Ingleesh Laanguaze

Disclaimer: I do not claim to be a linguist and these are only my observations. Also, disclaimers seem to be in vogue after the Aamir’s dog licking incident. And before you jump to any conclusions, he didn’t lick the dog. Just go watch NDTV 24/7, for updates.
Spoken English classes caught on in a big way a few years ago. Now, they advertise aggresively in every tabloid/newspaper urging you to join one. Makes you a more confident person, it says. Starting with the Sun Music VJs no one speaks a sentence that doesn’t start with “so” and end with “ok va.”
The climax in this English speaking celebrity rut is probably the dance show that is aired on Kalaignar TV on Sundays. Its again one of those starlets’ pass to fame shows judged by yesteryear beauties. The show’s director, Kala Master, is one of the judges. As much as an authority she is on filmy dancing, she lapses into a stream of intolerably weird English when she gets too emotional or in her own words, “Too emotion.” “I like the confident in your performance,” she reassures her participants. When they experiment with something new or get an especially good act together, she likes their “creative.” I can’t even recount some of her other usage of very common words. My memory fails me!
She is just an example of why these spoken english courses will always thrive and have an ever growing clientele. I understand the pseudoness involved in having to speak the language perfectly, well, almost, to make yourself desirable to a prospective employer. But to have to do that on a Tamil Tv show, is simply taking it to new heights. Again, I know its not our “mother-tongue,” so to speak but what about at least making sure you speak a language the way it should be, grammatically correct.
Can they not speak in a language that they’re more comfortable with, rather than having to throw in words from a language they’re barely familiar with? Especially when they know there’re cameras pointing at them. Like Monica says, I’d have to go powder my a**, if I had to speak to more than 2 people in Hindi at the same time. In spite of my roommate giving me very reassuring glances.
I guess at the end of the day, the aim of a language is communication. So, what the hell, lets go revel in our pseudoness.
PS: Next post coming up on the way people have mutilated the Tamil language. Due to the abundance of nonsense available, we’ll start with people who sing in Tamil and dub for our heroines.

All for the sake of a story??

When I was surfing channels this morning, I caught Headlines Today covering the story of Amit, an employee of Infosys, who allegedly killed his wife and before committing suicide cos he suspected an extra marital affair.
As they couldn’t get either of their family members to comment, they turned to their orkut profiles as a testimony to what a happily married wonderful couple they were. Apparently her profile had a lot of pictures of them together in which they looked very happily married! Apparently Amit’s profile clearly mentioned that he detested liars. So apparently he hit the roof when he found out that his wife was lying to him. And oh, btw, his wife, according to her testimonials, is a very lovable, smart woman. If only he had looked through her profile before deciding to kill her.
Are you frikkin kidding me?!! Is this what our news channels want to base their stories on? A profile on a social networking site! Somebody please stop them..

Ps: the person who was reporting the story mentioned that both the families were very disappointed with the way they were covering the story. Hmmm, I wonder why!