ACROSS
1 - Half of them trick an English couple with the man (8) - {
5 - An Arab follows the notice in a month (4) - {AD}{AR}
9 - Travel past switching sides for a merger (8) - {TAKE}{OVER} Overtake to takeover
10 - Symbolic image of the mind (6) - PSYCHE [CD]
12 - Shot out at a silly piece of writing (4) - TOSH*
13 - They are made in conformity with both the parties (10) - AGREEMENTS [CD]
15 - Investigation that may be shockingly new! (6,8) - GROUND BREAKING [DD]
17 - Ken, note he is somehow following the steward out at lunchtime in a sick condition (5,2,3,4) - {WA
21 - Police Officer angrily leaves half of the dinner with a feeling of sadness (10) - {PO}{Indi*GNANTLY}
22 - Mark out this kind of bowler (4) - PACE [DD]
25 - Compare inside the kind of x-ray taken out at the end of the day for the missionary (6) - {XA{VIE}R26 - Dictatorial sailors are mostly old in half a minute (8) - {ABS}{OL
27 - Cummerbund found in South Africa for the girl shortly (4) - {SA}{SH
28 - Dependable wise man is in an Indian state for the final test (8) - {ST}{ALWAR}{T}
DOWN
1 - Body specialist is at the tip off the metropolis (6) - {ENT}{
2 - Spoke out about the punches (5) - POKES*
4 - Came out safe at last from an abrupt alliance in the capital of Denmark (7) - {E}{MERGE}{D}
6 - One may do this at the port of call (9) - DISEMBARK [CD]
7 - Come to accept one cleric in trouble (9) - RECONCILE*
8 - Announced the voyages for the men (5) - (~cruise){CREWS}
11 - Overheard the pet Bambi (4) - DEER (~dear)
14 - Releases the horse drawn carriage almost new for the Germans (10) - {SURRE
18 - Prayer in the ninth hour (4) - NINE ?
19 - At first heavyweight boxer will be in distributing the fish (7) - {H}{ALI}BUT Where does but come from?
21 - The chest for the Spanish has a tiny dot of light (5) - {PIX}{EL}
23 - Demon king is like you in the prayer hall (5) - {AS}{U}RA Anno for RA pending
24 - Language that is disrespectful (4) - FOUL [CD]
Rare reference to St Xavier in 25a. Referred to as Goemche Saiba in Goa, where most of his reportedly uncorrupted body (minus some parts taken away by overenthusiastic devotees as relics) lies (reverently viewed in Expositions held every ten years). St Xavier is regarded in two rather different ways: As a highly revered saint and as the person who requested for the Inquisition (to be fair to him, the Inquisition actually started 8 years after his death). Incidentally, his arm bone lies in Macau which has been referred to by Naresh Fernandes in his short piece ‘Tomb Raider: Looking for St Francis Xavier’ in Jerry Pinto’s ‘Reflected in Water- writings on Goa’. BTW Nona for 18d probably has links with Novena, a nine day prayer though the common thread nona=nine as in nonagon or nonagenarian.
ReplyDelete9a Takeover was nice, whereas reference to ALWAR in 28a should have been ‘erstwhile / princely’ Indian state.
Re 19d: But is hidden in 'distri-but-ing'???
ReplyDeleteCol: Welcome back to co(o)l (nothing in a military officer) Bangalore, we just had a heavy thunderstorm yesterday evening.
ReplyDelete1. Overall experience was satisfactory and that's what matters to me. There could have been a few mistakes/ errors here and there but I wouldn't focus my attention too much on those.
ReplyDelete2. I've seen different people using different standards and it's just a matter of choice. It's not mandatory that everybody's gotta use the same standards.
3. It would not be fair to totally equate Indian English with British English. The problem is, we don't have an "Indian standard English".
(Continuing the debate from yesterday)
1. Let's leave VJ happy with his/her engagement with NJ's crosswords. Who are we to spoil his/her delights?
2. Different composers can follow different standards. They will, and they can even lower the standards if they want, because the papers that publish their works follow no criteria. No Indian newspaper has a true crossword editor and most papers that carry the feature as a space filler (no space, no crossword!) pays scant attention to it: this explains the appearance of such poor crosswords in a Western India newspaper.
3. I have no problem with a composer using Indian English if it is defined. In its absence mixing of UK/US English in a crossword grid cannot be accepted.
Chaturvasi
The opinions expressed here are in the public domain. They are my own and I will hold on to them until my last breath. Period.
In the above, read "pay scant attention"
ReplyDeleteI said: "They are my own and I will hold on to them until my last breath. Period."
ReplyDeleteI would like to assure my readers that I am alive.
28 A Took wise man to be seer and was left wondering how the remaining 4 letters could make an Indian state!
ReplyDeleteCV: well said. I still think there ought to be an Indian Style Manual.
ReplyDeleteThere's simply a huge number of Indian users of English. Indian print media (esp. in English) is exploding. Indians are very comfortable in the English speaking world because of the language. However an American reading Indian papers or magazines finds many expressions/vocabulary items puzzling or sometimes downright incomprehensible. These are however commonly understood Indian expressions.
So there is an Indian Standard English. It deserves a Style Manual.
Chaturvasi, I agree with most of what you've said. The Hindu, as the publisher, should take entire responsibility for the quality of crosswords they print. Just by giving us the name of the compilers, they cannot absolve themselves of any accountability. They gotta have editors to check for errors/ flaws and to give necessary feedback to the compilers as a routine. This could help compilers correct themselves..
ReplyDeleteEfficiency levels of compilers may vary depending on their experience, dedication, knowledge etc. If newspapers keeps publishing compilers' work without proof-reading and compilers keep getting their paycheck at the end of the day, nothing's gonna change.
So far, AmE spellings on these puzzles haven't bothered me but I would now tend to agree that there has to be some kinda consistency. Perhaps, compilers could stick to one standard in a particular puzzle. Wanting them to totally refrain from using AmE spellings would be a bit unfair IMO, especially considering the fact that there's no "Standard Indian English" Or is there really one that I'm not aware of?
BTW, I appreciate your quote. If you believe your opinions are reasonable, you gotta hold onto them like paradise at least until you change your mind.
There are certain expressions, phrases and terms that are used exclusively by English speakers in India. These need to go IMO.
ReplyDeleteLakhs
Crores
Please do the needful
Cousin brother
Cousin sister
etc...
Hi friends
ReplyDeleteHad completed about 80% of the grid early morning and was away from desk.
Just to beat the boredom, why don't we all contribute samples of Indlish expressions as the above ones, which each of us may have come across day to day?
From me:
Q 'Why?'
A 'Why means simply like that only !'
Here's a few more.
ReplyDeleteCinema for movie.
Good name
Love marriage
Out of station
I think the funniest is "What is your good name?" It cracks me up whenever somebody says that.
VJ: I do beg to differ respectfully. There is an Indian standard English - that's the one kids were taught in schools and colleges. It's still being taught going by school texts in use in India.
ReplyDeleteDepending on one's education level, there are certainly many registers of the language. That does not mean however that there's no standard English.
Your arguments, perhaps without meaning to do so, are reminiscent of that of Colonial administrators who insisted there was no standard Telugu or Tamil. "You have many caste dialects but no standard one", was the refrain. It was upto the litterateurs of the day to prove that there has always been a standard literary language - for many centuries in fact and increasingly a common Standard Spoken language.
There's a Standard Indian English and it's crying out for a Style Manual. It'd be easier to critique an educated Indian's usage against this kind of an aesthetic standard. It'd also reduce to some extent the subjectivity inherent in all literary pronouncements. Mechanical elements like punctuation and spelling can and should, I feel, be subject to commonly accepted standards.
It's indeed a crying shame that Indians who were ahead of the rest of the world by a couple millennia in laying down prescriptive aesthetics for their own languages should lag so much behind where it concerns an adopted language but still one so close to her own heart.
The prayer in the 9th hour is None.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_%28liturgy%29
Words like Lakhs and Crores have become a well established part of "Indian" English. Any language absorbs words from other languages over a period of time. So one can't just have a some how 'pure' version of the language over a period of time. That said, expressions like "aap ka shubh naam", translating to "your good name" or "prepone" maybe things that probably are not good additions even for Indian English.
ReplyDelete> Good name
ReplyDelete> Love marriage
> Out of station
VJ: I was thinking of these phrases. 'Good Name' and 'Love Marriage' now bid fair to be internationally recognized as Indianisms.
'Good Name' has of course given rise to Jhumpa Lahiri's short story 'Gogol' which has since expanded into a novel and a movie ("The Namesake").
'Love Marriage' is the debut novel of a South Asian woman (and Harvard grad, I may add) called (Va) Sugi Ganeshananthan.
I suppose 'Out of Station' is begging to be written :)
LNS, though I disagree, I can appreciate your sentiments.
ReplyDeleteWell as I see it, we don’t really need to have a standard of our own. After all, we are not native English speakers and we could comfortably continue to adopt either American English or British English with maybe some Indian twists thrown in.
I’m not really sure if kids are taught the “Standard Indian English” Well I’m not an expert and this being said, I wouldn’t like to make a positive claim.
Somehow I’m not able to accept the idea of “standardizing” a language that we don’t even own.
LNS, conceptually, love marriage is a bit odd don't you think? I think we really need to look for a better expression. Nobody would wanna marry somebody they don't love. In marriage, love's not optional.
ReplyDeleteVJ: We standardize it because we use it (and how!), not necessarily because we own it. This is after all the era of the Open Source. In any case, Indians are not looking up the British or the American Style Manuals before composing a sentence in English.
ReplyDeleteAs to Standard Indian English, it's indeed taught in our schools and colleges. You still can't write 'prepone' or 'cousin brother' in your English paper and expect to pass it off as good English. However, you can 'tell' instead of 'say' and in many cases, even use the present continuous instead of the present and get away with it.
Increasingly, texts written by Indians themselves are becoming required reading in English courses in Indian schools and universities. Evidently, the register of English used in these texts is quite different from what I read like 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Trumpet Major' (yawn) and O Henry's Short Stories.
Someone who majored in English can add some relevant pointers. I am an engg grad.
If you live in America, I suggest you examine the question of Latin American Spanish vs Castilian Spanish. The question is similar though not identical.
VJ: Yes, of course, the term 'love marriage' is odd. It seems the Iranians and Arabs also use it, if it's any comfort.
ReplyDeleteWhat new expression in its place did you have in mind?
LNS, I'm an Engg grad and I too would like to hear what experts gotta say
ReplyDeleteWell as I see it, the whole issue is debatable. This is not something that could be resolved objectively as it seems more like a matter of perspective. So I think we could safely agree to disagree :)
Within the same language there could be different styles and forms. The question is where to we draw the line between a dialect and a standard version? Could this be done objectively in a reasonable way? For example: AAVE and Southern American English are dialects of AmE and both have enough unique features to qualify as "standard" versions on their own (going by the criteria you use). So could they be called AASE or SASE? Well these are one of the few dialects where double negatives aren't frowned upon - and not to mention, the ain'ts and g-dropping.
IMO, different "styles" do not equate to different "standards." The word "standard" shouldn't lose its significance in the broader sense (with reference to language and its natural form).
LNS: It's no consolation (for obvious reasons)....
ReplyDeleteI can't really think of a suitable expression. I think this distinction (love vs arranged) is something that's better left unexpressed.
'Language is a dialect with an army'. There are no other objective criteria.
ReplyDeleteAll of you have forgotten 'Lady wife' !!!!
ReplyDeleteLady reminds me of the use of the plural 'ladies' even when there is only one. And also 'family' being used to refer to the wife.
ReplyDeleteAnd how can we forget 'Male Nurse'.