Till now, at least 50 scholarly and authentic books on Urdu grammar have been written in Urdu…….
My question about this sentence is about “Till now” as it combines with “have been written.” “Up to now” is the way I would say this but I cannot find anything out of order with “Till now.” But what it suggests to me is that something will follow like, “However, we now see several unscholarly books published….” or some such. So here is the whole context:
“After a while, Urdu grammar writing in Urdu by natives really took off. Till now, at least 50 scholarly and authentic books on Urdu grammar have been written in Urdu, not to mention the hundreds of commercially and unscrupulously produced substandard grammars of Urdu.”
This still bothers me. So here is the following paragraph:
“During the last few decades of the last century, some of the most admirable works on Urdu grammar by a foreigner have definitely been two books by the Russian scholar Sonia Chernekova. Her two books, written in Urdu and named Urdu Ke Seeghe and Urdu Af’aal, show her great command over the Urdu language and grammar. She indeed has some insight to offer to some of our grammarians. Some aspects of forms of Urdu verbs explained by her for the first time are unparalleled examples of fine understanding of Urdu’ s verbal forms.”
The author again gives a time frame and mentions some specifics. But that is a reference to the past; “Till now…” implies to me a reference to the present or the future. I think that is the source of the slightly jarring effect of “Till now….” The reason that is interesting is because it shows how hard it is to learn or teach idiomaticity in another language. The writer obviously knows English very well and it is difficult to say if this “infelicity” occurred because his native language is not English or because the English he acquired natively is Indian English, a recognized variety of English.
Does anyone not have trouble with the “Till now….?”