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A reminder that pretty much no lorry driver in india knows English. Vehicles here have inane phrases like this and it’s for the most part almost protocol to pai
by ramraj07 5y ago
A reminder that pretty much no lorry driver in india knows English. Vehicles here have inane phrases like this and it’s for the most part almost protocol to paint them when you get a vehicle of that class. The guy who paints Lorry backs with the company name probably asks “you want the horn ok please phrase right” and the drivers probably like yeah whatever.
Not like the drivers here expect courtesy from anyone around them. If anything they expect (and return in kind) douchebaggery. It’s like playing gta. Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly.
Similarly auto rickshaws all over Tamil Nadu used to ubiquitously have the phrase “the age for a woman to get married is 21”. Similar bullshit reason (though in this case the govt might have mandated it at some point, memory unclear). Thankfully it’s disappeared nowadays.
- ben_w 5y agoThat seems very plausible, along the same lines as western tourists getting a tattoo which says “輕信游客” and thinking it’s a profound quote.
- Aeolun 5y agoIt is profound. Just not in the way they’re thinking.
- setum 5y ago輕信游客 means ‘gullible tourists’. That’s funny.
- chris_st 5y agoTried taking a picture of this, and using iOS 15's "Live Text" to recognize the characters and translate them. It translates this phrase as "Lightly believe tourists". Anyone care to comment on whether that's an accurate translation, and "lightly believe" is an idiom meaning "gullible"?
- srini_reddy 5y agoConsidering the HDI parameters of Tamilnadu, I would say that auto campaign worked very well too.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago> A reminder that pretty much no lorry driver in india knows English. They live in India -- why would they need to know English exactly?
- paulgb 5y agoThey don't, but it seems like relevant context on an article about an English phrase that's ubiquitous there.
- emteycz 5y agoEnglish is one of only two recognized official languages (in addition to Hindi) of the Republic of India [the federation]. It is widely used when native languages can't bridge the gap between two Indians. edit: s/Indian state/Republic of India
- WeekSpeller 5y agoBy Indian state you mean the federal govt. States have their own official languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status...
- School-Cotton 5y agoThey meant “state” in the general sense, not the particular sense of the federated entities of India, USA, Australia etc.
- School-Cotton 5y agoAlso there are some Indians with English as one of their native languages. Not sure how common that is, but enough that I know multiple of them despite not being from India myself.
- DonHopkins 5y agoTo read the phrase "Horn OK Please" perhaps?
- 5y ago
- llampx 5y ago> “the age for a woman to get married is 21” Worth adding here, that this phrase was meant to make families wait to get their girls married, aka "as opposed to 15" and not as in the current day, where this would be taken as implying that they should get married at such a young age.
- prateek_mir 5y agoI think similar messages used to be printed on the back of government owned buses in the state of Rajasthan !
- selimthegrim 5y agoApparently West Bengal state transport company paints “Safe Drive, Save Life” on its buses, except for one year where they decided “Save Drive, Safe Life” was the optimal way to express the sentiment. Maybe CO2 or pollution was high on the agenda that year.
- alisonkisk 5y agoWhat's wrong with promoting girls' freedom from forced marriages?
- junoper 5y ago> A reminder that pretty much no lorry driver in india knows English. It would be rare to find a lorry driver who can converse in English but most of them would know the words "Horn, OK, Please". Thye aren't obscure words and phone/smartphone is widespread in India with mostly latin script interface. So, while I agree that it has become kind of a protocol/decoration, drivers while knowing the meaning, wouldn't care much about it given that it doesn't hurt to write that and can potentially help. > Of course you expect every passerby to steal your car and you act accordingly. That would be an exaggeration. There hasn't been any vehicle theft in my wider social circle ever. I read news about capture vehice thieves and I wouldn't be careless about the vehicle but I wouldn't expect everyone around me as potential thief. May be things are different in TN.
- 1-more 5y agoI think the car stealing example was referring to the in-game behavior in GTA online. You expect car theft in GTA the same way you expect unsafe overtaking when driving in India.
- ramraj07 5y agoMy grandfather used to work in a goods shed so I knew my fair share of lorry drivers in the 90s. Horn ok please predates that era even. They knew not an sorts of English back then.