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For most of us, English is still a challenge. With all its irregularities, exceptions and rules, English is a very difficult language to master. Wrong: Myself Sunil Kumar Wrong: You will surely get more better. English has a few adjectives whose comparative and superlative forms are irregular. The adjective 'good', turns into 'better' in the comparative and 'best' in the superlative. The word 'more' should not be included. Wrong: I will return back. Wrong: I will talk to the principle of this college. Nashaat Quadri, 34 from Dubai, sent the following letter: At present, I am working with Mashreq Bank, for their direct banking division based at Dubai HO. I have observed that most of the populace here is from the Indian subcontinent followed by a sizeable chunk from gulf, phillipines and the UK. Here are some funny situations. Indians not used to fluent English often say 'the thing is that' as a filler (for baat yeh hai in Hindi). I hear clientage used in place of clientele. Aparna, an architect in the UK, sent another amusing story: Looking into construction quality before signing them off to a client is common. Sometimes there are flaws that need to be redone and one of my colleagues wrote this: Comment: 'The whole wall needs to be fixed' in place of 'The hole in the wall needs to be fixed'. It took the contractors by surprise that an entire wall needed to be fixed not to mention confusion on our part that something so huge was missed by us till the very end. A Matin, a 50 year old executive from Mumbai, rounds out today's bloopers with his letter: If you'd like to share common bloopers you come across when people speak/ write in English, do mail your list, along with their correct alternatives to englishbloopers@rediffmail.com -- we'll highlight them right here as a helpful guide to those trying to improve their English. Also, make sure you include your FULL NAME, AGE, OCCUPATION and the CITY you are based in. |
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