21–30 of 378 posts
“it doesn’t seem to make grammatical sense” To people familiar with standard American and British English, perhaps, but it's written by Indian English speakers for an Indian audience. Perhaps it's not ungrammatical in that language variety?
Indian English rarely differs in grammatical constructs from other varieties. It makes no sense in Indian English either.
This isn’t the only “ungrammatical” expression (relative to global standard English) you will encounter in India. Could it be that some person or some company simply put this expression on their trucks (thinking it’s grammatical), and because it seemed useful other trucks followed, until it became the standard? Edit: this isn’t to be proscriptive about what’s correct/incorrect in a given country. My definition of “gl…
Indian English has as much right to its own standard of correct as American English. (It's possibly a more widely spoken dialect! Depending probably on whether we say e.g. Europeans learning with heavy US film/tv influence are AmE speakers.)
This isn’t the only “ungrammatical” expression (relative to global standard English) you will encounter in India. Could it be that some person or some company simply put this expression on their trucks (thinking it’s grammatical), and because it seemed useful other trucks followed, until it became the standard? Edit: this isn’t to be proscriptive about what’s correct/incorrect in a given country. My definition of “gl…
Eh, sometimes you just gotta do the needful.
> Trucks, in particular, are often not even equipped with side mirrors in the first place. Maybe mandating side mirrors (or rather enforcing this mandate - I can't quite believe that side mirrors are optional for roadworthiness, even in India) would be a better point to start with, rather than outlawing the phrase "Horn OK Please"?
Moreover, large trucks and busses have a large blindspot, and can't check behind them. So, vehicles behind them, can only honk to make them aware that they are there.
Anyone with local insight on how safe/unsafe the roads are and if things like side mirrors would help? I once drove around Sicily for a few days and the main city area roads were constant traffic jams, many more car lanes than actual road lanes (faded or non-existent lane markings), and people switching lanes and turning without any notice/indicators. For all the chaos it kinda worked and people just went very slowly…
Importantly, one expects rashness. You expect tho wheelers to zip around you from both sides. No one’s surprised so pretty much everyone behaves predictably. If someone starts crossing the middle of the highway you can be mostly sure that they’re going to walk at the same speed so no one actually stops, everyone adjusts their speed to miss them just so and keep going. For someone who likes thrills this is good. Someone who gets anxiety will have a very tough time.
I’m gonna miss driving in Indian roads.
As someone who has grown up (and learnt to drive) in England - I had a moment of sudden realisation in India. For me, the horn is a warning sign - "get out of my way" or "watch out!" - only to be used in emergencies. In India, the horn means "I'm over here", to be used whenever you're near another vehicle. Which fits with the statements on the back of the lorries perfectly.
This. I couldn't imagine driving in South East Asia without the horn. Scary story: My cousin almost killed a cyclist once after moving back to Europe after living in Asia for years. She used the horn as a friendly message (or so she thought) before passing. The cyclist, not being used to ever hearing horns on the road, got scared, looked over their shoulder and swerved out in front of the car.
Not like the drivers here expect courtesy from anyone around them. If anything they expect (and return in kind) douchebaggery. It’s like playing gta. Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly.
Similarly auto rickshaws all over Tamil Nadu used to ubiquitously have the phrase “the age for a woman to get married is 21”. Similar bullshit reason (though in this case the govt might have mandated it at some point, memory unclear). Thankfully it’s disappeared nowadays.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indian driving is like ant colony, but it's humans.
Way my colleagues told me, circulation is such a mess there’s no way you can check all around you (plus what’s that going to change, defensive driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic means complete paralysis) so the only things you look at are in front, and the people following have to be ready. Needless to say I opted out of driving, crossing roads is as far as I took the challenge of directly interacting with indian ci…
It's not so much that you can't, but that most people don't and with no driver education and no enforcement of traffic rules, you are stuck in a shitty nash equilibrium. I learnt driving in Canada, and I have tried to continue the same driving habits in India - because that is the only way I feel safe while driving. I simply can not change lanes without checking the rear-view mirrors and a shoulder-check because I am utterly terrified of what could happen if I don't.
At the same time, I am also completely aware about how 99.9% of drivers on the road are operating. So, I have to be cautious that any car could try to nose their way into the road in front of me even when I have right-of-way because that's just how things work here. It is stressful and horrible.
“it doesn’t seem to make grammatical sense” To people familiar with standard American and British English, perhaps, but it's written by Indian English speakers for an Indian audience. Perhaps it's not ungrammatical in that language variety?
> Perhaps it's not ungrammatical in that language variety? Indian English rarely differs in grammatical constructs from other varieties. It makes no sense in Indian English either.
For example: 'I myself have noticed this' (likely translating ही emphatic particle - a BrE speaker would almost certainly not say 'myself' at all, unless responding to someone saying they had noticed something perhaps, and then it would be at the end of the sentence) similarly 'I/me only' & 'even I'.
Or 'slowly-slowly' (धीरे-धीरे) and other adverbs - while BrE does use repetition for emphasis I'd say it's not nearly as common, and typically not adverbs.
I was visiting a relative in Patna and it's like everybody just honks for the sake on honking. I mean I thought delhi was bad, but this place just takes honking to a whole new level. It's so bad that I had to go inside a random shop to wait for my Ola as the sound levels were literally unbearable.
The only place where I haven't seen so much honking is Goa. Maybe the traffic is less or people are different but that's like the only place where the roads are somewhat quiet.