Tuesday, November 29, 2011

5 Indianisms that every non-Indian should know

We are a billion strong nation. And a foreign country ruled us for years together and made us learn English. So, we picked it up in our own way. Sprinkling English with words we felt appropriate and accent that came naturally to us. Over the period of time, we went to other countries, we worked to “blend” and sound like them. But then, we still stick to a few of our favorite words, that we refuse to let go. Here is my list of Indian words that I still occasionally use, though I am fully aware that they are wrong.

Passed out – So I passed out of MBA in 2010. When we say “passed out” we actually mean we graduated. If you think that we lost consciousness when we graduated, yeah we were so ecstatic that we really did. So stop smirking there each time when I say I passed out.

Expired – Yeah Indians expire. We don't pass away. We all have an expiry date and when we reach that date we just expire. Yeah, I was not born, I had a date of manufacturing.

Couple of – When I say “I did a couple of presentations” or when I say “I met her a couple of times” it means – I did many presentations and I met her many times. Just because you think couple means twice, doesn't mean that I mean it that way. Even after 100s of emails, it will still remain – I sent him a couple of emails.

Lakhs of – When I say there are lakhs of people in my town. I mean hundreds of thousands of. We measure 100,000 as 1 lakh. So each time I say “lakh” remember – 1 lakh = 0.1 million don't give me that quizzical look.

Prepone – Just because you can postpone meetings, so can I prepone them. What's wrong in it? We think of pone as an event. If I move things beyond pone – I postpone them. So if I bring them before pone, I am preponing them.

How can you think any of this is wrong when 1 in 6 people in the world actually say it?

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