I’ve been meaning to start a series of posts focused on the intricacies of the English language for a while now.
So for the first post, I’ve taken up something that is probably a very Indian mishap.
Take this for instance:
“Hey, what did you do yesterday!”
“Well, let me see! First I went to a movie, then we went bowling and then I shopped for shoes! I did all those stuffs!”
NO.
“Hey baby! Look at all the cool stuffs I bought for you!!”
NO AGAIN.
But WHY?
To understand why it is this way, you have to know of a concept called Uncountable Nouns. In the English language, a lot of things are classified as uncountable. These are the objects that do not have a plural form (are implicitly plural) and also cannot be divided.
E.g. Milk, water, rice, sugar, hair etc.
These are the objects that we cannot count directly but always with an other form of measurement. For example, we can say a bag of rice or a liter of milk and so on but never rices or milks!
In contrast, take biscuit for example of which you can perfectly say – I have two biscuits!
But wait, STUFFS is a valid word too!
Only in its verb form but.
Par example:
“He stuffs the jute bag with the dead body.”
There! A perfectly correct sentence, see!
So that’s it! I do think most people know this but this stemmed off from a conversation I had with someone who simply loves to use the word “Stuffs” wrongly. I know for a fact that a lot of Indians make this mistake so if I’ve educated at least one I’ll consider this endeavor a success.
My ex corrected me when I used to make this mistake in the past. 😛 Grateful to her.
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You chose your ex well! 😛
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Explains the reason why I didnt get into another relationship after that. 😛
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Haha, He stuffs the jute bag with a dead body. Are you sure that that’s a correct sentence? If so, then I’m worried for your wellbeing. Don’t worry man, I know that it’s obviously a joke but still… hehe.
– Ainsworth 🙂
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LOL…do you think there’s an error in that sentence? :O I thought it was grammatically correct.
And a little dark humor is required once in a while, no? 😛
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Haha, grammatically correct yes and I do quite enjoy the dark humour. Just don’t let your girlfriend hear that one man. By the way, I was meant to say that I throughly enjoyed this post. I can’t wait for the next one!
– Ainsworth 🙂
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Hehehe, yes I agree! And thanks! 😀
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I wish you the best of luck. English can be confusing even for those of us who have its as our mother tongue. Water is another example of confusion. You can have ‘waters’ as in,’By the waters of Babalyon’ as used in the old once popular song.
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Thank you. Yes the word ‘waters’ did cross my mind yesterday. The eccentricities of English are boundless, it would seem!
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“Childrens”
“FIshes”
Oh… Heavens !
😉
Good initiative
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Oh my gods!!! 😛 Right you are, those are some of the commonly made mistakes too. And thanks, hope I come up with some interesting topics every week.
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you made me smile at a few points with you examples, Uday. Great! Thanks!
I guess, that’s not a problem only for people from India, but for many people speaking English as a second language and have learnt is as an adult.
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Yea I guess English language has a lot of little things like these that a non-native speaker might not get.
Thanks for stopping by and glad I could help!
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or even persons!!! Great post, very well explained. Nice to reconnect with you again..I have been a very lazy blogger recently, but am getting back in to my groove
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It’s great to hear from you too 🙂 Been quite a while now. Your Bali posts always add a zing to my timeline.
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Vow…I loved your flair for coining words beginning with the name of your blog….Udayology…and also luminographer…very nice
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Ongoing thread on Quora about this!
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-lately-the-pseudo-words-maths-and-stuffs-pop-up-everywhere-Did-I-miss-an-important-linguistic-shift
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Actually, there is such a word as peoples when you refer to two or more groups of ethnics or nationalities. I hope you are never ignorant now of that fact.
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Thanks a lot for such an interesting explanation about the word stuff. That’s very helpful to us English learners. Have a great 2021.
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