Dear Telus,
Thank you for your recent correspondence written in Punjabi.
Like many Canadians, I do not speak or understand Punjabi. Nor can I decipher the beautiful Gurmukhi script you used. I am therefore not sure why you were writing to me, though I can guess that it might involve a desire to woo me back, after multiple problems with your service caused me to move to another provider some years ago.
I do find it intriguing, though, and a little unsettling, to imagine what prompted you to write to me in Punjabi.
I know companies like yours use complex algorithms to determine the interests, weaknesses and other characteristics of their customers, based often on information they purchase from on-line entities such as Google and Facebook. Perhaps you know from those sources that I am a fan of Satyajit Ray, the incomparable Bengali film director, and of Arundhati Roy, author of the astonishing God of Small Things. Neither are Punjabi, of course, but they are from Northern India, and perhaps you consider that to be enough. Identity by association.
If I were a little more paranoid, I might think that you also have knowledge of my cohabitation during my Winnipeg years with a Gujarati-speaking architecture student. (The script for Gujarati, used for example in Ghandi's autobiography, might be seen as superficially similar to the Gurmukhi script in which Punjabi is normally written.) Going back even further, maybe you dug up information about my paper on Firth's 1956 book on Urdu in the popular British Teach Yourself series (previously published as Teach Yourself Hindustani).
A tad less worrisome, and possibly more likely, would be your awareness of my dining at local Indian restaurants, where I am exposed to TV channels in languages you could not imagine I do not understand, and which could be Punjabi for all I know.
Whatever your reasons for supposing I might respond favourably to wheedling in Punjabi, let me assure you that, like previous correspondence in English, your letter will fall on deaf ears, so to speak. No amount of linguistic ingenuity could convince me to abandon the quite satisfactory service I currently enjoy for promised improvements in which, based on past experience, I would be unwise to have any faith.
Thank you for your recent correspondence written in Punjabi.
Like many Canadians, I do not speak or understand Punjabi. Nor can I decipher the beautiful Gurmukhi script you used. I am therefore not sure why you were writing to me, though I can guess that it might involve a desire to woo me back, after multiple problems with your service caused me to move to another provider some years ago.
I do find it intriguing, though, and a little unsettling, to imagine what prompted you to write to me in Punjabi.
I know companies like yours use complex algorithms to determine the interests, weaknesses and other characteristics of their customers, based often on information they purchase from on-line entities such as Google and Facebook. Perhaps you know from those sources that I am a fan of Satyajit Ray, the incomparable Bengali film director, and of Arundhati Roy, author of the astonishing God of Small Things. Neither are Punjabi, of course, but they are from Northern India, and perhaps you consider that to be enough. Identity by association.
If I were a little more paranoid, I might think that you also have knowledge of my cohabitation during my Winnipeg years with a Gujarati-speaking architecture student. (The script for Gujarati, used for example in Ghandi's autobiography, might be seen as superficially similar to the Gurmukhi script in which Punjabi is normally written.) Going back even further, maybe you dug up information about my paper on Firth's 1956 book on Urdu in the popular British Teach Yourself series (previously published as Teach Yourself Hindustani).
A tad less worrisome, and possibly more likely, would be your awareness of my dining at local Indian restaurants, where I am exposed to TV channels in languages you could not imagine I do not understand, and which could be Punjabi for all I know.
Whatever your reasons for supposing I might respond favourably to wheedling in Punjabi, let me assure you that, like previous correspondence in English, your letter will fall on deaf ears, so to speak. No amount of linguistic ingenuity could convince me to abandon the quite satisfactory service I currently enjoy for promised improvements in which, based on past experience, I would be unwise to have any faith.
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