The Red Marker Blogathon

I am jotting down some of my experiences in response to Sue's post..I have come across many people throughout the country who insist on speaking English their way and not the correct way. Irrespective of the language in which they are spoken to, some people insist on answering in English but unfortunately are not able to convey correctly what they want to say..whereas some people directly translate sentences from a vernacular language to English resulting in this confusion..

1. A funny incident that happened when I was in college- A professor was taking his first class after recently joining the college. He recollected his experience at the administrative section. It seems he did not have a pen and he asked a peon " If you don't mind, can I have your pen please?" to get a reply " Have it, I have no mind"..

2. When we visited Chennai and southern Tamil Nadu as part of our vacations (before I settled down here), I would hear kids and people coming to a shop and asking for " 1 colour"..I often used to wonder what is that colour only to realise that it is the local pen name for Cool Drinks such as Limca, Coke etc..

3. I worked in the customer service cell of a share transfer agent/registrar some time back. My job was to reply to letters and answer incoming phone calls from customers. I had trouble understanding the content of some letters in broken English. One of my colleagues could not speak English fluently but he would insist on speaking it the way he wished..Once he answered a call for a query that he was not in charge of..he replied " THE Miss XYZ is there, you talk to HIM afterwards" instead of saying "Miss XYZ is in charge of this section, please call later and speak to her".