Letters to the Times of India, Director General, Doordarshan, etc.

Written on 24 December 2014

Dear Sir

I am writing to bring to your notice a language error in today’s edition. Please refer to the following sentence under your news heading Munda out, will Jharkhand get its first non-tribal CM?

...although the Narenda ModiAmit Shah duo is expected to take a call and communicate it to Jharkhand BJP.

Correction: It is true that as an informal word ‘call’ means a decision, judgement, or prediction, but one cannot take a call; one can only take a decision. However, the verb ‘make’ collocates with the word ‘call’. Look at the following sentence examples:

a tough call to make (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/call)

that entrepreneurial instinct may account for his ability to make tough calls when profits are at stake (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/call)

Thank you for your attention.

H. Pd. Singh

http://eduspiritual.blogspot.com/

Written on 12 March 2014

Dear Mr Sharan

I am writing to draw your attention to a grave and glaring error in the Hindi spelling of the English word ‘National’ as it appears (on the TV screen) in the Devanagari script on the DD National channel. The spelling used by your organization appears as नेशनल. However, the correct pronunciation of the English word ‘National’ is नैशनल. To substantiate my point as well as to differentiate between the pronunciations of the two words relevant here, let me produce the pronunciations of the two English words ‘Nation’ and ‘National’ as given in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (and the same in all the other standard dictionaries of the English language):

Nation: neɪʃn  (http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/nation)

National: næʃnəl  (http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/national)

I hope you have marked the clear distinction between the pronunciations of the two relevant words. Thus, maintaining the standard of linguistic accuracy, National should be written on your channel as  नैशनल  rather than नेशनल —as is the case now.

I regret to point out that while most of your English newsreaders, by and large, use grammatically correct English, the subtitles appearing on the TV screen are poorly edited and are full of errors. Your editors will benefit, to a certain degree, by perusing my article Use & Abuse of English in India: the Need for a Scrupulous Approach to Using English available on my blog: http://eduspiritual.blogspot.com

 I hope to see my mail acknowledged by your office.

Yours sincerely                        

Hareshwar Prasad Singh