By Kiran Khalap, February 22, 2010

Semantically speaking, there is no such thing as a sunrise. That would happen if the we lived in a geocentric instead of a heliocentric universe. (On June 22, 1633, a Vatican Inquisition passed down judgment on Galileo Galilei for suggesting that the earth rotated around the sun;-))

It’s a word that merely confirms that human habits die hard: the logically correct word for sunrise word could be sunsight. (If you have more options, please do mail them to me!)

But why worry about the Vatican and humanity in general when professional communicators make the same errors? Today, let’s look at India, the nation that adopted English as its language of commerce in the 18th century and its uneasy co-existence with 22 other languages recognised by the government. It’s an accepted fact that languages that survive are the one that are most plastic and inclusive.  The observations below are not about inclusiveness but about habits and hangovers.

1. Professional Indian English writers are the only ones in the world to use ‘up to’ as one word. You will find the error from the lowest-brow ads of both multinational as well as local brands, right up to the high-brow headlines of the Times of India and the Hindustan Times.

2. Indian advertising copywriters are the only ones in the world to use a slash and a dash after a figure that refers to a price, as if they are writing a bank cheque…even at the cost of the figure being misread. Eg: You could easily mistake Rs 111/- for Rs 1117, right?

3. Professional communicators in India always ‘cope up’ rather than just cope. So they cope up with stress…but merely cope with incorrect prepositions;-)

4. Indian advertising copywriters working for the Petroleum Conservation  Research Association have spent millions of rupees educating the general public about the virtues of saving ‘oil’ (rather than petrol or diesel).  As far as the general public is concerned that word refers to cooking oil.  What a waste!

5. Most of the regions in India experience riots and violence over the over-usage of English and the non-usage of the local language. So you would expect no spelling errors of common words in local languages: yet all the State Government milk booths under the brand name Aarey in Mumbai refer to milk as ‘dudh’ instead of the correct ‘doodh’. (Imagine spelling ‘seen’ as ‘sin’!).
The same government has distributed stencils for slogans about saving electricity, where the Marathi word for electricity is spelt ‘vij’ as against the grammatically correct ‘veej’. Again, thankfully, no ‘riotous indignation’ by the self-professed guardians of the language.

Do you have your own favourite list of ‘hangover’ words? Do pass them on!

Tags: advertising copywriters, Galileo, Hindustan Times, semantics, Times of India

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