Let’s Not “Do The Needful”

Not because what is necessary shouldn’t be done – of course it should. But when it is, it is not needful, it is required.

This morning my assistant put me in mind of these aberrant constructs when she messaged me:

Good Morning Sir
Reminder for your PWA Amicable Settlement Teams Meeting.
Please note it has been preponed by 30 mins.
Meeting is now from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Crimes against language that assault the senses are most egregious when committed by native speakers—for theirs is not the sin of ignorance, but of complacency. And complacency left unchecked leads to erosion: of the very foundations that support the edifice.

Preponing a scheduled appointment echoes the shrill noise of between you and I instead of the correct me. The register is higher than needed—and incorrect all the same. The result is silly affectation. Like a monkey in a morning coat.

English, in its deepest grain, does not thrive on symmetry. It thrives on drift. On poetic slouch. On phrases that wobble, hesitate, and ultimately stick the landing. It is not a logical language. TikTok overflows with foreigners marveling at its asymmetries—its idioms, its pronunciation, its grammar held together with exception and tradition, not rule.

Languages evolve, yes. But they do so through what F.R. Leavis called the living sense of the language. Words are adopted not because they are rational, but because they sound right. Nabokov ridiculed translations that were too literal, too clean, lacking the “tint and tincture” of the original’s expressive shape. Prepone, despite its constitutional logic, offends that inner ear.

Structuralist linguists taught us that the link between signifier and signified is arbitrary—but once established, it resists tampering. Language is a code, and codes resist arbitrary rewiring. Prepone is syntactically correct, but semiotically wrong. Roland Barthes would call it a “writerly” sign: self-conscious, contrived, foregrounding its artificiality and disrupting the illusion of natural fluency. From a cultural semiotic perspective, prepone reeks of bureaucratic overreach—of managerial rationalism imposing itself on the fluid, feral territory of speech. (Like I said in a prior post, I’m writing a book on organizational effectiveness so…..)

English is a mongrel, and proud of it—a mingling of Saxon and Latinate bloodlines, a genetic chimera that resists codification. Its strength is its instability, its poetry born of contradiction.

Now, some will no doubt accuse me of salafi snobbery—of puritanical pedantry, of cloaked xenophobia. They’ve misread the line entirely. This isn’t about keeping out the foreign. It’s about keeping out the counterfeit. It’s not about race. It’s about maintaining the right texture; it must be felt.

Words like bungalow, shampoo, and dungarees—borrowed from Indian languages—have been fully adopted into English, and have thereby enriched it. But crucially, these are nouns. They are semantic inclusions, not syntactic innovations. The latter is called Hinglish for a reason.

The resistance to prepone and its kin arises because they violate the essence of English—not by being illogical, but by imposing logic where none belongs. It’s the linguistic equivalent of architectural incongruity: like replacing flying buttresses with aluminum siding. The bones may hold, but the soul has been squeezed out the vestry.

One can easily introduce borrowed words into English—the way Moroccan tiles enrich a Victorian foyer. But to coin verbs like “prepone” is to replace the corniced ceiling with drop panels. It may be more efficient, but the aesthetic contract has been broken.

This isn’t about xenophobia. It’s about formal coherence.

Language is not a delivery mechanism. It’s a shared dwelling. Every time we let these phrases in, we plaster over a window. We swap metaphor for menu. We trade cadence for code.

So let us not “prepone” the demise of a language that is at once simple enough to be picked up by the entire world but nuanced enough for its finest users to imbue with harmonic layers.

Let us stand united against this inveigh and vow to do everything necessary to ensure it does not take root. Not out of pedantry, but out of reverence. Not out of nationalism, but out of love.

But let’s not allow anyone to “do the needful.”