la lingua pura, as Dan Brown calls English in his "da Vinci Code", is the perennial victim of cruel, cold-blooded and almost casual murder. Just consider these dollops of excellence in communication that a knowledgeable English speaker must put up with day in and day out (the text in brackets are mine).
NOTE: These are all quoted verbatim from email messages that I have the bad fortune of reading.
- We constantly are trying to improvise the tool to provide additional features. [sure you’re trying to improvise. Now, how about some improvements for a change?] There are a lot of suggestions [are a lot of suggestions, or are lots of suggestions? Make up your mind!] coming from the users like you who would like to have various features in this tool...Please use this facility generously and help us to help you better. [yes, we shall be generous, and will "help you to help us better"]
- Please revert back for any further clarifications in this regard. [shall I also include the negative -5 for clarification?]
- Finally we are got the response from web service & thanks for your co-operation. [all your response are belong to us and thanks for all the fish]
- Can u give the xml request in your Adapter side(Helper Application side) not in the sample xml request ? ( Meaning Helper Application side your handle request, so that request we want.) [now, that parenthetic saved the day! We'd have been very confused otherwise]
- This will be different call. He only requested to setup at that time. I will check with him and rearrange the call. [this was from a manager]
- It is my mistake only I missed out earlier as M is on leave I could not able to concentrate on it. I will see it won’t happen again. [sorry, I couldn't able to resist including this only]
- I am also sending J for raising NAIF's for SDP and Open Zone for Live source application connectivity from R [edited] Platform. So that they will be in place before this will be migrated onto R from D [edited] platform. [phew!]
- We will have small meeting. I will let you know the timings. [The world is full of small things]
- I reviewed the doc, I updated some sentences and added some commends [wonderful! Thangs a dun!]
- Each environment will have different different settings [and each sentence will have different different errors]
- S is not the write contact, Could you please let me know the issue details [ah, he's the "read" contact; now I get it!]
- Currect Implementation : if(manualcbuk != null && manualcbuk != "null" && manualcbuk !=""){ [To be sure, this is an excellent example of how code ought not to be written, still...be very sure while writing code, son!]
- I didn't have nothing more then this to estimation….So the estimation will obviously grow up. [it will, but when will you?]
And on and on it goes!
Have you come across such gems in your career? If so, improve my day by sharing them :-)
4 comments:
loved it (esp the -5 one) - witty, caustic, tongue firmly in cheek, served just right.
keep 'em flowing
Thank you rema :-)
lol. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Jokes apart, we (read I) make a lot of mistakes too. In my opinion, only the degree of brutality varies. I don't realize my mistakes until a native speaker lashes out in a post of his/her own. :-) I don't even want to venture into pronunciation.
-Viji
Hmmm, that's true sometimes. The difference in our (both of us) case is that we know enough to acknowledge genuine errors, and seldom have to really learn something new that I'd consider basic. Obviously, it's all relative.
Still...
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