[OT] Indian C programmers and "u"

[Floyd Davidson]

The words have closely related meanings. In most current forms of
English they are not interchangeable as nouns. In current Indian
English, they are very close to interchangeable.

I can't speak for everywhere, but in West Coast American
English, that usage will be understood by just about any native
speaker.

The first time I hit this was a borderline case. A colleague said
"I have a doubt about these two lines", by which he meant "I'm
fairly sure this is right, do you agree?". This usage was very
slightly odd to my ears, but the meaning was immediately obvious.
The next time I came across it was when someone came up to me and
said "I have a doubt", giving no other context. I assumed I'd

The first is, of course, precisely correct usage, and is obvious
from the context. The problem with the second is not
correctness of meaning, but lack of context to sort out which
possible meaning of "doubt" is meant. Given that the intended
meaning is not the most common meaning, more context is
necessary to be clear.

misheard, and asked him to repeat. When I was sure of what he'd
said, my first (internal) response was "why tell me, I'm not a
philosopher or a spiritual advisor". Not sure how to respond, I
said "go ahead" and he then asked a question - at which point I
finally understood his opening remark. This usage was totally new
to me, despite having some knowledge of several different forms
of English.

We're not talking about requirements for equivalency, but about
usage and understanding. In most current forms of English, "doubt"
cannot be used for "question" in the same way that it can in
Indian English.

I'm in no position to argue "most current forms", but I find
that statement all of problematic (are you qualified to make
that broad a statement?), questionable (I'd like to hear some
evidence that it is true) and doubtful (it isn't true in my
experience). I think I could have used any one of those words
and, while it may not have been as precise, the meaning would
not be significantly different.

Most speakers of other Englishes are able to work
out what is meant, but it sounds odd to them.

It may sound odd, but the very reason that speakers of other
Englishes are able to work it out, is because it is indeed
*correct* English, exactly as you have described above. It may
be obscure, it may not be common everywhere, it may sound
odd... it may or not be a lot of things, but it *is* correct.

I've dealt, as a translator of Englishes, all of my life with
people who speak English as a second language. I hear a lot of
uncommon usages, and I'm regularly faced with "translating" that
kind of English for others who are not used to it.

Typically a person finds that a given word "means" something, so
they use it. Their friends hear it, and they use it too. The
native English speakers they talk to scratch their heads, figure
it out, and never blink an eye again. Pretty soon there is,
within a small community, a regular pigeon English dialect
unique to that group. People can rattle off half a dozen "odd"
usages within a couple sentences, and within the group used to
it, it works fine. A newcomer can't understand a word of it! A
member of the group travels to some other location, and can't
manage to talk to anyone...

 

[Anupam]

Don't be too sensitive in NG. You're supposed to learn and
correct yourself; and always take the matters too lightly in NG.

Dont get me wrong here, just refer to my last statement to infer
that I am willing to learn. You may also refer to my previous posts
if this fails to convince you.I give deference and am more than willing
to accept any mistakes... but this was a bit different.

That's good spirit. But, you must also be gladly accept
grammatical and etiquette mistakes.

I am quite sure that there was no reference to *my* grammatical or
etiquette mistakes. Of course I am not saying that I am infalliable at
grammer. But that was never an issue here. So what's there to accept?
I was talking about something else.

 

[Anupam]

Get over it. By responding in this manner you have given people
ammunition. Your oversensitivity reflects negatively on you.

I'm not here to win a game of one-upmanship. I think a man who stops
being sensitive to certain issues and fails to stand up for what he
believes is destined to fail eventually. After all, what would have
happened if I had gone on without any comments on this issue. The newer
people who happen to chance by this group would have a wrong opinion of
it. I just wanted to avoid that.

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> CBFalconer wrote:
>
>
> And yet one can imagine contexts in which it would not sound ridiculous. I
> don't plan to invent one right here, though.

Yes, to the *store* I will go.

 

[Thomas Stegen]

CBFalconer wrote:




And yet one can imagine contexts in which it would not sound ridiculous. I
don't plan to invent one right here, though.

"You will have to go to the store to complain."
"To the store I will go!"

An "and" can be put at the front or a "then" at the end
to achieve slightly different effects.

 

[Thomas Stegen]

This is simply untrue. Any native English speaker will understand "in
general" to mean "in most cases", although it also has other meanings,
particularly in a more formal context. That you are apparently
ignorant of such meanings illustrates my point.

I am not ignorant of any such meanings, which if you read later posts
you will see. The start of it all was someone saying something like "in
general, the order of include files matter." How can anyone, in a
technical context, in a technical newsgroup of programmers no less, fail
to see that this means that "unless you do something special the order
matters." This brings us to another matter alltogether. It is,
hopefully, trivially false that order matters for most real headers
files. Anyone wishing to hold a fruitful discussion should choose the
most likely and correct interpretetation in ambigous situations. It is
called the principle of charity. That someone well versed in programming
absolutely refuses to admit that general can mean "unless otherwise
specified" implies only quarrelsome behaviour to me. When the objector
to my usage then starts playing the completely destructive definition
game my suspicions are confirmed and my goodwill meter does not exactly
go off the charts.

It is like the difference between "in general header files shall be
written in such a way that order does not matter" and "in general
header files should be written in such a way that order does not
matter."

Here are the first
few uses of "in general" that I found in the British National Corpus:
[snip]

In none of these examples does "in general" have the meaning you
claim. It is used as a qualifier, and means approximately "most".

Neither do they dispute my claim (and when you first bring up dictionary
examples, yes there are many many that supports me and us. I say us
because I use the colloquial meaning you cite almost every day), and I
never claimed that it cannot mean those things. I was talking in
context.

 

[Nils Petter Vaskinn]

So you say you disagree and present an argument which supports precisely
what I said...

No. I present as anecdotal evidence that _I_ will assign different meaning
to the two sentences. Apparently I failed to explain to you exactly how
those two interpretations differ.

"I have a question" means exactlty that.
"I have a doubt" means you have a question of a given type.

I have a doubt about whether you read what you wrote with enough care to
realize the words you used. If you question the
suitability/quality/something of malloc, why would you post that
statement unless you wanted someone to either refute or corroborate it
for you... meaning "you would like to know about malloc".

The differenece is that "doubt" gives more information about _what_ you
would like to know about malloc.

Whatever
your doubt/question about malloc happens to be, the discussion could
start with a statement using either doubt or question. It would not
change the likely responses.

You would get a different response from me depening on which one you use.

What blows me away is that I've posted several sentences now that can
use doubt or question interchangeably without the slightest shift in
what a reader would interpret the sentences to mean, and yet people
still insist that they can't mean the same thing.

I'm not saying that they can't be used completely interchangeably in some
sentences, but in the example above they can't.

 

[Jeremy Yallop]

That someone well versed in programming
absolutely refuses to admit that general can mean "unless otherwise
specified" implies only quarrelsome behaviour to me.

But that is what *you* refused to admit:

It does not mean for all cases, or even most cases. If something is
true for 10000 cases and false for 1 case it is not true in general.

and elsethread:

The general case is not most cases.

"does not mean" and "is not" do not admit of any exceptions. If you
intended to indicate otherwise then you failed, because a number of
native speakers understood that you were excluding other possibilities.

Mark McIntyre wrote in reply:

This is rubbish. It /is/ true in general.

Neil Butterworth replied, also to you:

Completely wrong.

and correctly concluded:

I take it English is not your native language?

He was able to conclude this because you misunderstood "in general"
*as an English expression*. You correctly understand the meaning of
"in general" in a mathematical context, and you are apparently aware
of some of its other meanings, but the fact that you did not
understand the phrase as native speakers of English would (and did)
shows that the language you are using does not entirely correspond to
English.

It is simply absurd to claim that you have a better grasp of English
than native speakers beacuse whatever native speakers speak *is*
English, by definition.

Here are the first
few uses of "in general" that I found in the British National Corpus:
[snip]

In none of these examples does "in general" have the meaning you
claim. It is used as a qualifier, and means approximately "most".

Neither do they dispute my claim (and when you first bring up dictionary
examples, yes there are many many that supports me and us.

But the whole point is that these are *not* dictionary examples! The
difference between a dictionary and a corpus is central to this whole
discussion.

Jeremy.

 

[Simon Biber]

For example, if you insult RJH, immediately Ben or Joona will
raise their voice irrespective of their nationality to vouch
him---all because he is regular.

I have a doubt that RJH's bowel function is relevant to this discussion.

 

[Grumble]

Oops

The sig delimiter should be DASH-DASH-SPACE-NEWLINE ;-)

As it is, you left the SPACE character out.

 

[Thomas Stegen]

But that is what *you* refused to admit:

It does not mean for all cases, or even most cases. If something is
true for 10000 cases and false for 1 case it is not true in general.

I agree that is badly phrased.

and elsethread:

The general case is not most cases.

"does not mean" and "is not" do not admit of any exceptions.

I was speaking in the context set up the original poster of the phrase
"in general". Who is a native speaker of english. Apologies if that
was not clear.

If you
intended to indicate otherwise then you failed, because a number of
native speakers understood that you were excluding other possibilities.

And some native speakers understood my intended semantics... Both
on and offline (I asked more than one).

He was able to conclude this because you misunderstood "in general"
*as an English expression*. You correctly understand the meaning of
"in general" in a mathematical context,

Which apparently some of the native speakers don't?

and you are apparently aware of some of its other meanings,

More than aware I tell you.

but the fact that you did not
understand the phrase as native speakers of English would (and did)
shows that the language you are using does not entirely correspond to
English.

If you want to translate English to my language you can always
substitute "general" for "generelt"
(in general, since syntax varies slightly,
"generelt sett, siden syntaksen varierer noe") and
preserve meaning exactly if context is preserved.

It is simply absurd to claim that you have a better grasp of English
than native speakers beacuse whatever native speakers speak *is*
English, by definition.

Of course. And it is absurd to claim that no native speaker agrees
with me. I have seen it happen. More than once,and examples includes
both speakers and writers from more than one country where english is
the first language. Besides, are the way non natives speak to be
completely ignored even if they happen to live in an englsih speaking
country and have done so for years? I think not. The way these people
speak *will* affect how the natives speak if there are enough of them.
This is an interesting issue nonetheless.

As you say yourself:

"Non-native speakers are able to acquire knowledge of English as it is
actually used only to the extent to which they participate in the
English-speaking community [...]."

You won't find a native speaker which participates to a greater extent
in the english speaking community than me (depending on the
granularity you use of course). And I know many other non-english
speakers for which the same is true.

I am not saying that (ok, I phrased it too strongly to start with,
regard this as my position now) non-native speakers in general have a
better grasp of certain parts of english than natives. But it does
not take much effort since most natives puts in no effort at all
to improve their understanding and usage of their own language. It is
not as simple as saying that native speakers by definition speak
correctly[1], because you will end up with ridiculous situations if
you do.

1. This is the only reasonable interpretation of your statement I can
see without ending up with a circular tautology.

But the whole point is that these are *not* dictionary examples! The
difference between a dictionary and a corpus is central to this whole
discussion.

Yes, because corpora are never outdated the way dictionaries are...
Oh, you mean various corpora are updated. Oh, I see. Sort of what they
do with vairious dictionaries you mean? Corpora are based upon usage
text (mainly) and they include usage which is just as old and outdated
as dictionaries. As you can easily find out with the British National
Corpus, many (most maybe) of the entries are between 10 and 20 years
old. So either your argument that english changes carries less weight
than orignally thought or the corpus is not a reliable resource. And
as a side note, I would imagine many foreigners learned english from
books and resources as new or newer than 10 to 20 years old.

And did you know that corpus linguistics are not generally accepted
by all linguists? Most maybe, but not all. I am just saying that if you
say one language reference can be outdated unless updated, then that
applies to all language references.

But what I'll do is this. I'll try to get hold of a norwegian-english
aligned parallel corpus and look up the word general and see what it
says. It might have to wait untill christmas though since I spend most
of my time in Scotland where occurences of such might be rare. I'll
have a look in the university library today though.

(incidentally I did find a norwegian-english aligned parallel corpus
but it was local access only... If anything should be under the gnu
documentation license a corpus would surely be it

 

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Dont get me wrong here, just refer to my last statement to infer
that I am willing to learn. You may also refer to my previous posts
if this fails to convince you.

Indeed I refered your previous posts. For me, it sounds that
you're taking the matter too sensitively---though not seriously.
That's why I did reply you. But, it seems that I've misunderstood your
words. My sincere apologies for that. Thanks for your patience.

 

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

If browsing cost is an issue I wouldn't recommend using google to read
newsgroups. There are cheaper ways that doesn't require you to be online
while doing the actual reading and writing of messages.

An offline newsreader will connect to a server and download headers for
all articles. You can then disconnect and mark the articles you would like
to read taking as much time as you like. You then connect again and
download the selected articles disconnect and read them while offline. You
then make your replies, connect again and send them.

Unless the cost of setting up a connection is huge compared to the
per-minute price this will probably be cheaper, you get much more
information for your money, and you can read without having to rush
because you pay by the minute.

If you were to mention what platform you're using you'll probably get
suggestions about peoples favorite offline newsreaders. And pointers to
download locations and instructions on how to set them up.

I think, all of your suggestions are if I own a computer. But,
unfortunately I don't own computer. For me and most of the people who
use public Internet cafe, the only solution is to use web-based Google
Groups (AFAIK).

Anyway, thanks for the points.

 

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

What has Google got to do with it? They are only one of many ways
to access usenet, and a relative newcomer. Their principle claim
to fame in this regard is their archives.

Sorry, I meant Google search engine. I meant, most of the
people don't aware of how to search. I'm sure, people who started
asking Google won't ask any humanbeings. For me, Google seems to be
fast than any of the newsgroup experts.

 

[Dan Pop]

We rarely complain here about improper use of adjectives as
adverbs, sloppy interchange of "quick", "quickly", and "fast", and
a plethora of other fairly ignorant errors and/or usage.

Ignorance is one thing and deliberate usage of inappropriate abbreviations
is another. I doubt that anyone (mis)using "u" really believes that this
is the correct way of writing "you".

But just
looking at the above list, bear in mind that in some parts of the
"English" speaking world "4" is pronounced with at least two
syllables ("fo-wah"), "8" comes out as "ay-ut", ur is a Chaldean
city, b4 is a square on a chess board, and so on and so forth.

It doesn't matter: I didn't make up any of these abbreviations, I've
seen all of them used by native speakers of one flavour of English or
another (but usually Americans).

Dan

 

[Slartibartfast]

Nope. Informal text based communication using electronic means has
developed its own set of abbreviations, well and widely documented.
Any good Internet tutorial also contains a list with the most common ones.

They've been created to be used, and not only to be inventoried in a
zillion places on the Web...

You're absolutely right, and "u" and its kin fit into all the above
categories as much as IMHO or OTOH. Both are "slangy shorthand".

Don't misunderstand me. I'm neither condoning one set of abbreviations
nor condemning the other - merely observing the hypocrisy of those
that do. I don't much like so-called "d00dsp33k" either, but that
doesn't prevent me understanding it and I certainly wouldn't insult
somebody for using it.

Maybe I've been working for Californian based companies for too long
)

 

[Dan Pop]

(e-mail address removed) (Anupam) wrote in message I've been wondering about this for too long. Why is it that *every
single* Indian C programmer I have seen on this newsgroup writes "u"
for "you"? Many manage otherwise perfectly grammatical English but
that one mistake sticks out. Do they have a law in India forcing
schools to teach mangled English or something?
<snipped most of previous post>
<OT>
Also please have the decency to mention off-topic when it is so. And

The whole thread is labeled as off-topic, in the subject line, so why the
hell would anyone expect topical contents inside?

PS. At least the OP mentioned OT in his header(headers are not

And the [OT] tag is present in the subject line of *all* the posts in
the thread. So, what's your point, if any?

visible in all mail clients ,still...).

If you don't see the subject line, how do you decide what to read and
what to ignore?

The first line or two is picked up from the posting and displayed in
a tree-list.

None of the newsreaders I've ever used does that. All of them present
me with a compilation of the most relevant headers of the post (at least
author and subject).

So the OT should also be present below inside the main text,
preferably in the first line or two.

The first lines typically say: X sais this, Y said that. Your own <OT>
tag was inserted after them...

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

I'm not posting any nationalistic comments, and have not done so *at all* in
this thread. I may therefore be considered "neutral". But I /do/ have an
interest in what is discussed here, especially as my bandwidth is
ludicrously limited (28800 bits per second at the moment).

Then, how do you explain the relatively high number of off topic posts
emanating from you, that achieve nothing than generating even more off
topic posts from other people, to which you reply another bit of nonsense
and so on?

Please spare us the hypocrisy.

Dan

 

[Dan Pop]

But wouldn't a one-syllable-word be easier to slip up on?

Is "you" the only monosyllabic word they use? Plenty of others are prone
to similar "abbreviations", but they are properly written. Besides, the
*consistent* usage excludes the possibility of a slip up.

I usually make
the most mistakes on short simple words where I don't consciously think
about how to spell them. If for example I wrote "ov" instead of "of" I
wouldn't notice, (and I probably wouldn't notice if someone else did
either).

For the vast majority of the words, I let my fingers do the spelling for
me. If I notice a typo, I correct it. But my usual problem is that my
fingers are slower than my brain and often omit a full word, to keep the
pace. And this is something I seldom notice (before posting).

Dan

 

[Richard Heathfield]

seemanta dutta wrote:

besides i think the average person no matter what background he is
from who posts in this group has the minimum intelligence level
required to 'decipher' the meaning of 'u',

Obviously. That's not the point. The point is that the /most/ important
thing is to communicate clearly, and pointless abbreviations obscure
meaning, rather than illuminate it.

of course with the
exception of u and ur friends who fail to understand that getting
one's view across is more important than getting involved in the usage
of english language, at least in this newsgroup.

It is precisely because getting one's view across is so important that one
should make the effort to communicate clearly.