[Hippie at Heart]

This is an excerpt from ‘The Complete Plain Words’ by Sir Ernest Gowers; ISBN 0117011215.

“Here is the response of a child of ten to an invitation to write an essay on a bird and a beast – The bird I am going to write about is the owl. The owl cannot see at all by day and at night is as blind as a bat.

I do not know much about owl, so I will go on to the beast which I am going to choose. It is the cow. The cow is a mammal. It had six sides – right, left an upper and below. At the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush. With this it sends the flies away so that they do not fall in milk. The head is for the purpose of growing horns and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to butt with, and the mouth is to moo with. Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking. When people milk, the milk comes and there is never an end to the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet realized, but it makes more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell; one can smell it far away. This is the reason for the fresh air in the country.

The man cow is called an ox. It is not a mammal. The cow does not eat much, but when it eats it eats twice, so that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says nothing it is because its inside is all full up with grass.”

The reason am bringing up this is that, does putting across ideas or just having a conversations with English speaking foreigners/tourists in a language that is still not mastered by Indians at large, provoke laugh or frustration or a smile from the listeners? Another fact that English language has been evolving constantly across the globe and there is a healthy mix of local words, is a benefit that far outweighs the contamination or sticking to the purist idea even at the cost of developing pudder is the right way for development of language?

[malkers]

Hippie, would you mind rewriting that post in English so the majority of us can understand it?