Errors

A pic was shared like crazy on Facebook in the last few weeks— This comic is factually incorrect, but it’s a good demonstration of how most people are confused about what actual Active and Passive voice is, and mostly just assume it to be random rearrangement of words. In the comic, the teacher asks the students to give examples of Active Voice and Passive Voice. The smartass kid replies with two lines from the song _Tere mast mast do nain_ from the movie Dabangg, thereby also complimenting his teacher’s eyes.

Back in November, I discussed what happened when Tom Cruise used machine translation to connect to his Indians fans. Since I am in Japan, I come across bad English translations on a daily basis. I hadn’t posted any on Linguistrix because Chinglish/Janglish is very common stuff and you get them dime by the dozen. But today I found this one that is incomprehensible in at least two languages (I have to check up my Chinese friend to find out whether it makes any more sense in Chinese than it does in English/Hindi.

Ojas Patil suggested long ago that I write a post about causes of language change. I had forgotten it until E, who’s already given me post fodder once via a comment on a Linguistrix post, asked me a follow-up question on my reply to his comment-question. It was heartening to see that E appeared reasonably convinced by my answers to his first question, and his question is quite interesting— So how does language or grammar evolve (Because it certainly _does_ evolve)?

Christmas is around the corner, and it seems to be that time of the year when you discover you had been pronouncing a word wrongly all this time. The word is awry, which I had always thought of as awe-ry, instead of its actual pronunciation a-wry (əˈraɪ). The funny part is that I learnt of the correct pronunciation while reading someone else’s account of how he had been making the same mistake (for a much longer period than mine).

Someone called E has posted a question in the comments section of my last post—The VanDamme Academy, and why grammar is not about clarity—Part 2. I was going to answer it there itself, but I realized this had enough material to be a post, so here it goes. First, his question: So, what, according to you, is ‘unconditionally ungrammatical’ about _They is walking_? If it conveys all the information the speaker intends to convey, unambiguously, the only thing wrong with it is the fact that it does not follow convention (the convention of conjugating a verb a certain way with certain subjects)

A recent tweet by Tom Cruise shows us the perils of machine translation and literal translation. The first part of the tweet is of course absolutely unidiomatic, but you can figure out what it is trying to say. But the second part will flummox any reader who is not familiar with English expressions. This was obviously the result of English—>Hindi machine translation of something like “We are really looking forward to talking to our friends in India when @GhostProtocol comes out soon.

I saw this at Port Blair airport today, on my way back from an excellent family vacation at Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Language errors on notices and boards are very common and are tracked by countless blogs and humor websites. Since most of these follow typical patterns like spelling mistakes (MISSILE PAAV or anything any IITB Hostel Canteen menu lists) or bad grammar, they are funny but mostly unremarkable. However, I am posting this one here since I have the feeling that this wasn’t so much a result of lack of competence as plain confusion.