31 July 2008

Evolution of Language

A friend of mine always interrupts when anyone uses the word "postponed", saying that there is no such word. It affects the actual discussion. Yeah I do agree, there was no such word. But when it is accepted and understood between all the people in India and even some dictionaries include that word as belonging to Indian English, I do not see a problem.

If someone is creative and cooks up a word in their mother tongue, they are viewed as smart people where as when you do that in a foreign language, your own people consider it as lack of fluency. The same applies for accent and pronunciation.

On the same note, there is another word: post-paid(use & pay), cooked up to be the opposite of pre-paid(pay & use) where, post-payable would have been more appropriate but, post-paid is easy to understand.

Let us keep the evolution going

4 comments:

Sankar said...

But why is postponed an invalid word ? It is not flagged an error on any dictionaries that I use.

Nikanth Karthikesan said...

Yes, now it is recognized by a lot of dictionaries, it is a recent addition. But still most of non-Indian English speakers may not have heard that word.

Anonymous said...

hehe .. guyz .. "postpone" is a valid word. itz "prepone" that is not there. so use 'advanced' ..

Nikanth Karthikesan said...

lol. I spotted my mistake when I read sankar's comment yesterday, but left it as it is, for you to comment.

BTW both are valid words now, so keep using any of the words or cook-up new words.