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