Henceforth let this be Stricken

[darkmattr.livejournal.com]

Dear Level 1 Support in Mumbai.

I personally shudder everytime you transfer a call to me and the first thing out of the Cretins mouth is "Thank God you speak English."

I also respect and fear people who still show up to work five miles from a major terrorist attack while it is still going on. I personally would be under my desk wetting myself in the fetal position.

I also understand that you speak english better then I speak Spanish, much less Hindi.

But please.

Please


Stop using the word Hence in your case notes.

Love and Kisses,
Me

Comments

[necessitysslave.livejournal.com]

with our delhi support it was always

"please to be doing the needful"

Also one of the managers knew a very odd set of antiquated english. I actually had to have a dictionary site open when reading their emails. All valid english (though not always correct word order) but not words I knew, and I thought I had a fairly good vocabulary.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

I guess that's what happens when colonial British English survives to the modern day.

[falnfenix]

heh.

in my former workplace, we had about 2500-3000 users. about 2/3 of those users were researchers, and the other third were clinical staff. almost all the researchers who called and asked for me were from varying countries in Asia...and they all consistently said "please do the needful."


I WILL NOT DO THE NEEDFUL. EVER. ARGH!!

[owl]

Actually, you hear 'do the needful' a lot in Ireland too.

[peace873.livejournal.com]

Dragon Naturally Speaking has a separate dictionary for "Indian English".

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I've been subjected to the similar "do the necessary".

It's not so much that I can't work out what they want... usually. It's that whenever I read email with Indianisms in it, I always have this crawling feeling that something crucial *might* fall between the cracks during the translation/guessing phase.

And it's not like management is going to supply or provide reimbursement for an English-English dictionary/phrasebook.

[spiker-uk.livejournal.com]

I see this, even amongst our (pretty damned good, actually) outsourced support in India. Having asked them about this, the short version is that "please do the needful" or similar is a respectful request for the other party to "do that which is required", implying that the parties already have a common understanding of what exactly should be done, beyond requiring specific hand-holding or step-by-step instruction.

Indian English is an unusual beast at times...

[kuang.livejournal.com]

Maybe he's a Yellow Submarine fan?

George: As a matter of fact, there's a war on.
John: Then brothers in war, to the skirmish must we hence! Shall we hence?
Paul: Oh, let's not waste any more time sitting on the hence! Beatles to battle! Charge!

[darkmattr.livejournal.com]

I'm betting they were listening to Love You To.


Sitar for the win.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, i watched that on the weekend :)

[kuang.livejournal.com]

I've never been a huge Beatles fan, but that film is a gem :) How could we ever forget Ringo's portable hole?..

*wanders off into the distance calling bluuueeee meeeeeanieeeees...*

[sdaemon.livejournal.com]

In a similar vein, it has been commented that I may be the only auto mechanic around who says "thusly" when "like this" would suffice.

[arabwel.livejournal.com]

... I am now tempted to start using "hence" in my case notes. *hides in a corner*

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Unless they're using it wrongly, what's the problem?
I'd have a good mutter about terrorist attacks now, too, except I no longer live in London, and I don't think anyone would bother to try and blow up Manchester.

[seaborne.livejournal.com]

Manchester Bombing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing).

[random-c.livejournal.com]

...apart from them. And they've retired.
I was going to say Bolton, except I went shopping this afternoon. Ah well. Note to self: Look shit up.

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

My boss, who is Slovakian, likes to leave the word "the" out of sentences in e-mail (not so much in talking really). He also says "Today morning" instead of "this morning", which always cracks me up.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

Also, stop saying "Please advice", despite me sending you links to web pages that explain it.

[liber-cogito.livejournal.com]

Yeeeah, I hear ya on that one. You don't by chance work for a large US telecommunications company, do you?

[darkmattr.livejournal.com]

Depends on who you consider large

[liber-cogito.livejournal.com]

Can you hear me now?

[darkmattr.livejournal.com]

Lol. No. And why are they telling people they invented thbe blackberry. John McCain did that.

[liber-cogito.livejournal.com]

No idea. I just fix their employee's shit when it breaks.

[shifuimam.livejournal.com]

We got a lot of "do the needful" with our contracted software developers at my last job... we also heard a lot of "prepone". I had to ask about that one, and it was explained to me that it's the logical opposite of "postpone".