for this disorder and frequent urination is one of its most common symptoms, which is how it got its name. The name diabetes (literally, a passer through; a siphon) was coined by an ancient Greek physician who noticed that patients of this disease passed an excessive amount of urine.

In 1675 a physician called Thomas Willis added mellitus to the name. Mellitus is a Latin word which means sweetened with honey and refers to the sweetness of urine in diabetics caused by excessive blood sugar.

Potboiler

2011-11-12T23:14:00.001+05:30

Potboiler is frequently used in Indian journalism for describing a typical, formulaic film. Merriam-Webster defines it as a usually inferior work of art or literature produced chiefly for profit.

Image: Coeruleus

Such a movie or book would bring in money to keep pots of food boiling, hence the term.

Tone-deaf vs Stone-deaf

2011-10-31T10:30:00.000+05:30

Merriam-Webster defines tone-deaf as "relatively insensitive to differences in musical pitch" whereas stone-deaf means "completely deaf".

Simple.

Incidentally, both terms are hyphenated since they serve as adjectives.

Life-sized vs larger-than-life

2011-10-25T12:52:00.000+05:30

According to a news report on ibnlive.com, the recently-inaugurated Dalit Prerna Sthal in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, has 12 life-size statues of Ambedkar, Kanshi Ram and the UP Chief Minister herself. However, it has been reported elsewhere that these bronze figures are about 12 feet tall, which is more than twice the height of Chief Minister Mayawati. (see photo below)

Photo: www.outlookindia.com

A life-sized statue or image is one which is of the same size as the subject is in real life. The bronze statues in Noida, hence, are not life-sized but larger-than-life.

A cool blog, a unique temple and some fascinating words

2011-10-07T01:46:00.000+05:30

A few days ago I came across the website Know Your English, a compilation of a weekly column by the same name in the newspaper The Hindu. Each week the column explains the correct use, meaning or pronunciation of a different word or expression, or the subtle difference between two similar words.
The columns in the blog, however, are from The Hindu's archives and the ones currently on the home page are from the year 2007. But this does not, in any way, diminish its value and usefulness in helping improve the reader's English. You can subscribe to new entries on the blog by email or via RSS.

If you wish to read the latest columns you can do so on The Hindu's website and you can subscribe to their RSS feed here.

The other day I was looking through the website of Uttar Pradesh Tourism when I came across the following gem in a list of places of interest in Lucknow:

Source: http://www.up-tourism.com/destination/lucknow/places_of_interest.htm

A Lord Human Temple would certainly be an attraction.

And finally, here are some fascinating (and rarely used) words that I came across recently:

Curglaff: The shock we feel when we jump into cold water. (http://obsoleteword.blogspot.com/2006/03/curglaff.html)
Apricity: The warmth of the sun in winter. (http://www.wordnik.com/words/apricity#sounds)
Cachinnator One who laughs too much or too loudly. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7654511.stm)
Remord:To feel remorse. (ibid.*)
Psithurism: The sound of wind in the trees and the rustling of leaves. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/psithurism)

*ibid. is short for ibidem and means in the same place (used when referring to a book, article etc. which has just been cited) (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ibidem)

Fast

2011-08-22T23:06:00.000+05:30

Anna Hazare has been on a protest fast for almost a week and public support for him and for the Jan Lok Pal has been growing by the day, throughout India. I don't know what his confrontation with the government will lead to but it has certainly made the tv-news more interesting.

But what does all this have to do with the English language?

Well, the other day I began thinking about the word fast and I was wondering how it came to acquire this meaning. So I decided to investigate.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the original meaning of the verb to fast was "to hold firmly" which evolved into "firm control of oneself" and then to "holding to observance".

The verb to fasten now makes sense: "to close something such as a piece of clothing or a bag using the buttons, zip, clip etc. on it", as Macmillan Dictionary says.

And so does the meaning of the adjective fast: "firmly fixed, steadfast, secure, enclosed", from which we get fast friends, meaning "firm friends".

As an adverb it means "quickly, swiftly", which evolved from its original meaning: "firmly, strongly, vigorously", hence the phrase fast asleep.

External links

2011-08-07T01:44:00.000+05:30

Here are links to some interesting articles that I came across recently:-

1. Not all adverbs end in -ly.

2. The subjunctive in English; you could forget about the article but do read the comments.

3. A very clear spelling mistake.

Mondegreen

2011-05-18T01:27:00.000+05:30

Sticking to the world of music, today's word is mondegreen. You may have never heard or read this word before but it refers to something that you are certainly familiar with.

A mondegreen is simply a word or group of words that a person mishears in a song. (You can listen to the pronunciation of the word here).

A famous example of a mondegreen is the title of the well-known series of travel guides, Lonely Planet. The founders of this series, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, gave their guidebooks this name after they heard the words lonely planet in a song. It was only later that they realised that the real lyrics were lovely planet.

Take a look at this hilarious Youtube video of Nelly Furtado's I'm like a bird:

And this video of Livin' la vida loca by Ricky Martin.

Earworm

2011-05-01T12:28:00.000+05:30

Most people have had the unpleasant experience of a song playing endlessly in their heads and not knowing how to stop it. Well, now you know what to call it: earworm, which is a literal translation of the German word ohrwurm.

Wikipedia defines earworm as a portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one's mind, put colloquially as "music being stuck in onés head ."

There is even a website dedicated to earworms.

Lakhs and crores

2011-04-20T18:05:00.000+05:30

The terms lakh and crore are widely used in the English-language media in India — in newspapers and magazines, tv channels, government publications and even in the financial statements of Indian companies — and I think it is about time that we shifted to using hundred thousand and million instead.

The Indian economy has been growing fast for many years and so has international trade but we are still out of tune with the rest of the world in this respect. We use the Gregorian calendar rather than the Hindu calendar, don't we? So why not dispense with lakh and crore, which are understood only in South Asia, and start using the standard terms which are understood throughout the world. Of course, we should continue using lakh and crore in the Hindi language.

What do you think?

Flammable vs Inflammable

2011-03-06T21:47:00.000+05:30

You must have read the words Highly Inflammable painted on many oil tankers in India and Highly Flammable on others. That's really odd; isn't inflammable the opposite of flammable? Is there a difference in the type of fuel that they carry?

Image: Hockadilly

This is one of those things in the English language that leave you scratching your head. Adding the prefix in- usually turns the meaning of a word on its head: for example, injustice is the opposite of justice. But in the case of the words flammable and inflammable, both mean the same thing — "likely to burn easily and quickly" — and can be used interchangeably when talking about materials, like fuel and cloth. The opposite of these words is non-flammable.

Inflammable can also be used in a figurative sense to mean "easily aroused to anger or passion" (Collins Dictionary).

Diffuse vs Defuse

2011-02-03T12:00:00.079+05:30

The words diffuse and defuse are frequently confused in Indian publications, probably because they sound so similar. Here are three examples:

The Zakir Nagar area near Jamia Nagar in southeast Delhi was tense after mobs surrounded an Uttar Pradesh police team and allegedly beat them up when they came to arrest an accused wanted in a burglary case in western Uttar Pradesh. The SHO of Jamia Nagar had to lead a team to the area to diffuse the tension. (Times of India, Jan 20, 2011)
The Congress central leadership has promptly swung into action to diffuse the crisis in Andhra Pradesh when a group of newly sworn-in ministers rebelled against the chief minister Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy protesting that they were given insignificant portfolios. (Live Mint, Dec 02, 2010)
The police are likely to hold similar recruitment drives in all the other areas of the old city. The police see the drive as a move to diffuse another "possible uprising" in 2011. (India Today, Jan 13, 2011).

Funnily enough, they have nearly opposite meanings: to diffuse means 'to spread something' (information, ideas etc.) whereas to defuse a situation, crisis or tension is 'to calm things down', 'to reduce tension, stress or emotions'. It is easy to remember the distinction: the literal meaning of defuse is 'to de-fuse a bomb', i.e. to remove the fuse of a bomb so that it does not explode.

Murder of the English Language

2011-01-29T00:04:00.000+05:30

This is the second post with murder in the title but I assure you I am not a psychopath. Anyway, I have been thinking about this subject off and on for quite some time but I have finally decided to write about it after I read the following comments on Yahoo India in response to a news item about the Arushi murder case:

Oh defntly d parnts. God wl nevr 4giv u bloody murderer. How kud u kill ur own child. My gosh!!! M jus stunnd... I jus wish Arushi's soul 2 rest in peace & I hope dat she gets justic vry soon...
i hav a question 2 arushi'z parents...y are u not pleading for justice for ur daughter???
werz d got @#$% justice???
malini i feel u have a point.i too have these question in mind which is unanswered.
I dnt understand when we being the individuals can think of so many questions with only knowing what they tell us without even knowing the complete truth hw do they work? Exactly abt internet the router was switched off at 3 am y ? wat it is concerned with the killer to net being offed or on. Until its some one from home to be concerned for it.

This blog entry is not about the tragic murder of Arushi and the events which followed but about the murder of the English language which is being committed in full public view. Thankfully, most of the other comments were closer (but not always close enough) to standard English than the ones quoted above.

I wonder why many Indians write like this online. Is it really so difficult / inconvenient / unnecessary to write simple, grammatically-correct sentences with reasonably good spelling? I do understand that there are many Indians who do not know this language very well but that does not explain the kind of deliberate mis-spellings and incoherent sentences like the ones above. And I'm nt talkin abt SMSs & tweets, both of which offr vry ltd spac 4 msgs : ) I don't know about you but dis and dat in particular really get my goat; does it take too much effort to write this and that?

To me it is akin to a candidate for a job going for the interview with unkempt hair and dressed in a scruffy shirt, torn trousers and dirty shoes; he would make a very bad impression on the interviewer and might not get the job even though he might be very good at what he does. Similarly, such slapdash writing leaves the reader with a poor impression of the writer and he might not even feel like reading all that has been written.

But let me give them the benefit of doubt; maybe there are good reasons why they write the way they do. Here are a few possibilities that I can think of:

Some people lead extremely busy lives and omitting a few letters saves them a few seconds each day.
There are some who type with only one or two fingers, so leaving out a few characters here and there saves them a lot of time and energy.
Maybe they are simply rebelling against the arbitrary way in which English words are spelt and want to turn it into a phonetic language like Hindi and Spanish; so they write wud, cud and bcoz instead of the weird manner in which the dictionaries spell them.
It is a conspiracy by Pakistan's ISI.
It is a Chinese conspiracy to undermine Indians' knowledge of English.

If you can think of any other equally plausible explanations please leave them in the Comments section below.

End of rant.

Word of the Week: Hangnail

2010-12-12T18:08:00.000+05:30

It is something that everyone is familiar with but may not know what it is called. A hangnail is a painful piece of loose skin at the side of a fingernail or toenail.

A hangnail. Photo: Rick P.

Word of the Week: Philtrum

2010-09-11T01:16:00.000+05:30

Philtrum is the name of the small depression between the base of the nose and the upper lip.

Photo: www.hahastop.com

Word of the Week: Murder

2010-09-02T18:40:00.000+05:30

You might be wondering why I have chosen such an ordinary word this week. Well, a few years ago I saw an English film with the curious title A Murder of Crows. I did notice crows in a couple of scenes but none of them was killed, so why this name? Intrigued by the title I did some searching and found to my surprise that murder is a collective noun for crows!

Indeed, there is a long list of fascinating terms for groups of animals. I mention below a selection of the more interesting ones. Here is an enlightening discussion on the origin of the word murder and whether terms such as the following were ever in regular use or just someone's idea of a joke. And another over here.

A venue of vultures Photo: Sentrawoods

A murder of crows Photo: Loz Flowers

A shrewdness of apes
A murder / parliament of crows
A piteousness of doves
A business of ferrets / flies
A leap of leopards
A parliament of owls
A pandemonium of parrots
An ostentation of peacocks
An unkindness of ravens
A descent of woodpeckers
A cackle of hyenas
A crash of rhinos
A prickle of porcupines
A cowardice of curs
A convocation of eagles
A sounder of pigs
A venue of vultures
A kettle of vultures (when circling in the air)
An ambush of tigers
A sleuth of bears
A coalition of cheetahs
A mischief of mice

I owe this information to the following webpages: timesonline.co.uk, ojohaven.com, thealmightyguru.com

PS: I have chosen a smaller font size for this post. Please let me know if you prefer this size or the one in the previous posts. Thanks.

Marriage vs Wedding

2010-08-25T02:33:00.001+05:30

I got the idea for today's post while reading a news article about Shashi Tharoor's wedding which said: About 100 close relatives, including 20 from Pushkar's side, attended the marriage...(http://in.news.yahoo.com).

Many people in India use the word marriage when referring to the ceremony where a marriage takes place, instead of the more appropriate wedding. However, the use of marriage in this context is not wrong, as is apparent from the second definition of the word shown in this screenshot from the Macmillan dictionary.

Nevertheless, wedding should be the preferred word since it refers specifically to the ceremony.

You can easily remember this distinction if you keep in mind the following film-titles, all of which use wedding rather than marriage.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Best Friend's Wedding
Monsoon Wedding

Word of the Week: Triskaidekaphobia

2010-08-15T20:33:00.000+05:30

Noun. Pronounced tris-kai-deka-FObia
Listen to the word here.

Where's the 13th floor? Photo: Quinn Anya

The superstition that the number thirteen brings bad luck is common in many parts of the world. This fear is such that many hotels and apartment buildings don't have a thirteenth floor or a room numbered thirteen. This irrational fear is known by the tongue-twister triskaidekaphobia. I chose this as the Word of the Week as we have just passed Friday the 13th, a date which is feared to be so unlucky that it has been used as the name of a horror movie.

Who vs Whom

2010-08-11T22:58:00.001+05:30

It seems to me that many people, not just Indians, do not use the pronoun whom very often, if at all; maybe they do not know when to use it, so they just stick to who.

In order to get an idea of how widespread this practice is, I googled "who did he talk to" and got 599,ooo results. Then I searched the grammatically correct version of that sentence, "whom did he talk to", and got a mere 49,000 results!

I performed another search and the results were equally revealing. This time I entered "who do you think you are talking to" and it's grammatically correct sibling "whom do you think ..."; the results for the former were many times greater than for the latter.

But it's not difficult to understand if you put in a little effort. Let me explain.

Who and whom are used just like he and him. All four of these words are pronouns; who and he are known as 'subject pronouns' while 'whom' and 'him' are 'object pronouns'. The subject of a sentence is a noun or a pronoun which performs an action and the object is the recipient.

Let's take an example. Let's suppose that a female teacher scolded one of her male students. Using pronouns we can say:

"She scolded him." The female teacher was the one who performed the action, so she is the subject and is represented by the subject pronoun she, and the student is represented by the object pronoun him.

If you don't know who the recipient of the action was then you can ask the question "Whom did she scold?" using the object pronoun whom. Here, who would have been wrong since it can represent only the subject of a sentence, which in our example is the teacher.

Let's take the first sentence that I googled, "who did he talk to". Imagine yourself answering that question with "he talked to ____". Here, he is the subject since he is the one performing the action of talking. So the pronoun to fill the blank will have to be the object pronoun whom, not the subject pronoun who.

Similarly, if you were to answer the second sentence, "who do you think you are talking to", you would say "I am talking to _____". Here again, I is performing the action and is therefore the subject and the recipient of the action, and the object, needs to be represented by the object pronoun whom.

I hope I haven't confused you further. More lucid explanations can be found here and here.

Word of the Week: Vomitorium

2010-07-24T16:40:00.001+05:30

Noun. Pronounced: vomi-TOR-i-um
Listen to the word here.


A vomitorium. Photo courtesy: York University


Vomitoria at an ancient Roman amphitheatre. Photo courtesy: Sebastiá Giralt

The image that came to my mind, the first time I saw this word, was of a place meant for people to vomit in. It turned out to be something very different. And far more pleasant.

Vomitoria were the wide passageways in ancient amphitheatres through which large numbers of spectators could enter and exit. These days most sports stadiums and movie theatres have vomitoria.

Both vomit and vomitorium come from the Latin vomere, 'to spew forth, to discharge'.

Incidentally, amphitheatres were called so because they were circular in shape whereas theatres used to be semi-circular; the prefix amphi is Greek for 'both' or 'on both sides', hence a theatre on both sides would make an amphi-theatre. Clever!

A theatre. Photo courtesy: Phil Gyford

An amphitheatre. Photo courtesy: http2007

Word of the Week: Schadenfreude

2010-07-15T00:57:00.000+05:30

Noun. Pronounced SHAA-d'n-froi-der

Listen to the word here.

Childless couples often go to great lengths to conceive a child of their own. If in spite of their efforts and money spent they are unable to do so, they may decide to undertake the time-consuming procedure of adopting a baby.

Fortunately, adopting a word from another language is much simpler: there are no forms to fill, no interviews with the adoption agency and no house-visits. If you like a word, just take it!

I fell in love with this word the first time I saw it and came to know what it meant. It is a German word, adopted by the English language since it has no equivalent of its own. Its meaning: pleasure derived from others' misfortune.

Schadenfreude is what a political party in the opposition would feel on seeing the government in hot water due to a financial scandal. Or what a businessman would feel on seeing a competitor suffer big losses. Or ... you get the picture, right? And here are some funny examples that I came across.

LIC, mediclaim and xerox

2010-07-12T00:09:00.001+05:30

Until a few years ago the insurance industry in India consisted only of public sector companies: Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) was the only company selling life insurance policies and there were four public sector firms selling general insurance products like medical, householder's and vehicle insurance policies.

Mediclaim is the brand name of the medical insurance policy offered by public sector general insurance firms, but it is widely used generically, even in the Press, to refer to policies sold by the private companies as well.

Likewise, xerox (from Xerox Corporation, manufacturer of photocopiers) is used both as a noun and as a verb to mean (to) photocopy. And the popularity of the Hoover vacuum cleaner in the US led to it being used as a verb: to hoover, meaning to vacuum.

Do you know of any other brand names being used generically?

Word of the Week: acnestis

2010-07-04T23:26:00.001+05:30

Everyone suffers an itch now and then. But when it is on that part of the back where you just cannot reach, no matter how you contort your body, it can get really annoying. You must have seen cattle rubbing their backs against tree-trunks and dogs writhing on the ground on their backs trying to relieve a persistent itch.

And would you believe it! There is a word for it! Seriously. It's called acnestis: the part of an animal's back where it cannot scratch itself.

Although this term is used with respect to quadrupeds (an animal that walks on four legs) nothing stops us from using it to refer to the same part of our anatomy.

Just des(s)erts

2010-07-04T22:29:00.001+05:30

I recently came to know that the expression just desserts ( a punishment or reward that a person deserves) should actually be written with a single s, as just deserts.

The noun desert in this sense means 'something which is deserved'. However, it is pronounced the same as dessert, i.e. with the stress on the second syllable and this is why the confusion arises. The noun desert in the commonly used sense of 'dry, barren region' is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable.

You can read Michael Quinion's explanation here.

Word of the Week: petrichor

2010-06-23T00:01:00.004+05:30

The summer has been harsh, as usual, and the northern part of India is looking forward to the arrival of the first monsoon rain (the southern region having been baptised already) to deliver us from the murderous heat and drought.

And when the first rain falls on dry earth there arises that familiar, pleasant smell which everyone loves and many of you might have wondered if there was a word for it. Well, indeed there is: petrichor. (The pronunciation can be found here.)

You might have noticed that this is also my pseudonym on this blog.

Stepney

2010-06-18T18:51:00.001+05:30

Did you know that the word we use for a spare wheel, stepney, comes from Stepney Street in Llanelli, Wales, where the first spare wheels were manufactured. It was invented in 1904 by two brothers, Tom and Walter Davies who were ironmongers by profession and who later branched out into assembling bicycles and then into hiring out cars.

The Stepney Spare Wheel consisted of a pre-inflated tyre mounted on a spoke-less iron wheel rim which could be clamped onto a deflated tyre (see picture).

India is one of the very few countries where the word stepney is still used.

Phenomena and Alumni

2010-06-14T18:02:00.002+05:30

The words phenomena and alumni are plural nouns but are frequently used as if they were singular, as seen in the following examples:

"This is a phenomena that has started since the entry of Reliance in the GSM market in January this year," said an analyst with a Mumbai-based brokerage. (www.livemint.com)

Sometimes a phenomena called ballooning occurs in hydraulic circuits where the hydraulic brake hoses swell up after repeated braking... (www.team-bhp.com)

An alumni of the famed Loyola College, Chennai, Shri Vaithilingam imbibed a zeal and commitment for public service from his student days. (http://speakerloksabha.nic.in)
Lt. Gen. Rajinder Singh Sujlana is an alumni of National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla and the Indian Military Academy. (http://indianarmy.nic.in)

In these examples the singular forms, phenomenon and alumnus, were needed.

Personnel

2010-06-09T00:54:00.006+05:30

Personnel is frequently used by the press in India even when referring to a single person, particularly if he belongs to the armed forces (see the examples below). This is an error since personnel is plural. Serviceman can often be an appropriate substitute in cases where the rank of the person is not known.

1. It was unfortunate that an army personnel posted at a high altitude field area who met with an accident while at duty was granted a meagre pension. (www.judgementstoday.com)

2. On Tuesday night, one terrorist and an army personnel along with a civilian were killed in another gun battle in the area. (www.ibnlive.com)

3. The other argument of the police was that the service rules did not permit grant of out-of-turn promotion more than twice in the career of a police personnel. (www.hinduonnet.com)

In the first two examples, serviceman would have served the purpose and in the third one policeman would have been perfect.

Literally

2010-05-16T01:43:00.008+05:30

According to AskOxford.com 'an intensifier is an adverb used to give force or emphasis, for example really in my feet are really cold.' However, many people wrongly use literally as an intensifier, as in the following examples taken from various websites:-

I was literally blown away when I tested this device's noise reduction capabilities.(www.4allgadgets.com)
Overall, Sony is better, but then this Acer notebook is literally a steal at that price. (www.chip.in)
"Destiny literally came knocking at my door and I welcomed it," says Aditya. (From an interview with Aditya Raj Kapoor, in www.zoomtv.in)
Amitabhji has been a source of inspiration because he has literally opened the highway for mature actors to do meaningful work in India. (Same source as no. 3 above)

In the first sentence, for instance, really would have been a good substitute for literally since I am sure that the person who was testing the device did not get blown away by the gadget exploding (which is its literal meaning); he got blown away merely in a metaphorical sense.

Similarly, Destiny knocked at Aditya's door, metaphorically speaking and not literally.

Literally has been used correctly in the following news headline:-

It's raining fish in Lajamanu – literally

Believe it or not but a Territory town in Australia has witnessed fish raining from the sky twice this week. Apparently hundreds and hundreds of small, white fish fell from the sky at Lajamanu, about 550 km southeast of Katherine.

And it seems that this error is not restricted to Indians as evident from this blog dedicated entirely to the misuse of literally.

Post

2010-05-11T18:21:00.004+05:30

The word post is increasingly being used in India as a synonym for after. The problem is that it is being used as a preposition rather than as a prefix. Take a look at the following examples taken from Indian publications: -

1. Kunal Dasgupta, quoted in The Times of India (TOI): Zee TV had staged the Indian Cricket League which was a failure. Modi was attempting an IPL post that.

2. From an article in the TOI: Women who live in Faridabad but travel to Delhi for work say they would never venture out alone post 8 pm.

3. From India Today magazine: This month Jake Gyllenhaal proves the fact that nothing works better post a break up than an extremely sexy makeover.

In all the examples given above, after should have been used instead of post.

Post should be used as a prefix, as in post-match press conference, post-partum depression, post-natal complications, postdated cheque etc.

Welcome

2010-05-11T17:12:00.004+05:30

This blog is meant for sharing my observations and opinions on the use and misuse of English in India, and about the English language in general. Comments and suggestions are welcome.