Some unique Indian expressions are ‘cousin brother' , which should be ‘male cousin' and ‘co-sister', as no real English term exists for this. One of the words frequently abused by many Indians is ‘only'. Examples of wrong usage: ‘‘I only did it'', to mean ‘‘I am the one who did it'' and ‘‘Now only you tell me, to imply ‘‘Tell me right now'' or ‘‘He went there only'', to convey ‘‘That is where he went''.
A sentence that is contextually wrong is, ‘‘Our class teacher takes tuition classes for some of his students in the evenings''. Students take classes, teachers teach them. Yet another example is,‘‘I passed out of college in 1995'', when it should be,‘‘I graduated from college in 1995''. To ‘pass out' is to faint. In addition, many Indians use, ‘‘I am older to you'' to mean ‘‘I am older than you''. Many people use the incorrect expression ‘be rest assured' as in ‘‘Be rest assured it will get done''.The first part should be either ‘be assured' or ‘rest assured'.
Moreover, many Indians say ‘yesterday night' instead of ‘last night' which is the more preferred form. Many even use unusual expressions like ‘yesterday itself' and ‘there and all'. Some expressions used by Indians do not have the right form of the adjective - for example, you should not say ‘100-feet road' or ‘6-inches ruler'. They should be ‘100-foot road' and ‘6-inch ruler' respectively. Some objects like sunglasses and scissors should always be in the plural unless you are referring to broken ones. Other common mistakes committed by Indians include using incorrect prepositions. Examples are: ‘‘The BSE is in Dalal Street'' or ‘‘The BSE is at Dalal Street''. It should be ‘‘The BSE is on Dalal Street''. You use ‘in' when the area is bigger, like a city, or a locality and ‘at' to refer to an intersection of roads or a place or establishment. For example, ‘‘The Taj Mahal is in Agra'' and ‘‘I will meet you at the station'' are correct usages. ‘At' could be used for a town or city as well though ‘in' is generally preferred. If you are in doubt regarding the pronunciation of any word, a dictionary always comes in handy. It helps to own two dictionaries, a British one such as Oxford's and an American one such as Webster's and compare the differences in meaning, usage and pronunciation between the two countries. ‘Can't' is pronounced in the US similar to ‘can' with a ‘t' at the end. ‘Schedule' is pronounced as ‘sked-jul' in the US. ‘Been' is pronounced as either ‘bin' or ‘ben' in the US. The ‘tory' of many words like ‘inventory' and ‘derogatory' are pronounced as ‘tory' in the US while they are pronounced as ‘tree' in both India and the UK.