English is a funny language. At the moment, over 1000 people in the world speak Mandarin as their mother tongue whereas about half of that speak English. Following this, Chinese must be the global language and yet analysts have considered English as the global language. Most English words have been derived from Latin and Greek. With the arrival of the Royal British Empire, the language transformed and found its way into all the colonized lands of the Queen even to the United States of America by the twentieth century. So what makes this very global language very funny?
There are no such people quite so arrogant as people for whom English is their mother tongue. The British, The Australians, The Americans and not merely them, everyone in Canada and New Zealand too. Each native English speaker has his own mannerism in the way he speaks with heavy accent. For instance, the Americans love to pronounce and stretch their words whereas the English prefer short and crisp pronunciation often making it difficult to deduce for us Indians. The differences are obvious in the way a F.R.I.E.N.D.S character speaks from that of a Hugh Laurie or a Michael Sheen. Here in India, we are very prone to vandalizing the English language as a result of diversification. We have introduced such variances of the same language with no such intent but only in an effort to put across the meaning which few have informally termed as ‘Hinglish’. In the 1975 Hrishikesh Mukherjee hit comedy Chupke Chupke, an ardent Hindi speaker Dharmendra curiously asks his master why the English language does not have same pronunciation for words like ‘go’, ‘do’, ‘to’ or why ‘chacha’ and ‘mama’ are both called ‘uncle’. His master finds himself in a fix unable to explain and says that that was the way English is spoken and written. Russell Peters often trusts the Indian accent to bring the house down.
There are other such rather nonsensical examples of the funny English language viz., Boxing rings are square… A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig… We have noses that run and feet that smell… When a house burns up, it burns down… and a lot more. I must say however funny the language seems and difficult to deal with for many, it has become a prerequisite in the global world that we live in, for one must communicate well in English in the modern development of science and commerce. It becomes the imperative to learn the English language to foster change, innovation and development. The Japanese, in contrast do not use English as the official language nor do they have any training in schools and colleges and yet are well ahead in terms of innovation with respect to science and commerce.
There are also the new fashionable English words that do not seem like English in the first place. The Americans are much ahead in this regard, creating new vocabulary, which of course are meant for their own use and understanding. ‘Ba-donka-donk’, meaning a very curvy behind of a woman. ‘Shawty’, meaning fine girl. ‘Flossing’, meaning showing off one’s asset are rather new entrants in the English vocabulary. The British on the other hand love to use the old English and their choice of vocabulary is certainly more profound than the rest. The Australians too have theirs as much as the Americans and the British. I have observed that if you ask a set of different questions to a British, an American and an Australian, you might get one word or two words responses to all the questions. (British) - How are you? Fantastic. How was your day? Fantastic. How did the presentation go? Fantastic. What did the clients say? Fantastic. Great, I’ll get ready and we’ll go out for dinner… Fantastic. (In the restaurant)… Sir, we have a special guest who will be performing live tonight… Fantastic… (American) - How are you? Awesome. How was your day? Awesome. How did the presentation go? Awesome. What did the clients say? Awesome. Great, I’ll get ready and we’ll go out for dinner… Awesome. (In the restaurant)… Sir, we have a special guest who will be performing live tonight… Awesome… (Australian) - How are you? Mighty good. How was your day? Mighty good. How did the presentation go? Mighty good. What did the clients say? Mighty good. Great, I’ll get ready and we’ll go out for dinner…
The English language is hard to learn… Some like to condense their speech while some like it elaborated. It is also seen that eloquent speakers love to elaborate. Barack Obama loves to articulate and speaks with gusto while Steve Jobs likes it straightforward. Both are exceptional speakers. But inorder to be able to convince a large audience, one must be proficient vis-à-vis the environment in which he delivers his speech. English is a very important language in the corporate world where the interactions mainly occur via e-mails as well as in conference halls. This is one area where Indians appear to have lacked even with the growing number of university graduates. The language proficiency is below what is expected of an average person and very few universities have set guidelines to solve the issue. I recently read about the need of 8 million graduates by 2014 for our GDP growth curve to keep rising. Presently we have only 350 recognized universities against the 1500 needed and only the IIMs and few top B-Schools seem to be looking into the need for prioritizing the knowledge of English. Some state politicians even coerce parents to send their children to schools where the medium of instruction is in a regional language. In no way should this help India progress at the kind of pace that we educated lot expect it to. The question is, who will teach English, how are educated graduates going to improve their language, how are we going to thrive upon the fact that we are a competent lot, until we announce it? We could help ourselves by triggering an eagerness to learn, willingness to accept the importance of English in every line of business and create an atmosphere where somebody learns and teaches another.
Let the government-run institutions do the fine job of delivering highly qualified engineers and management leaders. Private institutions need to scale up their capacity to not only get in students and teach them but enable to grow and develop themselves. It is highly recommended that internships are encouraged and companies should render co-operation. Schools need to correct everything at the roots. Making English mandatory, stressing on grammar, pronunciation, etc. can prevent damage in the future. Meanwhile, we need to understand that we need to improve and work on it ourselves. It is important that we speak well, write well and communicate well even among ourselves. We all must make the effort to improve. We might be able to tap our own potentials and take the road to a higher level bridging the gaps with a common language. We need to be part of the global paradigm where more inter-person communications takes place. Though there is an underlying threat of neglecting other languages, I would like to maintain a belief that we are all wise enough to uphold our national languages and not risk it by holding it too tight. Life itself finds its meaning when compared to a grammar lesson… we find the past perfect and the present tense. It is no more an exception to be part of the global phenomenon but the norm and we must participate.
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