“Uncle, my exams got over yesterday,” said the granddaughter of a friend the other day.
I was peeved. Only the previous day, I had told her that exams did not “get over”, they only “finished”, or “were over”, or “ended”. Evidently she had not been able to get over her fixation with “get over”. I had noticed others using “get over” to mean “end”.
“Get over” is defined in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OED) thus: get over — ‘phrasal verb — get over something; deal with or gain control of something; synonym overcome. She can’t get over her shyness. I think the problem can be got over without too much difficulty.’
It is a marvel how people get used to erroneous usages, and how such usages catch on and often even find their way into dictionaries. Take, for instance, “prepone”, a typical Indian usage for “advance”. “Pre” is the opposite of “post”, and we just attached it to the tail of “postpone”, without bothering to check if “pone” existed! The word has found its way to the dictionary as “Indian English” for “advance”!
The Kerala “bystander” has so far had no such luck though. This bystander, strangely, has nothing to do with his namesake in any dictionary: “a person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part.” The Kerala bystander is a relative or a friend or even a hired hand attending to a patient at a hospital. How he/she can at once be a bystander and an active attendant is beyond me.
Someday this “bystander”, too, may get entry into dictionaries as Indian English. Better still we will have our own Indian English dictionary or at least a glossary a la Hobson-Jobson.
“Do it today itself” is another common Indian usage. Some frown at the “itself”, evidently from the Hindi “he” (e.g. aaj he khatm karna chaahiye’). During my Delhi days (which now seem like a bygone age), I often had to deal with neighbourers: the one in your neighbouring house or flat naturally became a neighbourer, a la labourer?
I wouldn’t fault my countrymen for thus “corrupting” the English language. English, sad to say, has no moral scruples: just see how the language unites two opposites forever as, say, in “monopoly”, where two opposing prefixes tie the knot. Gosh, the poor couple mono and poly must be fighting all the time, each having extramarital relations galore, but somehow escapes scandal! Pre and post also cohabit in “preposterous”, and make their meaning clear: “contrary to reason or common sense; utterly absurd or ridiculous: a preposterous suggestion.”
I can see “proconsul” fuming at me for not acknowledging how it accommodates “pro” and “con” together — without worrying about the pros and cons of such practice. I should not belabour the issue. I wonder how many more odd couples are waiting in the wings to pounce on me for not receiving mention in this dispatch.
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