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The Wonders of IT English in Bangalore, India
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Heard of IT shayaris? Did some one just say ''ping me (contact me) when you are done?'' Or how the ''lappy '' (laptop) has replaced the puppy as your constant companion? Well, burn it in your brain and welcome to Bangalore. India's IT city has developed a lingo of its own in the last few years, an English that is almost entirely made up of IT words. Be it complaints about ''multi-tasking'' or a ''ctrl+alt+del'' to signify a If a person cannot do something at a certain time because of overwork, it is because he does not have enough ''cycles'' and the most common excuse is ''I don't have the bandwidth to do it.'' And how about uploading yourself onto the lift and downloading on your floor to sleep? There are many examples of words that once were common in the technical world but now are frequently used in everyday speak. The symbol "K" for instance is often used informally to mean a multiple of thousand, which is why today many refer to their salary in terms of K, eg. 25K. Similarly, snail mail is used to connote regular mail (previously referred to as post) as opposed to the e-mail or electronic mail. Language watchers point out that there is a tendency, in general, in Bangalore to absorb tech-jargon into common language, be it the ''funda'' of the IIT graduates or pharma terms like 'amalgamate.'' But no study has actually been done by any major language institute on the subject of the IT lingo yet, though several studies have been conducted on how the SMS language denotes the lowest common denominator of spellings. What makes it really strange is that you can't really identify the IT geek from the common man in Bangalore through their language. If the girl in the clothing shop calls her friend on the mobile to ask for ''specs'' – she means what color and what size dress do you want – she very often is not from the IT industry! Things, however, get a bit complicated when computing things mean actually the exact opposite of what they are supposed to in regular English. Take the word transparency – it means see through in English. But in computing terms, transparency means only that particular server through which it is routed can understand it and its opaque to all others! So the joke is – if a software engineer says he's being transparent, he could just mean only some people can understand it!. So remember, when you visit Bangalore, ''googling'' means searching, ''dump'' means updating someone on something they missed, while ''coordinates?'' means where are you. And you would do better to keep your friends and relatives ''in the loop'' or ''route'' information through them and if you want to say something off the record, well, ''take it offline,'' please! What has really made the IT lingo more unique than others like SMS or pharma lingo is: it lends itself to everything, be it poetry or jokes. Sample this: As for poetry, there is everything from blog poems to shayaris. Sample this anonymous blog poem floating around cyber space on how the IT lingo has changed perceptions: “An application was for employment The Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, got this series of anonymous shayaris, adding to the IT lingo fun: Arz kiya hai.... Kal jab mile thhe
>> Read more articles written by Chillibreeze writers:1. Articles related to Content and Outsourcing
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