Friday, July 24, 2009

My Pet Peeves

Everyone has his/her pet peeves - something which is not unacceptable but something which, kind of, annoys him. Here are a few of my pet peeves

Anyways. This really sounds i-also-English kinds. Have we ever read, in any of our text books, the word 'anyways'? The correct word, anyway, is 'anyway' – and surprisingly, everyone knows it – even those who use 'anyways' in every other sentence they speak. But still they use it - perhaps, to sound 'cool'. You think it's just 'no-problems' to use it?

Sarvanan: You know, radio was invented by Marconi
Swetha: No re. Radio was not invented by Marconi. It was invented by Tesla
Sarvanan: I told you na that I referred to Wiki and Wiki cannot be wrong re.
Swetha: Is it? I'll need your help in Googling, Sarvanan
Sarvanan: err...
Swetha: Will you help me na!

[Link to who-invented-radio dispute]

Sa re ga ma pa dha ni may be music to my ears but 're' and 'na' are definitely not. There is also the English-version of it. 'Na' maps to 'no'. “I told you no that the pani puri is not hyginic. Now see. You fell ill no

No problem – This phrase may have become famous after Suzuki Samurai's ad. But this is something which people use so often when they don't intend to use it. “No problem” is not a replacement for “you are welcome”. While filing a complaint with a service provider, I got, kind of, annoyed when the customer service executive returned a 'no problem' for my 'thank you' . Does she mean it's not a problem for her to take my complaint? She should be, rather, sorry. I am sure she didn't mean the 'no-problem' in the literal sense and gave it as an obvious return for a 'thank you'.

'Only' is being used to mean 'hi' in Hindi – Like, 'maine hi use kaha jane ki liye' translates to 'i only asked her to go'. Now don't laugh after reading it twice. If you go back from 'i only asked her to go' to Hind you land up at 'maine use jane ki liye hi kaha' which is completely different from the original sentence!

Exclamation mark. This has become a subsitute for other punctuation marks like full stop and question mark. Unnecessary use of '!' doesn't make the writing more exclamatory. Neither does it shows that the writer is 'exclaiming'. Personally, it annoys me. I wish the word processors removed those unnecessary exclamation marks. Or the email solutions mark those emails with a dollop of exclamation marks as spam. BTW, even the smileys don't mean you are smiling. It's very annoying when you get something like - “You are fired! :)

Another pet peeve of mine in my childhood days was the use of 'Teacher's Day' instead of 'Teachers' Day'. It was a different feeling altogether to see beautifully designed and decorated charts wishing 'Happy Teacher's Day'.

It's not that i am some language expert or that i don't make errors. I am sure i do. And you can find a host of them in this blog. But i guess everyone has a right to 'have' pet peeves :)

Do share your pet peeves with us and also if i happen to be using any of yours in my posts.

Cheers.

9 comments:

Anonymous July 24, 2009 at 9:43 AM  

Beautifully said. I seem to be sharing some of your pet peeves, yet using some of them myself.
You might also mention the replacement of every punctuation mark with an ellipsis. Part of the SMS-ese lingo. It runs thus, "m gr8...hw bt u...." Sad plight. More pet peeves that I've come across here, here and here.

Prashant Mehta July 24, 2009 at 10:20 AM  

@vigneshjvn

Yeah. The SMS lingo and the ellipses are my pet peeves as well. Damn, how could i forget to mention it.

Krishna July 24, 2009 at 12:39 PM  

Nice post:-)

Also people use Ki instead of 'that'.

'na' 're' and 'np' after 'thanks' are commom now a days!!!!

Also sms and gtalk lingo!!!

Lavanya July 24, 2009 at 5:16 PM  

Very well said Prashant. I can list out some of my pet peeves (from you)
"Seriously" - as a substitute for 'yes, of course' or rather any exclamation.

My pet peeves (from the rest of the world,including me)
a) "like" : used as a filler word, after every two words uttered!
b) "na,re,ya"
c) "No problem" : for the reasons you suggested. Unfortunately, I picked this up overtime .

aboutfilter July 25, 2009 at 6:07 AM  

This was fulltu fun to read. yr writing is fundu re. total tp.
'You know' this is the typical style all have picked up you know.

Toastmasters help in improving this.

Mustaf July 26, 2009 at 10:57 PM  

Very interesting...you must have concentrated "reading between the words" very much :-)

deicider July 27, 2009 at 11:46 AM  

Innovative and witty,trademark Prashant....that's what I would call this piece.I use some of these pet peeves myself specially the use of the word "na".I will tell you the worst that I have heard,this came as an sms from my friend...."We are waiting for you,cum here immediately"."Come" has been replaced by "cum" in the most happening forms of communication today but frankly I would prefer the four lettered spelling instead of the three lettered one.

Lalit Vashishta July 27, 2009 at 11:57 AM  

cum on yaar, you are taking this too far, na.

alpesh July 30, 2009 at 1:39 PM  

Hey dude atlast i found it out.
By the way, apart from "re" ther's another one that i use quite often this days and it's "common yar"

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