Being not so good with English myself, I found the following article interesting and funny at the same time. Who is up to write an “Urlish” dictionary?
*When the law minister, Wasi Zafar, was recently described as the “long arm of law” by a local journalist, the minister mistook it for an expression in his native Punjabi which roughly translates into “up yours”.
His apt response, on national TV, was: “If anyone gives me the long arm, my long arm to his whole family.” *
A federal law minister with these communication skills is not a reflection on Pakistani english but an indication of the competency and calibre of the people who appointed him to that post.
That is not just that case with english but with other languages too
few months ago i was with two college students and unlike me they where quite good in acadamics I mentioned one banner written in urdu ‘Muslim league ki Sad Sala Taqreebat’
I asked them what is the meaning of that sentence what kind of celebrations are they. They took time and pondered over but could not guess what ‘Sad Sala’ means. Then after giving them subtle hints like the year Muslim league (the political party which lobbied for Pakistan ) was founded ( 1906 ) and the year now (2006) and use of ‘Fi-sad’ (urdu for Per-cent % ) At last they were finally able to guess Sad Means hundred. Phew
Now i am positive that people were not familliar with the word Mil-len-nium … just before y2k people started using it and just after turn of the century it died out…
I tend to coin obnoxious words too , Maybe because i am also stamped Made in pakistan.
Once my learned teacher told us a word ‘Battery’ it has several meaning and one of them reffered to use of force on (beating of ) spouse (wife, to be precise )
colloquial British of course.
He suggested that now that the society has progressed the term should be evolved into ‘Hattery’ and ‘Wattery’ to be politically correct in equal opportunity society :k:
He asked me to properly forward them for inclusion in dictionary. But me being the lazybum have not done so.
We are so fond of english - the other day I saw a slogan on the wall of a school in the outskirts of Karachi - "Pen is Power". But there was too little distance between Pen and is than it was between Is and Power.
Now you guys can guess what actually would have been read by me!
A federal law minister with these communication skills is not a reflection on Pakistani english but an indication of the competency and calibre of the people who appointed him to that post.
