Author: Ash Nallawalla

About Ash Nallawalla

Ash Nallawalla is a consultant enterprise SEO with a long background in large companies with complex websites. He is a published author of several books and thousands of magazine articles.

Upgrading an iPhone 3GS to iPhone 5

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I have had an Apple iPhone 3GS for nearly three years and its chief annoyance to me was the camera. Any excuse to upgrade to the iPhone 5. I missed the earliest order date so I was happy to wait the estimated two weeks. As luck would have it, Optus sent me an SMS to say I could collect it on the launch date of 21 September 2012.

I got to the store around 5 pm and there were about four people ahead of me, including people who hadn’t pre-ordered. So, at least in this store there wasn’t a shortage of some models. By contrast, the Millenia Mall in Orlando had hundreds of people waiting to buy their iPhone 4 on its launch date. We just happened to be watching the spectacle, content with our 3GS.

waiting
Only four people were ahead of me at Optus World, Werribee Plaza on 21 September 2012.

 

x
Much longer queue for the Apple 4 at The Millenia Mall, Orlando, FL Apple store on 24 June 2010.

 

Continue reading

Content or discontent?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Most Indians seem to pronounce content (as in the contents of this page) as कंटेंट .
What’s wrong with that?
In the rest of the world (except, perhaps the countries next to India), कंटेंट refers to contentment, as in “I am very content with my career”.
The correct pronunciation for (page) content is कॉन्टेंट .

Colleague

In a similar vein, colleague is pronounced as कॉल्लीग, not कलीग. (You don’t pronounce college as कलेज, do you? 🙂
 

Like that only

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Let’s look at instances of valid English that would not make sense outside India. Consider this dialogue in India:

Q. Why did you do that?
A. Like that only.
A. Just like that.

Even an Indian knows that the answer makes no sense, but lots of people continue to talk like that. What would happen in the West?

Q. Why did you do that?
A. No idea.
A. Search me.
A. I can’t explain it.
etc

There are many other possibilities. Some of them don’t make literal sense either.
Let’s look at examples of the shortage/abuse of articles in India, particularly Northern India. (By “articles”, I refer to grammar — “a” and “the” are indefinite and definite articles). See Wikipedia.

Wrong: He has gone to office.
Right: He has gone to the office.

Explanation: He has gone to one specific office.

Wrong: She is eating mango.
Right: She is eating a mango.

Explanation: She is eating one mango – some random mango.

Wrong (no other information is known): She is eating the mango.
Right (note emphasis): She is eating the mango.

Explanation: She is eating a specific mango, perhaps one that has some significance, e.g. it is the only one in a bunch injected with poison. (It happens in fiction!)

Wrong: She likes to eat the mangoes.
Right: She likes to eat mangoes.
Wrong: I am doing some time pass.
Right: I am killing time.

Explanation: Passing time has morphed to “time pass”, which is a nice turn of phrase, but makes you look uneducated when you say it outside India.
Sometimes, people forget their high school grammar lessons. This poor soul has given us an example of bad spelling, bad grammar and bad logic (source):

if we really wants to kill terrorism from root then we should take some actions on that places where we know that terrorist are feeded by people for terrorism.We should start form the KASAB sitting in the prison and having fledge service of prison these is the one who is responsible of taking innocent people’s life in mumbai terror attacks.

Mastodon