Bangalorisation of English, contd.

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Ever since I began noticing the crude English phrases in use around me, I have been struck with a nagging thought... How do I know which is the correct usage and which is not? Not many worry about how they put a point across, with good grammar or not, as long as the point does go across. But now that I have decided to worry about it, it has become more than a worry, it has been a strong concern.


For example.
Someone said to me yesterday, "Moving forward, would you please take care of this?"
I felt considerably uncomfortable with this sentence, without knowing why (Of course, that didn't stop me from saying, "Sure".).
A week ago, a person who takes more care of his language said, "What would you like to do, going forward?"

Because I have noticed at several instances that the latter's language is more polished, I assumed that "going forward" is more correct than "moving forward".

But why fear when Google is near? I put an end to this misery and did a search. This is what I found.

Going Forward is apparently the correct(er) phrase. However, to my relief, it has been declared over-used.

Another interesting site lists out the most boring, over-used clichés.
Perhaps I should make a similar list of my own. The rusty language around me flows in a circle with no option to insert new words and thoughts into it. It is perhaps time I broke free!


Having said this, I am a person who believes that as long as one speaks and writes his/her Mother tongue well there is no cause for concern, and English is just English, a language for communication when the other party does not speak yours. And in a metro like Bangalore where the percentage of languages in use (Kannada, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali,... ) is almost uniform, English is the most commonly used language, even ahead of Hindi as most of the South Indians are not well-versed in the National Language.

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