There are some accents you use that give you away in any language
There are some accents you use that give you away in any language. In film form, this is perhaps best exemplified by Rex Harrison in the movie My Fair Lady, where the protagonist is able to deduce the area of origin of somebody who is speaking to him merely by analysing the accent of the speaker.
This is also possible with words. For instance, once I was speaking to a person whom I had just met and I used the word 'appa avaru' and he immediately shot back, 'have you been to Dharwad?' When I asked him in surprise how he knew, he said that people in Bangalore used 'appa' and not 'appa avaru' to refer to one's dad.
A common English word, which causes much confusion, is 'crib', which is generally used to imply that one is complaining. Even journalists, who are expected to know their language, use it quite often and I have seen a senior editor-level person belonging to a publication that prides itself upon its English use this word while addressing people from a podium.
A print version of the Oxford Dictionary of English (Indian Edition) does state that the dated British meaning of this word means 'to grumble', but the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary gives various meanings like confine, pilfer, steal, plagiarise and others, but has nothing to relate this word with complaining. In fact, the meaning 'to plagiarise' was what got the goat of my colleague if anybody tells him 'stop cribbing' he immediately asks, 'Why are you accusing me of plagiarising? What did I steal?'
So, where does this meaning come from? I checked Wikipedia and this site says that 'A crib is an infant bed in American English (British English: cot)'. Wikipedia also has 15 other entries, but the one that we are interested in here is the last one, which says, '(South Asia), To complain. This is used commonly by Indians and Pakistanis talking in English'. So, now we know
Another commonly misused word is 'prepone'. While native speakers prefer 'advance' and claim that prepone is not used abroad, it was first used by John Trenor in the NYT way back in 1913.
So, stop cribbing and use the word prepone!
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