Skip to main content

English and Personality


“Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.” Professor Higgins tells that to Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion.

“Does speaking well in English add a sparkle to one’s personality?” asks Indispire Edition 145. 


I have seen the foulest of souls speak the best of English.  And they came in the name of a religious cult and its sanctimonious morals and mores.  I have seen rustic people with no knowledge of English behave with poise and sagacity.  The opposite is true too.  All generalisations verge on falsehood and the assumption that speaking well in English can make one a sparkling personality is at best a pretty joke.  The theme is listed under “humour” at Indispire and so this post of mine is perhaps out of sync. 

Personally, I am a lover of English simply because it is the language of the world rather than that of The Bible.  More than that, it is the language which brought to me my favourite writers such as Dostoevsky and Kafka, Kazantzakis and Camus.  It is the language of the Internet and its ocean of knowledge. 



English has little to do with the sparkle of anyone’s personality.  The great secret of the sparkling personality, if I may paraphrase Shaw’s words in the same drama mentioned above, is not speaking in English or any particular language, but having the sparkle in your heart, having the same heart’s language for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in heaven where there are no third class carriages and one soul is as good as another.
Indian Bloggers


Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. PurbaNovember 29, 2016 at 11:20 AM

    Sadly, it's an enabler. We still equate good education, family background to well-spoken English.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. जितेन्द्र माथुरNovember 29, 2016 at 1:51 PM

      Said right Purba Ji.

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 29, 2016 at 8:23 PM

      I agree. Our education system is to blame. Make government schools accountable and effective and see the revolution that will happen.

      Delete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरNovember 29, 2016 at 1:53 PM

    Very well said Sir. Indeed very well. I had my formal education in my mother-tongue (Hindi) but English (as a subject in my curriculum) always fascinated me. Now I love English as much as I love Hindi and I am fond of expressing myself in both these languages. All the same, English-speaking should not be equated to superiority of any kind.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 29, 2016 at 8:44 PM

      I too did my entire schooling in my mother tongue. But I grew up 'consuming' more English simply because it is the global language, the language which gave me certain advantages in mu pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge is power and hence may give one an edge over some others. But sparkle? Well, that's a different matter.

      Delete
  3. sunaina sharmaNovember 29, 2016 at 4:57 PM

    Yes, the sparkler is the heart and not the language......I was waiting to read your take on the topic.....I love the language too, but don't feel that it makes you shine.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 29, 2016 at 8:45 PM

      I am quite busy these days and hence my post was written in a hurry. But glad you like the line of argument.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
28 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
9 comments
Read more