Vignettes

Purveyors of mangled English

R.S. Karunaratne

Signboards, advertisements, brochures and letters written in mangled English are a frequent source of laughter. It is, however, no laughing matter because mangled English can have serious complications for business.

It is amazing that companies which spend vast sums of money on advertising campaigns do not think it necessary to invest a little more to ensure that their advertisements, signboards, brochures, and letters are well written and edited by a competent person.

Once I bought a locally-made television antenna from a reputed company. I received a colourful leaflet along with the antenna. It said, "This is special TV antenna which is manufactured in a wide range to suit all channels. It can install yourself, very easily as shown in the diagram."

On another occasion, I received a letter from a leading private educational institute. It said, "We are to inform you that our Language Faculty is consists of 16 Teaching Centres around the country and we are working as a team to maintain our standard and the uniformity of the programme." The letter was signed by the Course Co-ordinator. At the bottom of the letter there was a note: "Dress: Please wear a tie." For the first time I learned that the tie is a dress!

After buying a Japanese digital player I went through the instructions printed in a glossy brochure. It said, among other things, "Thanks for purchase our digital player.... Please excuse us and point out mistakes so that we can correct it. But we not take charge of the missing and error in the manual and we could not control the mistake caused by clients at the same time." I still do not know what the "mistakes" referred to here. Are they the grammatical mistakes in the brochure or faults in the product?

Flipping through the pages of an old business magazine while waiting for my turn with the dentist, I came across an interesting article written by Prof. Richard Watson Todd. He too had similar experiences. Once he had received a manual when he bought a washing machine. The manual said, "Automatic washing machines. Please remove all your clothes when the light goes out."

The professor had stayed in a tourist hotel during one of his routine lecture tours. While looking for something to read during breakfast, he had found a manual meant for the hotel employees. He found that everything was all right except the following instruction:

"After the tea break, staff should empty the teapot and stand upside down on the Drainage Board."

Sometimes, those who do business writing try to impress the reader by using high sounding words. Prof. Todd had found the following in one of the business letters:

"(The executives should be) proactive in upskilling and strategising through blue sky thinking outside the box in order to enable the company to push the envelope through synergizing the leveraging of assets by utilising core competencies as success factors."

This is nothing but gobbledygook!

Meanwhile, educated people get annoyed to read material containing misspelt words such as, "accommodation" (for accommodation), "compliment" (for complement), or "stationary" (for stationery). With a little more care these mistakes could have been avoided.

There seems to be something radically wrong with our education system to produce people who cannot communicate their ideas effectively in good English.

Being a teacher and an ardent lover of English, once I bought a copy of "Everyman's guide to English grammar" written by an Indian author. Since the author claimed that it was 'a guaranteed source book for excellence in English', I did not hesitate to buy it.

To my horror I found the following bloomers in the book:

* "An young and cultured executive gave a personal compliment in a diplomatic way."

* "I listen to trivial complaints from my workers. I often feel tired of it."

* "How do you do Vishnu? Where you working?"

* "I am an old friend of Menon. And yourself?"

* "The children are chips of the same block." (Belonging to the same category) However, the standard idiom is "He is a chip of the old block" meaning "His looks and talents are like those of his father."

When such self-proclaimed grammarians go wrong, we cannot expect students to learn and use good English. These grammarians and teachers are responsible for the widespread mangled English you come across in writing and speech n many parts of the world.