Whose Language?
Julia (name changed) spoke English like native
American speakers. I presumed that she had lived for some time in an
environment where that variant of English was spoken, because there were a few
other such students in the school. Charlie (real name), for example, came from
the USA where he lived with his parents until they decided to give him a taste
of Kerala, their homeland. Charlie’s English was just like what I hear in
Hollywood movies. I had to request him to Indianize it a bit for my sake
sometimes.
Julia was my student for two years:
grades 11 and 12. Her American accent was little easier for me than Charlie’s. Nevertheless
I requested her too to make it more comprehensible to the class so that the 39
other students could follow her. She did make an effort.
It was only in the first Parent
Teacher Meet that I came to know that neither Julia nor her parents ever lived outside
Kerala. They all lived in a village not far from the school.
“How did she acquire her American
accent?” I asked her mother.
“From Hollywood movies and TV shows,”
the mother said, “and constant practice. She loves English.” Then she added, “She
loves you too.”
A student’s love for a subject can
stretch to the teacher and vice-versa, I knew that from years of teaching
experience.
Julia’s love became a cake when
Christmas came. “I baked it myself for you,” she said handing the pack to me.
From that Christmas to the last one
in 2025, I have received a cake every year, baked by Julia herself. Years and
distance haven’t brought any wear and tear to our friendship which is
apparently based on our mutual love for English.
his morning’s The Hindu newspaper reminded me of Julia. The Education Plus page carried an interview with Alan Maley, English Language Teaching (ELT) expert. Should everyone speak English like the native speakers? No, affirms Maley. Standardisation of a language does serve practical purposes, Maley says, “but it is also linked to power, control, and nation-building. So-called ‘standard English’ is, therefore, a convenient fiction.”
English is spoken differently in
different countries. I speak Indian English as do most Indian speakers of
English, though I try my best to follow the standards prescribed by Received
Pronunciation (RP) and International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA). I love English
like Julia, so much so I gave up math after graduation and pursued higher
studies in English language and literature and became an English teacher. My
personal library is full of English books. A simple reason is that English
brings me writers from everywhere, my most favourites being the Greek
Kazantzakis, Russian Dostoevsky, French Camus and Czech Kafka. Without English
I wouldn’t have known them.
But I never made an effort to acquire
the British or the American accent and intonation. I am of the firm opinion
that language belongs to a place and culture, even if it is an imported language.
So it will naturally acquire the local flavours, and that’s how it should be.
I loved Alan Maley for saying that
when he set up an MA programme at “a prestigious private university in Thailand,”
he appointed lecturers from India, Singapore, Italy, Burma, the Netherlands,
and, of course, Thailand. Maley was “the only native speaker.” Maley made
English more inclusive and hence more universal. More dynamic.
Languages are dynamic. They keep
growing by adapting itself according to situations and requirements. English is
a “shared global resource,” as Maley puts it, “rather than the property of a
privileged few.” Let it be rooted in the soil of the place while branching out to
all over the world.
anguage can be made a weapon. India’s present political leaders are doing that in many places. Hindi is being imposed by Delhi on the whole country. I fail to understand why people living in the rural areas of a state like Kerala should learn Hindi in order to understand what their government in Delhi is communicating. This same question was asked by Karnataka two days back when Kerala government decided to make Malayalam the official language. There are plenty of people in the northern border region of the state who speak Kannada rather than Malayalam. How will they be affected by Thiruvananthapuram’s imposition of Malayalam on them?
Why should anyone impose their language on others unless it is for control and manipulation? My simple solution is: let there be a universal language. English suits the purpose best simply because it is spoken all over the world. Let there be as many Englishes as the speakers want. If we shed our nationalistic egos, English can be our own and serve a lot more practical purposes than trying to make absurd acronyms like: SAMPADA in PMMSY.
Ø PMMSY - Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAMPADA Yojana
Ø SAMPADA - Scheme for
Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters
Language grows when people adopt it and give it a spin to suit their purpose. I once had a friend who argued that if you speak a language like English it makes more sense to speak it like the British rather than adapt it to suit your purpose. I disagreed with him arguing that there is nothing wrong in speaking English like an Indian. When an Englishman or an American speaks Tamil or Malayalam or for that matter any other Indian language you can't expect them to speak it like an Indian. Mark Tully the BBC correspondent for India spoke Hindi like a veteran. The only thing was he had an accent. I agree fully with you that imposition of language is used by politicians to consolidate their narrow political ends. English is an international language and just like you I love the language. It can definitely be used as the sole link language for India.
ReplyDeleteI had a teacher long ago who was a British missionary. He lived in India right from his youth and never returned home. Yet the Tamil he spoke was quite like his English: crisp and heavily accented. The Europeans don't get the prosody of the Indian languages easily. As you say, the Indians don't need to struggle to emulate their accent and intonation either. Actually, Indian English is good enough; there are so many excellent Indian English writers too. Of course, writing is a different matter. But the point is that Indian English has been accepted as 'legal tender.'
DeleteMark Tully was born and brought up in India. That's why he acquired the native patterns. Many relatives of mine live in the UK and USA and their children, born and brought up there, speak like the natives and they don't speak Malayalam like native speakers. Simple.
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteThe imposition of a national tongue in and of itself is definitely practical, from the point of view of administration. To impose it by law to the point of overriding local languages is when it becomes tyrannical. English itself was a weapon, remember... used first against the Gaelic speakers of Scotland and Ireland. That said, there can be no denying that the three commercial languages of the world are English, Spanish, and French, and it would make more sense for any one of those to be used as the administrative languages of the places where they dominate. That is not, however, what the current Indian government is about, really, is it? It is seeking to do what the English did centuries ago... YAM xx
Precisely, present Indian government is doing just what the British Raj did. Impose language, culture, and many other things. In fact, the MODI INC fails to understand that they're undermining the fundamental values of Hinduism with their silly political agenda. The plain truth is that Modi is delusional. His latest speech in Somnath and the dress he wore there indicate that he stands in need of psychiatric treatment. Seriously. He claims, not too discreetly, that he is not born of the usual biological process, but has some divine origin. This man in inflicting his insanity on the entire nation.
DeleteThere was a show a few years back: The Story of English. In it, they talked about how English had turned into so many dialects depending on where is was spoken. Each nation that uses it uses it in their own ways.
ReplyDeleteEven Microsoft has listed a large number of English varieties in Word. There are a lot more than that too.
DeleteAny child's capacity to master languages is infinite. - Nopriestamleft Chomsky. Youngsters, in general, like to catch on to the Yankee accent, of course, from motion pictures. I had a seminarian, who left.. Whose fastidiousness for accent in English, used to make him a laughing stock, among other seminarians. He ended up as a Newsreader and an Anchor for the Doordarshan and other Private Channels in the NE. Eventually, he refound his vocation, as a priest, in one of the two dioceses in Arunachal Pradesh. Languages, like vocations are wavy and rippling...
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting example for the waviness of languages and religious vocations. My school in Vazhakulam had a curious mix of accents because the senior secondary section had students from many parts of the world though all were of Kerala roots. Students came from the Gulf and other countries where their parents were working, but chose to send children for higher sec education in Kerala for various reasons. The variety was so much that no one laughed at anyone; rather, it benefitted all.
DeleteI followed Noam Chomsky's theory. I refused to waste time on teaching grammar and instead asked students to read, write, speak and listen in order to acquire linquistic fluency and skills. And it was successful - both in Delhi and here.
Noam
ReplyDeleteLanguage has become as emotional an issue in India as religion. Understandable, because language connects people. What is not understandable is politicians weaponizing language. If politicians take their hands off language, it will remain just an emotion and not an issue.
ReplyDeleteOne, Hindi is just a regional language like Tamil or Oriya. Since it's the most predominant one, and it's language of the region where our capital and power centres are, it has got a lot of currency. That's fine. But don't wish away other languages.
I have always been for a three-language formula. English for global reach; Hindi/another vernacular language for national/regional reach. All important announcements and notices should be in all three languages. Out of the three, most of the people in India will know one of the three languages.
(My latest post: A Sunday surprise
Kerala always had 3 languages in school. I learnt Hindi for 6 years but just for passing exams. I couldn't put that language to any good use just because nobody spoke that language anywhere in my neighborhood in those days. Later when I moved out tp Northeast, I learnt Hindi a little better by conversing with people who didn't know English. Necessity teaches us languages better than schools.
Delete