We Indians tend to have a desi version of most things on life - Indian western culture, Indian western English, Indian western attires and so on. As in others, our Contribution to the English language is immense, so much so, that we often invent new words when we strongly the feel that the word should have existed. For the uninitiated, though, this causes confusion. While I stake no claim on expertise on the langauage here are a few commom mistakes:
Developer (to American/British PM): Few activities are pending
What is implied: A few of the activites are pending
What the PM understands: Almost nothing is pending. A few and few are not same and never will be. Few means close to nothing if at all. The problem is there is no equivalent phrase in the Indian languages so to us few and a few sound the same.
Parallely: No such word exists yet. Till such time lets try to 'do things in parallel'.
Prepone: Existence of postpone doesn't automatically mean there is a prepone. One way might be to 'bring things forward'.
Updation: No, updation of a document doesn't mean anything. Say the document/ policy update will happen in a month.
will add to the list as more words come to my mind.
last but the least our fascination for American words just keeps growing, don't freak out when we pop a darn freaking comment just to make it sound awesome. too good, eh?
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