Please check the same

Man of Honour
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Incorrect. This is simply Indian English.
See, this is what happens when your Empire invades a country and forces its culture on the locals - They start finding ways to communicate and learn your language. This stuff is a combination of literal translation and colloquialism, once being commonly spoken throughout the UK as well as The British Raj. Now it's mostly used over there, except where someone gets their IT support from Mumbai.

Do the needful, kindly revert, prepone the meeting, do one thing, be out of station... It's all local phrasing that we gave them, basically. Any manager using phrases like this is merely copying them from the IT guys... and since he's not 2nd Line Support, he does look like a clown!


As a native Englander, wherein we speak English, we do use that one quite a lot. Do a search just on this very forum, wherein you'll find 15 pages of it! :p
Wherewithal (or rather, lack of it) is more common than wherewith, though.
Bang on.
 
Man of Honour
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Ottakring, Vienna.
I miss Indian English.

Kindly do the needful
Herewith the documents
Please check the same
Please revert soonest

Oh, and a reluctance to use past tense (and to a degree, future tense), almost everything is present tense (Chinese is like this too)

You get used to it if you are dealing with offshore devs/IT folk.
 
Caporegime
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Dominating rooms with symmetry
It's not a management buzzword if loads of other people are using it.

That's pretty much the meaning of a buzzword and I didn't limit it to management.

The way I see it is the phrases they use aren't much different to the ones you see used over here, someone has seen it one day and decided to copy it regardless of whether it's being used at the correct time or within the correct context.
 
Associate
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"Please do the needful" is my favourite, and a great example of the flexibility of English word construction.

"This is the kind of up with which I will not put" I think is another interesting example of correct but bizarre English sentence construction (albeit Winston Churchill this time)
 
Soldato
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"This is the kind of up with which I will not put" I think is another interesting example of correct but bizarre English sentence construction (albeit Winston Churchill this time)

Nothing beats "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

:cool:

But I digress.

Indian English was the language of Government and bureaucracy in Raj India.

There is no such language as "Indian" and certainly there were many different languages in use across the continent during imperial rule.

Indian English (Like English globally today) represented a common language that everybody understood whatever their mother-tongue was. and allowed effective communication between central government and the diferent provinces, smooth operation of the railways and so on.

As a consequence it is rather old fashioned and even a little bit pompous, as befits a 19th century civil service origin.
 
Associate
Joined
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2,343
My personal favourite... Bifurcate.

Also...

Me> "Which one of these two opposing things should we do?"
Raj> "Yes."

or the longer version
Me> "Which one of these two opposing things should we do?"
Raj> "That we must do." *giving no indication which one
Me> "So which one?"
Raj> "Yes."

Me> "Do you think that is a good idea?"
Raj> "Yes. We should not do that"

I have learned that just like a nod of the head, "Yes" does not just mean "Yes", it can also mean any of the following:
"No",
"You are someones manager so I must agree even though you are obviously wrong",
"I am thinking of something else",
"You are an idiot",
"I am an idiot",
"I have no idea what you are talking about",
"no one here is listening",
"I have no intention of doing anything needed",
and "Why are you talking to me?"

Don't get me wrong, I love working with my colleagues, but until you work out the rules it can be deeply puzzling and frustrating.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Sep 2005
Posts
16,527
My patience has actually run out with the above

If I ask someone if the server backups have worked, and they say yes (which they always do) and turns out they haven't, it's a warning from me
 
Man of Honour
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Shropshire
It's the head wobble that always got me it never matched up with the yes/no that was coming from their mouth and sometimes I think they were just imitating a bobble head.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Mar 2004
Posts
5,000
I manage one of these teams based near Delhi, I go over every half year or thereabouts. All top people, once they are relaxed about you they are without exception a pleasure to be around and work with.
 
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