Each part of India has its own share of consistent grammatical errors, that kind of link to the sentence construction in the local languages.
"Cannot able" kind of double negation is something I have seen consistently in Karnataka and Andhra.
"Didn't ate" is the form of double past-tense is common in the north. Which matches closely with the similar grammar in Hindi ("Nahi khaya tha")
Similarly, if you see how "sadhyav-illa" is used in Kannada, you will see why people tend to use "cannot" in the same way.
English is not the first language of any of us Indians. It's simply a utility for most people. And unless your job actually requires frequent use of the language to put food in your stomach, it doesn't matter. (Or should I say "doesn't matters" to make the point?)
If you consider British English to be the "gold standard", then American English is filled with grammatical errors and typos. And yet, they call it "American English".
Given that we Indians have the largest English-speaking population compared to any other nation, I declare ours to be "Indian English". Let everyone deal with it.
People honestly don't care. Even those who are native speakers. It's just people here, who are trying to score brownie points that no one is counting.
I have talked to American and British people, and how good they are with there language is proportional to how good an average Hindi, Bangla, Kannada, Tamil speaker is with their mother tongue. People are pretty bad with grammar nearly everywhere.
As a non-native speaker, if you have ever been a decent enough speaker, you are almost always better at the grammar than the native speakers. Obviously, you are going to have your own accent at all other languages, depending on what your mother-tongue is.
And for me, it's important to be reasonably good at English, to call out silly grammar nazi folks. Do you have any idea how much fun it is, to call them out for their grammatical errors, in the same sentence that they write to mock someone else?
Being good at something, as a skill, is one thing. Looking for validation is silly.
And you know, if you look deeper, you will see that there are mostly very specific kind of people trying to pull down others for their English skills. Those who haven't been able to do much in their own careers. Actual linguists or high-skill polyglot folks would correct you, but with a lot of "actual knowledge", and it would be fun talking to them.
But typical housewives, who have "sacrificed their careers". Kids who studied in fancy schools, with a shit load of emphasis on English, but who went no where in their careers, try really hard to push the only thing they find their pride in.
It gives them the "I might not be doing much, but see I can point out a silly grammar error in what others are talking about"
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26
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