Bombayite or Mumbaikar?

There was a time when a Bombay resident was a Bombaywallah or a Bambaiyya. Since the city reverted to its non-anglicized origual name, Mumbai, such persons are called Mumbaikar. In Marathi, the 'kar' is normally a suffix to a place-name which means 'resident of'.

My ancestors are said to have been residents of Vijapur, which made us Vijapurkars. All residents of Thane, regardless of their surnames, thus also qualify to be Thanekars, like all Pune residents, Punekars.

Most newspapers, even English language ones, have taken to the use of 'Mumbaikar' but some bloggers, as this, use 'Bombayite'. Some prefer Mumbaiite. The Hindustan Times has also taken to it almost routinely. Which means, there is no consistency.

This brings us to the use of two other usages: 'Andhraite' and 'Keralite' when referring to people from the two states, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. To my understanding, Andhra Pradesh is a region (pradesh) where Andhras live and in Kerala, people who speak Malayalee, and therefore are Malayalees, reside. If this logic were wrong, then people of Bengal (I am on West Bengal) would be Bengalites.

Tamilnadu was the name coined for the region where Tamil is spoken and by the same logic, Odisha for the region where Odiya is the language. Like Gujarat is the state of Gujaratis. All this has to do with the linguistic basis for forming the state, the first being Andhra Pradesh, the region of Andhras who speak Telugu. It is a surprise it did not become Telugu Pradesh or Telugunadu.

It is possible I may be wrong. If there are any contrarian views, hey are welcome here. But do take the trouble to convey it.

'Decide' is forerunner to a 'final decision'?

You 'decide' on doing something. Is that a prelude to a 'final decision' to come later?

A blurb to an interview of K Keshava Rao, a Congress leader in Andhra Pradesh says "in this interview with Rediff.com 's Vicky Najappa, Rao says that he has decided to join the TRS, but would wait until Thursday night before taking a final decision"

I suppose when you decide, it is final. Or you are only considering deciding to do something.

Read the interview and it would emerge that the blurb could have said Rao was edging toward a decision but dependent on how the powers that be in Congress and the Government respond to a demand for quick decision on formation of Telangana.

It is equivocation containing  threat to the party for its dilly-dallying.

We need to decide, finally, how we use the word without a qualifier.

Comptroller - the 'p'?

With Vinod Rai, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) having retired, we are less likely to read and hear about that office for few, even if in a Constitutional office, attract such attention as he had because of his report on G2 telephony and the presumptive loss of 1.7 lakh crore.

It was so often used that CAG, an abbreviation became the norm for referring to the office, even in the first reference breaking a journalistic norm, that very few had to grapple with Comptroller, with a p. How is it pronounced? We in India do bring that p when uttering it. Do we need to?

We needn't.The Merriam-Webster online dictionary's audio facility excludes that p. Try it here. The freedictionary which provides audio support for both British and American pronunciation too skips the p. Click on the Union Jack.

The Oxford Dictionaries, online, explains that its origin is "late 5th century: variant of CONTROLLER, by erroneous association with French compte 'calculation' or its source, later Latin comptus"

What? Come again!

I came across this in an article on the editorial page of The Times of India (May 28, 2013):

"The sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts."

It needs the reader to pause a while and unravel what the writers, Kaushik  Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, meant to convey.

Obviously, it is a take off of the expression, ascribed to Aristotle, which is, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A website, sum.com, explains it thus: "When you add together the parts, the total value will be larger than if you had counted up the individual components."

It is a holism, a doctrine that a system may have properties over and above those of its parts and their organisation. Like, for instance, a human body has a value higher than the value of each of the components that make up a human body.

But the "sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts"? Not easy to take in. Not very comfortable for a reader, even if it were a correct expression.

Army and 'order'

Organisations sometimes need outside help to better run them.

Some appoint consultants, others commission studies to find flaws in the way things are done and then look to changing procedures.

But when Indian Army wants to speed up the process of selection of officers and make it transparent, it just orders a study. In this case, the Indian Army orders a study by the Indian Institute of Management - Ahmadabad.

Fortunately, the IIM-A was not ordered; The Army chief ordered someone, apparently down the line, to have a study done.

Read this headline on The Hindu website om May 24, 2013 night: Army orders an IIM study to review officer selection.

We don't know what the print edition would prefer as the headline.

It is not the work of the headline writer. The text itself speaks of the order. 

An organisation which depends on order for itself efficiency, no other word would do!

In the second paragraph, however, there is an asked. Seems rather out of step, doesn't it?

Terrorism or murder?

Words have a purpose. That is why they are used. Indiscretion in the choice of words employed could convey an entirely different picture than intended. Carelessness can be with disastrous consequences.

Tristan Stewart-Robertson, a Glasgow-based journalist who writes a column for Firstpost.com deals with the use of the word 'terrorist' in describing the alleged killers of a person in Woolwich the other day.

His argument is that in the context of wild attacks anywhere which are now routinely classified as 'terror' and the attackers as 'terrorist(s)' in the media could well be a huge error. A murder could be plain murder, and a terror attack quite something else.

His piece can be read here.

In this context, when we speak or write of the sway of bahubalis in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, gangsters elsewhere, including the local goons who just like to keep the areas around them under their thumbs, are also terrorists. They were covered under a law, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act. These days we use the term terror in an entirely different context, to explain the attacks on Mumbai, the attacks on the World Trade Centre, especially after the rise of al-Qaida.

Stewart-Robertson is clear - don't call a murder a terror attack.

Talk to or talk with?

Moneylife, a periodical which also updates news on its website, used this expression:

Phaneesh Murthy, "speaking with reporters, said" whatever he said when conveying his side of the story on the sexual harassment allegations against him (till a court convicts him, we shall qualify it with 'allegation' unlike newspapers and television).

Read the relevant third paragraph in this link.

The question is, does one talk to reporters or talk with?

My understanding is 'talk to' is an Americanism. 'Talk to' is is English English, so to say. The second is used, some blogs explain, when a person is engaged in conveying information to more than one person, as reporters (plural here). But when two persons are engaged in a conversation, which is an exchange of information or views, it has to be talk with. Aren't reporters asking questions and the person responding, making it a conversation? Perhaps  it is putting a fine point to it.

This blog invites comments, and welcomes even a correction.

The spoken word - not just errors, also biases

When we deal with usage of words, it tends to be of written words, But there are spoken words too on news television which also are grammatically incorrect or are misused, sometimes not conveying much.

Madhu Trehan, who does a weekly analysis of television news in her weekly offering Clothesline on www.newslaundry.com finds that choice of words convey biases.

Watch this.

But Trehan, does one put them to dry before or after wringing them dry?

A letter and mixed feelings

There is an interesting item in today's The Times of India about how it took a letter mailed in Anand, Gujarat to reach the addressee in Navsari 31 years - yes, you read it right. The two cities are about 200 km apart.

When received, its  recipient was 'grateful' and also 'shocked'. When he read it, he was 'thrilled' as well. He also said, "I appreciate" the postal department for "preserving the letter" and then delivering.

Gratitude and shock don't go together, thrill does. Appreciation and shock? No. If the letter was well preserved, then, as the item says, why was it in tatters? If the postal official did not know where it was all these years, how does it get thanked for preserving something it did not even know was with them?

But 31 years is a long time in the life of a letter in transit. The sender did not remember why he wrote that letter but the addressee now knows. The gentleman from Anand had referred a patient to his friend, an eye specialist. We don;t know what happened to the patient and his eyesight.

The strangest part is at the end of the news item. The postal official says he was "surprised as to where the letter had been lying all these years". The reporter could easily have told him, "Sir, it was on its way".

Know your English, but she has no opposite for 'sin'

The Hindu has a reputation for good English. It has been said time and again that one improves on his or her English language skills by reading that newspaper. This may not necessarily hold good for every printed item in the newspaper these days, but it most certainly it is the case with its editorial pages.

For long, the newspaper has been doing another service of a weekly column, Know your English, published every Monday. The columnist S Upendran responds to questions from readers and explains the meaning and usage of words and expressions.

This column is printed regularly but in some corner of the newspaper's Monday pull-outs. Navigating to it is quite a task. Therefore this blog would, as and when it is able to spot one, provide the hyperlink to it, as it has here.

In this Know your English on May 6, 2013, Upendran explains the difference between effeminate and womanish. He also tells you, "Most Indian languages have an opposite" for sin, like punyam, punya, etc.but English does not have an exact opposite. Many people make do with words like 'virtue, 'grace'., etc. as opposites".

Now Mr Upendran may want to tell that while a comma precedes the etc., should it be followed by another comma? Etc., being an abbreviation of et cetera, the Latin words for so on and so forth, should invariably end with a full stop but a comma could follow?

Railway or Railways Minister?

A huge network which carries people and freight across India is the Indian Railways, that is Railway with an 's' attached. Like the plural of the word.

The minister in charge of that department is almost always referred to as the Railway minister. The 's' is missing.

Shouldn't it be the Railways Minister?

The annual budget he or she presents to the Parliament is, again, most often, the Railway Budget, not the Railways Budget. 

Even the Indian Railways uses it as a singular on its portal where the budget is uploaded, and headlined the 2013 budget as the 'Railway Budget' - the 's' missing. Some newspapers trim it to Rail Budget.

However, some newspapers, do use it in the correct form but only occasionally.

Makes one wonder, which is right - the one in popular usage or the way the Indian railways calls itself?

This confusion is confounded when the entity calls itself 'Bharatiya Rail' as its Hindi version.

There is much confusion at the official level itself. The body, which was later registered under the Indian Companies Act, came to be under the Indian Railways (yes, with that 's'). However, in an amendment to that Act in 1989, the law-makers used both railways and Railway.

The head of the unit that provides the oversight on safety is the Commissioner, Railway Safety, and each of its several zones are only a railway. There is the Central Railway, the Western Railway etc.

Interestingly, the top group that administers the entire network is not the Railways Board but Railway Board.

Civic body, no civic sense, but Sackrifice?

Headlines have to say a lot in few words, space being a constraint. The idea is to attract attention to a news item and them draw the reader into the text underneath it.

The Times of India has in the past used puns in some headlines, as if they were all written by Bachi Karkaria. She is a punster and read this to estimate her incorrigible capacity for playing with words. She writes a regular column, Erratica.

Yesterday's (May 10, 2013) one headline in that newspaper deserves an applause. Mumbai's city government was told by a judge of the Bombay High Court that the civic body that "you are not behaving as the municipal corporation for the maintenance of Mumbai, but as the municipal corporation for the destruction of Mumbai".

Of course, what Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud said was not part of an order or a judgement but a part of the proceedings on a public interest litigation (PIL).

Instead of the trite stuff like 'Judge raps' the civic body etc., the headline said this: High court slams BMC for lacking civic sense. A civic body without civic sense.

Compare it with this headline, Sackrifice for survival, in DNA, of May 11, 2013, for a story on how Railways Minister, Pawan Bansal had 'sacrificed' a goat to remain in office but had to finally quit when asked to by the Prime Minister following a bribery scam involving Bansal's nephew. It was a combination of 'sack' and sacrifice'.

It has to be noted that we don't know if the goat was sacrificed or fed since the media - newspapers, television and social media - speak of both.

It rings false, but such headlines, such coined words always do.

Do losses increase or widen?

Profits remain steady, increase or decrease. Adjectives can be used to describe its pace of change dependent on, well, the pace of change. It can be a slow, steady rise, a sharp surge, or even a gentle, soft curve on the charts or even a point where there is no profit or no loss.

Losses, whether slow or quick, can be traumatic for any business, and one just has some or heavy losses but these are subjective. They can be big or small.

But have you heard of 'wide losses'? If you haven't, then read this headline in the Business Standard of May 7, 2013: Adani Power's losses widen to Rs 586 crore in Q4.

Of course, losses can increase too, that is, what was a loss in revenue or profits yesterday could be have some more added to it  today, thus increasing it.

"Wide loss(es)" is, however, not entirely wrong, provided it is properly used to describe something else. For instance, If every other scrip or a a sector on the stock market slide on a given day, then it is indeed a 'wide loss'. Not otherwise.

A good example of the use of 'wide loss' is in Financial Times, (February 4, 2013) which can be read here.It would suffice to read the headline and the first paragraph where losses in all major 10 sectors were reported.

'Boston bomber' is charged, but remains a 'suspect'

This blog likes to look generally at the usage of words in the media, mostly print. Mostly, among them, newspapers.

That takes us to the use of the word 'suspect' in stories dealing with news about crimes. In this particular case, the Boston Bombings.

The latest, and a fine example, is its use in a headline by The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper. When referring to Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers, he is a 'suspect', in a New York Times syndicated piece.

In the text, he is mentioned as having been 'charged', though the 'suspect' is missing in the NYT's headline. It points to the man being already 'charged' and of the on-going investigations. In both the newspapers, he is prefixed with the honorific, 'Mr.'. This is a practice even in The Economist - pointed, but polite, courtesies to even suspects and, yes, to convicts as well.

Indian newspaper could refer to Dzhokar Tsarnaev as 'an accused' since he has been charged. Once he is, if he is, convicted, then he becomes a convict. But the tendency in Indian media is to refer to any person picked up for suspicion becomes an accused, an unfortunate tradition.

The television news networks are worse: a man could well be tried well before legally being charged. These days, even hanging is described as the best punishment in the trial by television.

Elsewhere, the law enforcers look for the suspect first. here, we look for the 'accused', even if unidentified by name.

It is all to do with the finer points of a situation. The implications of a suspect being let off but being accused of a crime in the media are not understood. The police may be poor in use of words, the media needn't be.

Huge bribe case only a 'slur'?

Today's Business Standard"s lead headline is Another corruption slur on UPA.

That, even as one case of graft after another is emerging from the woodwork. It is no more a shock, no more a scandal, and having become quite routine, even the newspaper's headline writer seems to have had his pen dulled.

A slur, among other things, is only a disparaging remark which hurts one's reputation. And what is the UPA's reputation? Breeder of corruption and protector of the tribe of the corrupt.

So, in a lighter vein, to say the UPA is not corrupt would be against its reputation.

If you read the entire story, you would see that it is, aptly, only a "latest controversy". Latest, yes, but only a controversy?

Words say a lot, don't they?

Status quo and status quo ante

This is about status quo.

A headline in The Hindu on April 23 had this headline, Revert to status quo, India tells China.

Today, DNA slugged a story on Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid's China visit, thus: India wants the platoon of Chinese troops, who have erected their tents in that area, to pull back and restore the status quo.

On March 23 The Hindu had used status quo in a headline.

This usage is incorrect. Once something changes, it is not status quo, and when it has to be taken back to what it was, then it is to status quo ante. Merriam-Webster says status quo ante "s the state of affairs that existed previously". 

What India is dealing with is the status quo - about the here and now - of Chinese troops on Indian side. If they leave, then they situation would not be to status quo but to status quo ante. Status quo, as the same dictionary says, is "the existing state of affairs".