I wish I could surgically separate those two conjoined words, up and to. You see, ‘upto’ is 100 per cent off. It’s plain wrong. The fact that the two words are written as one in 99 per cent of Indian advertisements, doesn’t make it right.
While ‘upto’ may be my pet peeve, it is just one of many grammatical transgressions that our ad lingo is peppered with. I could give you a whole list. In fact, I will: First up is ‘ATM machine’ – which is tantamount to saying ‘automatic teller machine machine’.
Moving to the category of beauty ads, there is ‘feminity’. When using this adjective for womanly qualities, why stint and drop a ‘ni’? Be generous, dear copywriter, and use ‘ni’ twice: It’s femininity, for God’s sake.
Ads for energy tonics and labour saving devices try to display empathy with questions such as, ‘Can’t cope up with your busy schedule?’ In the case of ‘upto’ we had to merely separate the up from the to, but here one must get rid of the ‘up’ entirely. ‘I’m trying to cope with odd English sentences.’ That’s the way to use ‘cope’.
The above-mentioned ads might go on to sympathise with your busy schedule: ‘Are you stuck up at work till late at night?’ I don’t think they are asking you if you behave snootily for long spells at the office. Simply banish the ‘up’, I say!
Then there is the ubiquitous ‘prepone’. This word never existed in the English language. Elsewhere in the world, the opposite of ‘postpone’ is expressed through the phrase ‘bring forward’. But Indians use prepone with such confidence and frequency – and not just in ads – that it was included in the New Oxford Dictionary of English, published 1998.
According to the 1991 Census of India, there are 91 million English speakers in our country. The entire population of the United Kingdom is about 60 million. This means that there are more English speakers in India than in the UK!
So it is the English of Jignesh, Lalita and Rafique – or whatever your goodname might be, dear Indian English writer – that will become the standard. I will have to shut my trap and concede that we are like this only. And that is the way to be.
(The author is Executive Creative Director, South Asia, Ogilvy & Mather)
