I am trying to get to the bottom of why people in India seem to confuse ‘in’ or ‘at’ a city/country.
eg.
‘Things to be discussed at Korea’
and not
‘Things to be discussed in Korea’
What is the correct grammatical construction? One might be tempted to put this down to bad grammar, but my time in India has taught me that it is not so much bad grammar as old grammar.
As a slight aside, I discovered the reason why people in India speak such antiquated English. The culprit is a horrible book called Wrenn & Martin. It was first published in something like 1926 and has been periodically updated since then but the general content remains the same.
It uses expressions like: ‘Queen Victoria was the greatest Empress the world has ever seen’ as examples for denoting different parts of speech in a sentence. This book is still considered to be the gospel text book on English grammar in India.
Someone who knows a lot more about Indian languages than I do (which is virtually nothing) can confirm this, but possibly the native language of these speakers uses the same word to mean both “at” and “in.”
IOW, for the same reason that English speakers learning Spanish have a hell of a time with por and para.
Balthisar, I would imagine the OP’s point had to do with the political connotations of the sentence rather than the use of the word “Empress”.
Prepositions in general are a problem for ESL students. Why do English speakers typically say “when I was in Korea” instead of “when I was at Korea”? Why do we say “He was happy about his promotion” but not “She was impressed about the painting” or “I am surprised about his rudeness”? Usage seems to be random, so it no surprise that new speakers mix their prepositions.
“in” would be correct in this case. “in” a city/country, “at” a specific location.
Although “at” might be considered correct depending on the context of a given sentence, e.g. “The plane will be taking off from Bombay at 0100hrs and landing at London the next day at 1500hrs”
While many Indians do know English really well, not all have perfect grammar.
Guilty party (Indian, W&M on my shelf at home) reporting…
Depends on function and scope of the location. If you want precision of location, then I use ‘at’ (at the center of the circle). If the aspect of subregions is to be implicitly acknowledged, if not specified, then I use ‘in’ (in the circle).
The one which gains wide acceptance.
BAN THIS HORROR OF A BOOK!!! NOW !!!
Forgive my antiquated English, but what’s wrong with that sentence?
I think the issue with “Empress” is not grammatical, but cultural: it harkens back to an era of shameful colonialism. The fact that it was used as an example of model grammar shows how deeply embedded the notion was.
Regarding Indian English - why is it that speakers of same (!) are so enamored with using “same” all over the place? I’m guessing there must be a word in Hindi that’s used a lot, whose translation is roughly the pronoun “same”. For example, I often get business emails like, “Please review document attached and I will forward same to Bob…”
ruadh - not in the way Indian English speakers use it. Here’s an example from a random email in my inbox:
It’s a sort of “over-correctness” - a native English speaker would just say “it”, even in a business correspondence. I’m betting there’s some pronoun in Hindi that translates to “same”, that is used much more frequently in Hindi than in English. Any Hindi speakers out there?
By the way: Yes, I know not all Indians have Hindi as their native language, and that there are close to 1000 (?) different languages/dialects in India. However, I’m led to believe that along with English, Hindi is the lingua franca of India.
The English preposition at is an odd beast; it usually has no exact equivalent in other languages. The words used to translate at in a given language may be different words depending on the context.
One oddity of Hindi-influenced English is when you sit down to dinner. Hindi would say mej par baiTh. Here mej=‘table’ and baiTh=‘sit’. But the postposition par used to indicate location usually (usually, but not always) corresponds to English on.
So instead of saying “Sit at the table” you will often hear Hindi speakers saying “Sit on the table.” Hilarity ensues.
Your example differs from what I have encountered in professional correspondence from native English speakers only in the fact that it says “the same” rather than just “same”. You may not ever have encountered it before, but I can assure you it is nothing unusual. I even use it myself from time to time.
Prepositions are one of the things that translates very poorly between languages. Think French: “Je vais au Portugal” but “Je vais en France” - two countries, two different prepositions (in this case because Portugal is a masculine noun and France is feminine). While ones native language may seem entirely logical in its use of prepositions, in reality it’s extremely arbitrary.
Indian English, however, has existed among a large body of speakers for quite a long period of time. Many Indians learn English from childhood, and it’s not really accurate to say that they’re speaking English incorrectly so much as that they’re speaking a unique Indian dialect, which is no doubt heavily influenced by Hindi (and possibly by poorly-written textbooks) - but such influences are historical factors that led to the dialect spoken now, which according to my knowledge is quite regular.
I can see another legitimate reason for “things to be discussed at Korea” - I would assume “Korea” was shorthand for something like “the next meeting of our study group, which will take place in Korea”, “Korea” being in the mind of the speaker at that moment not a country but an event.
In Swedish you say “on” instead of “in” for countries that are islands (på Irland, rather than i Irland). I think in old fashioned English you might have heard “on Malta/Cyprus/Bermuda/Tahiti/etc.” rather than “in”.
It’s certainly not business English in England / United States. Until I came to India, I had never heard sentences containing “some such” information as:
“I hope that you will be able to do the needful and intimate me your understanding of the matter. Please revert to me on the same”…
The first time I saw this, I was actually shocked. I thought that the guy was trying to be intimate with me.
[For those of you who are confused, this is the standard ending to business emails in India]
[QUOTE=ruadh]
Your example differs from what I have encountered in professional correspondence from native English speakers only in the fact that it says “the same” rather than just “same”. You may not ever have encountered it before, but I can assure you it is nothing unusual. I even use it myself from time to time.
[QUOTE]
Are you suggesting: “Please find attached a presentation as discussion material for tomorrow morning’s meeting (in any case, we will be carrying copies of same)”
WAG - You aren’t a native English speaker? Again, I have NEVER seen ‘the same’ or ‘same’ used by native English speakers in this context.
Similarly, a friend of mine from the English-speaking community in Sri Lanka says things like “jjimm, old chap, do you have the hour on your timepiece?” and “You are indeed a most clumsy bastard”.
Okay. I am not saying that it isn’t correct English but old/outdated English. My OP is partly based on this entire premise. But fair enough that it is ‘business English’.
I still don’t understand the difference between the ‘in or at’ question.
And BTW for you posters who were perplexed by my shock at the Empress sentence,** DarrenS ** was right. It is not the grammar that is disturbing, but the content.
If this was accidentally put into a modern UK English grammar book, a minister or two would probably lose their job.
Xash - I know you are a Mod an’ all but I think that your example is incorrect. If I was reviewing a document that used that construction, I would certainly change it. However, as this thread has shown, I am not always right.
Regardless, I don’t think that at is actually wrong. I am just trying to figure out why at Bangalore or at Korea is considered correct in India (to the point where people will actively change it from in Bangalore or in Korea. Some of these threads go some way to explaining this.
Perhaps I should rephrase the question - has there ever been a time when use of ‘at’ a given city/country was used in ‘proper’ English?
