Wrath Upon English!

  

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"Did you cutted your hairs?"... An unforgetable question that will rest in my memory for eternity.

I am not a paid editor or a proof reader nor do I find nirvana in correcting people, but it just becomes too hard for me to not to cringe over the erroneous words uttered together or independently. And as long as my cringing is silently mumbling inside my head there is peace. The moment it's out, no matter how sugary my words are, people take offense. Ergo, I have been tagged one of the most bothersome grammar Nazis around.

Nobody likes to get corrected specially by a non-authoritative person and I value that, furthermore not everyone is open to learning and I get that too…yes its individual choice to remain in the deep dark primordial well. So, it's fine with me with the title and the indifference of the ignoramus minds, except that flaws in the language peeve me and my oh-so-understanding nature refuses to show up. And I'm not talking about confusing cousins like "then" and "than" or "accept" and "except" nor I'm speaking of the catastrophic use of apostrophes, where "Girls' Hostel" becomes "Girl's Hostel". I'm talking about the other sort...the sort that gives acidity to Mr. Shakespeare in his grave (Lord Bless His Soul).

Look, I don't expect anyone to be an expert in English, neither am I. But, I fail to understand, how people can make humongous blunders and furthermore refuse to learn and correct them.
The other day a co-commuter asked a woman before me 'where are you get downing?'. Initially, I ignored it as a slip of tongue until she repeated merrily the same ‘downing’ statement. This time it was for me.  Anyhow, I couldn't correct a stranger while all she needed to know was my destination, so, I replied, "I'm getting down at Bandra"... stressing on the word "getting". Alas! She repeated the "downing" question, again, to another girl.

I did my schooling from a fairly good school, it's one of the sister branches of a very prestigious school. And it had some very good teachers too, but it did give me a few cringing moments. Some of the teachers were accustomed to asking the loud chatty bunch of students to "talk slowly". What they meant was "talk softly". But sadly, they never got the difference between slowly and softly as they literally translated the Hindi word "dheere" here. This mistake is quite common among many teachers here. My itch to correct our educators knows no bounds. I hope they realize soon how amusing it gets for the students listening to their teachers making such howlers.

My friend Brendan aptly calls this perversion of the English language in India as a revenge on the British for ruling over us for two centuries. I couldn't have agreed more.

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P. S. If you find any howlers in this post, kindly state it on the comment section. I detest living in the primordial well.