Singapore High Commissioner to India Simon Wong flagged a purported spelling error made by the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) on his official X account recently.
The foreign diplomat claimed that Singapore has been misspelt as ‘Singapur’ on a signboard in Lutyens’ Delhi. Tagging the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the NDMC, Wong uploaded an image of the signboard and captioned his post, “It is always good to spell check first.”
The image was uploaded at around 8:50 am Sunday and went viral soon after. Reacting to the post, several social media users explained that Indians spell ‘pore’ as ‘pur’. A person wrote, “This sounds similar to what Britishers did with ‘Thakur’ they made it Tagore.”
“It’s interesting because Indian cities with ‘pore’ were renamed to its original ‘pur’. Like Cawnpore became Kanpur. I wonder if Singapore has similar origins,” another user commented.
“This is nothing. Most of the Punjabi translations of signages in Delhi are outright wrong. Have complained multiple times, but nothing changes,” a user said while attaching pictures of signages installed at Aurangzeb Lane, Kautilya Marg, Janpath, and Mansingh Road.
However, the NDMC quickly fixed the ‘Singapur’ issue by using some white tape. Following this, Wong expressed his gratitude to the municipal bodies. “I appreciate the rapid fix. HC Wong @tweetndmc @MCD_Delhi,” Wong posted on X. Reacting to Wong’s second post, a social media user wrote, “Not a good pasting job India. I’m sure we can do better.”
