me, myself and my first blog

Well, the title might lead you believe I am gonna talk about some person called Mr Abbas Ali. I request you to be patient and hang on.

English is such a weird, funny and eccentric language. The words, pronounciation, the history, influences from languages across the world play havoc on anyone trying to learn it. The grammar, idioms, phrases et al dont do much to mitigate the pandemonium. Those who have seen episodes of 'Mind your language' would definitely agree. Even Eliza Doolittle of My Fair lady had a major trouble with a phrase as simple as 'The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain'.

The first time I was introduced to the idiosyncrasies of the language was when I was 6 [maybe]. Just learning to read... was told to read the newpaper(instead of asking pesky questions). Now at that age you would prolly be used to bat, mat cat or more simpler words. The day I chose to pick the paper I had good fortune of having the headlines of a particular country called Egypt. Now how was I to know how Egypt was pronounced? Since I was asked not to ask too many questions I tried to break it down to manageable proportions.

Egypt look at the word from an 6 yr old viewpoint.

Eg-ypt ?? Ok Eg could be tackled as egg but how do pronounce ypt? Maybe the newspaper guys made a mistake. Was still stuck with egg and just as I figured pyt could be pronounced pet, my mom passed by. Having done all the hard work I had to know if I was anywhere close to being right. I slowly mumbled Egg-pet. Mom came to me calmly hiding all her disbelief and controlling all her laughter. She asked me to repeat what I said. She was deceptively calm. Not sure, I went ahead and repeated myself with a shade of doubt as well as disguised aplomb. Little did I know  then that those words were to be etched as one of the finest and memorable goof-ups in family. Till date, if anyone is a lil upset, one word[egg-pet] is bound to have them ROTFL.

Another such incident in a science classroom. Of course science and geography classes had maximmum number of mis-pronounciation incidents. In a biology class the teacher asked me to read aloud some section of wildlife in India. All was fine till I came to the word, bustard.

Out in the city, one does find so many banners having words that are either being mis-spelt and mis-pronounced. People do make an attempt to speak in the language and it ends us confused more than anything. pelain, geroove, pesdo (instead of plain, groove and pseudo) ... sure does crack us up.

A friend once vistied an Irani cafe during some cricketing season. India was batting and an opener got out. The guy who serves tea said "Abbas Ali, Sachin is gonna come." It leaves my friend (and his friends) perplexed. Who is this new guy in Indian cricket? Abbas Ali? Only one guy got out why are two coming? After a few exchanges, it finally bulbed that Abbas Ali was infact, his way of saying obviously.

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