We often get emails from potential PhD students from the Indian sub-continent. These are generally quite amusing: I know it's in poor taste to giggle at unintentional language abuse but when your knockouts haven't worked for the umpteenth time and your feet are soggy because it's been raining for a week (and yet we still suffer under water restrictions) then you have to take your entertainment where and when you can get it.
However.
There is a world of difference between writing pidgin English because she is not your first language (and don't get me wrong: English is herself a pidgin, Britannia's bastard offspring who does not care from whom she steals vocabulary. Therein lies her strength), and being a muppet:
Dear [alternate name for Ricardipus].I went thru your profile and found ur connection in academics. I want to do PhD. I have scholarship of US $100,000 and wants a PhD position in Canada. Can you help me.
Ur, as everyone knows, was a city in Mesopotamia. It would have been over 6,000 miles from Canada.
Comments
And someone gave this person 100K? Tell me that part is not true.
Do they have PhD spammers?
Posted by: Georg | June 5, 2008 11:28 AM
I suspect he meant rupees, not US$.
(The Stack is back up? Yay!)
Posted by: bk | June 5, 2008 11:32 AM
Ahhh. That would explain it.
Yes, Stack has moved as my free server space was rudely taken from me.
Posted by: Georg | June 5, 2008 11:48 AM
How u thinks I gots MY PhD position in Canada.
Posted by: Eva | June 5, 2008 02:49 PM
I can has PhD? WANT!!11!
Posted by: VWXYNot? | June 6, 2008 03:51 AM
The sad thing is, as I have read, is that this sort of pidgin English is actually taught in a not a few schools in India these days. There was a pretty extensive article about how much of a disservice it was to generations of Indians looking to work in the English speaking world, though I can't remember when (it was in the New York Times).
Posted by: lost academic | June 17, 2008 08:35 AM
And yet... all the call centres are in India, and Singhalese, at least, have better English than the native speakers. It's a mad mad mad mad mad world.
Posted by: bk | June 17, 2008 09:14 AM