<p>“My cousin studied in a residential school and scored 95 per cent in second PUC. She is very clever. Her parents are giving a party to celebrate her success.” You hear this a lot these days.<br /><br />“We are going to get a new water collection soon. We can say goodbye to this salt (hard) water once the new water collection starts working,” told a friend of mine. This friend is a first class graduate from college and forgets the difference between collection and connection!<br /><br />The English lecturer who lives next door uses ‘struck’ in place of ‘stuck.’ His wife is the opposite; she uses ‘stuck’ to mean ‘struck.’ While “My scooter pedal is struck” is his statement, “Suddenly, this idea stuck me” is hers! I never thought that even newspaper people could get confused with these two words until I saw the magazine of a newspaper. Indeed, it was a shock to see, “The sea world trainer with a killer whale before the tragedy stuck.” Perhaps, this was a typo.<br /><br /><br />The most embarrassing one was what the salesperson said when I was debating on which dress material to buy. “Ma’am, buy this pink one because it is decent and green one is not decent.” While I figured out from the context that he meant ‘elegant’ when he said ‘decent,’ my immediate reaction was very uncomfortable.<br /><br />Usage of so many of wrong words at inappropriate places have crept into our everyday language. Some commonly made mistakes are using rail for train, scent for perfume, cell for battery, and invention for discovery. Unfortunately, many school textbooks have several of these wrong usages. In a first year PUC physics textbook, the authors have used invention of planet Neptune in place of discovery. Once it is learnt the wrong way and when too many start using a wrong word, rectifying it becomes extremely hard. <br />Unfortunately, right or wrong, it is the strong that wins an argument. It’s time we pay attention to these mistakes; otherwise we would be stuck with (struck by?) these wrong usages for ever.</p>
<p>“My cousin studied in a residential school and scored 95 per cent in second PUC. She is very clever. Her parents are giving a party to celebrate her success.” You hear this a lot these days.<br /><br />“We are going to get a new water collection soon. We can say goodbye to this salt (hard) water once the new water collection starts working,” told a friend of mine. This friend is a first class graduate from college and forgets the difference between collection and connection!<br /><br />The English lecturer who lives next door uses ‘struck’ in place of ‘stuck.’ His wife is the opposite; she uses ‘stuck’ to mean ‘struck.’ While “My scooter pedal is struck” is his statement, “Suddenly, this idea stuck me” is hers! I never thought that even newspaper people could get confused with these two words until I saw the magazine of a newspaper. Indeed, it was a shock to see, “The sea world trainer with a killer whale before the tragedy stuck.” Perhaps, this was a typo.<br /><br /><br />The most embarrassing one was what the salesperson said when I was debating on which dress material to buy. “Ma’am, buy this pink one because it is decent and green one is not decent.” While I figured out from the context that he meant ‘elegant’ when he said ‘decent,’ my immediate reaction was very uncomfortable.<br /><br />Usage of so many of wrong words at inappropriate places have crept into our everyday language. Some commonly made mistakes are using rail for train, scent for perfume, cell for battery, and invention for discovery. Unfortunately, many school textbooks have several of these wrong usages. In a first year PUC physics textbook, the authors have used invention of planet Neptune in place of discovery. Once it is learnt the wrong way and when too many start using a wrong word, rectifying it becomes extremely hard. <br />Unfortunately, right or wrong, it is the strong that wins an argument. It’s time we pay attention to these mistakes; otherwise we would be stuck with (struck by?) these wrong usages for ever.</p>
