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Our Life N Our Space Our Life N Our Space Funny English
Our Life N Our Space Our Life N Our Space Funny English
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On my way back, everyday I see a gang of boys gossiping and relaxing near the bus stop. Yesterday , my bus was late, so I just bent an ear, and tried to figure out what was their discussion all about. Soon I found myself snickering at their jokes and I could easily relate to them. The refreshment topic for the day was, How their lecturers mis-pronounce English words and wrongly use tenses. I know you are also going back down memory lanes, remembering funny experiences.
Amitabh Bachan said in one of his movies, “English is a very funny language”. Is English funny or have our pronunciations made it funny? The influences of our mother tongues bring really funny flavor sto the English language. I have my own experiences during my engineering days, and why then, even now I meet people with their own style and version of English. I'd like to share a few here.
I have done my engineering in Orissa, so most of my lecturers had Oriya as their mother tongue, but Telugu and Bengali were not minorities. Once I remember in Computer Networks lab, (the very first session in the semester), 45 of us entered lab room. Our dear CN sir started explaining, the experiments. But the introduction itself confused us so much that we were wondering if this was the first lab session or last but one! Here goes the statement, “We have total 7 experiments, out of that 6 You have done, and 7th You'll be done as part of Sessionals”. For a moment all of us started planning what to do for Tuesday CN lab 3 hours (since 6 experiments we had done). There are actually many such cases in college life. In Electrical Devices Lab, we actually decided to have a competition noting down such funny words or mistakes by the lab inspector, and see whose list is best. At the end of the lab session, we found out that we paid attention only to English and got blastied in Vivas. Later in final year, all of us were bold enough to point out to them how wrong they were. Once a girl was having lunch by bunking her classes, her coordinator caught her and asked, “Are you bunk?”. She smartly replied, “No, I am lunch!”. How can I forget to mention my favorite sir from AP and his unforgettable lines, “Sumana wopen this in wayed document noo...”, he wanted to say, “suman, why do not you open this in Word document”. Oh my God I can not miss out my maths sir. Once there were pegions flying inside classroom, me and my friend were busy following that. Sir noticed us and shouted, “eef you gaalz fail in the eggjaminationa I bill show you how pejeions fly in classrooma.” (It's actually oriya touch to have a “Aa” effect after each word).
I think I better stop here or else the editor will chop off my article saying it crosses 1000 words or something. Well no offense to anyone here, it is something very natural to have the mother tongue influence on other languages. Since generally we first learn our mother tongue and we are pretty comfortable using it, we never realize how much our mother tongue influences our English. Many times until and unless pointed out by someone, people do not even feel that their English is making people laugh at. You can never proclaim to know all the words or their correct pronunciation, especially in English. English is an evolving language. No one can say I have mastered in English. We are all learners. The only difference is that we are placed at different levels of learning. It is not impossible to get rid off our mother tongue influences, though it is difficult, we can still try our best. If not there will be people like me enjoying the fun part of it always.
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  written by umbrella, October 25, 2009  Hilarious ! Mother tongue influence is unavoidable when we try to speak another language..[not only English]. But the interesting thing with English is the entire meaning changes whereas with other languages..the meaning remains the same ! U should listen to the way Keralites pronounce Office, Honour...etc. The "0" is pronounced like 'OO' and not like 'aa'. Tamils speak english in someother way..Tamil has this "zha" and 'cha'. But no 'sa'. So..they pronounce 'sa' as 'cha'!..But now..ppl r smarter with more exposure and try to avoid regional influences.
 written by IdleMind, October 26, 2009
I guess the last time I read this post, I mentioned this. But I can't forget the only incident that this post makes me remember. The elderly professor who asked us (students) to open the classroom windows so that 'the climate can come in'.
Hilarious and funny use of English ... and the way you presented, its humour all the way!
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 October 2009 21:53 |
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I was particularly interested in what you say about the mother tongue influencing the learning and use of another language. Of course, English itself has many influences, including Norse, French and Latin. Those languages helped form today's English, but I wonder how those languages were affected in the process.
A friend and I have recently had a book published about how humorous English can be. For example, there are lots of sayings in everday use that don't really make sense when you think about them and would be very funny if they were taken literally. For example, it's perfectly natural for English people to say "I'm over the moon", "Don't beat about the bush" or "Don't count your chickens before they hatch"!
In the book we do take them literally, with hilarious results. We also encourage the creative use of language and explain how to make it funny even in everyday situations when it's usually boring. The book is called 'Beat About The Bush: The Funny Side of Language'.
I hope you don't try too hard to get rid of your mother tongue influences. As you say, there can be funny results, but it's only adding to the humour that's already there.