SAVE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE !!!

English is a beautiful language and it looks like some people are absolute sadists- they utterly cannot stand to see a beautiful thing last forever. Baffled??? Read on to comprehend.

There was a time when speaking perfect English and employing perfect grammar had other people staring enviously at the speaker, wishing desperately that they were at least half as good as the person speaking. Now however, it is a different story altogether. Try speaking perfect English or correcting someone using incorrect grammar and the response one will elicit is ‘’Stop showing off dude.’’ Sadly, in this modern and sophisticated era when people break a tooth or/and nail in their campaign to achieve perfection in every field, a person employing sophisticated and perfect grammar is seen as a persona non grata.

Bad English hangs around our necks like a dead albatross. The abominations inflicted by the person ‘supposedly speaking English’ upon the listener are too many to keep track of. The other day, I was enjoying my rare evening walk, taking in the sounds and sights of the place after which I made my way to the ice-cream parlor. I was enjoying my ice cream and taking in its sugary sweetness when I heard the shopkeeper tell the customer that the cost of the ice cream was ‘tolve’- meaning twelve rupees. On observing for a short period, I noticed that 95% of the people I came across pronounced ‘twelve’ as ‘tolve’ and worse, no one found it to be wrong at all. What is it with people these days? At the going rate, there might well be amendments made in the Thesaurus, replacing ‘twelve’ with ‘tolve.’

Another way of killing the English language is by using literal translation. In Tamil, people say ‘ leave podaren’ - some people very nonchalantly convert it to ‘put leave’ instead of saying ‘taking the day/week/month off’. Same is the case with ‘late panran’ which has been translated to ‘he made late’ instead of saying ‘he delayed someone.’ Its a good thing that William Shakespeare died when he did. If he were to be alive now, he would have killed the people butchering the English language and would have been condemned to death - a very undignified way to die .

One more thing which drives me up the wall is the practice of adding an ‘a’ to a word thereby adding a Tamil touch to it. For instance - ‘’Sachin outta?’’ (is Sachin out?) or ’’had fooda??’’(had food?) . I mean, is it really hard to say three easy words rather than omit one of them and ruin English grammar like never before?? It looks like people are caught in this never ending competition where they praise and glorify the person who kills the English language the most .

The bottom line - it is NOT fashionable to speak bad grammar. Bad grammar is out, flawless and faultless grammar which does not cause shock attacks to 2 out of 40 people (the number of people who probably speak relatively decent grammar) is the in thing.

P.S. : IF YOU THINK YOU CAN COVER UP FOR YOUR BAD USAGE OF THE LANGUAGE BY EMPLOYING A PATHETIC IMITATION OF THE AMERICAN ACCENT, YOU CAN THINK AGAIN.