July 20, 2006
I smell a revolting odour in what you speakLiterature
A tipster on the News page alerts us to the following very odd column by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle. The tipster comments: “Personally I think this article is in poor taste, but I’ll let others decide for themselves. I don’t want to be accused of jingoism.” A wise display of circumspection! So let’s take a look for ourselves. Carroll begins:
Occasionally over the years I have reprinted examples of English written by people for whom English is not their native language. Many of the examples appeared to be translations prepared by somebody with a whatever-to-English dictionary and a keen will to succeed. The earnest author would often, perhaps unknowingly, have a fit of fancy, often landing in magical territory unvisited by native speakers.
Okay… So, where are we going with this?
People often accused me of making fun of the writers. Not at all. I loved the writers. They were demonstrating how flexible English can be, something that professional writers tend to forget. It’s nice that the grammar police exist, but they mustn’t be allowed to rule. Language is not just a tool or a blade; sometimes it’s a springboard or a trampoline or a balloon.
Tool, blade; springboard, trampoline, balloon. Right. Anyway:
English as spoken in India is not a mistranslation; it’s a different dialect. Most written Indian English is made for domestic consumption, so it can follow rules that make intuitive sense to the audience.
Ah! We’re going to make fun of Indian English! Sure, why not.
The work below was prepared by a friend of a friend.
The old friend-of-friend move. Convenient when you write a daily column. (No columnist should ever write daily.)
All the sentences are reported to be actual quotations from one issue of True Crimes magazine
Reported to be actual! (Columnists don’t have to fact check either.) Now, onto this Indian English of which you speak:
Her husband clipped her ambitions with the instrument of refusal. The pangs of separation from her paramour made her to suffer….
When he retired to his bed that night, he tried to analyze latent import of her expressions; his body got thrilled….
Vijay’s friends had cars, in which stereos were fitted and they used to insert cassettes in the decks and then enjoy melody of recorded songs. “Come, let us go to the lake and listen to melodies of songs there….”
Geeta smelt a revolting odour in what he spoke. But Vijay was influential and also commanded much muscle power. Although he was in love with another girl called Lucy, a modern and highly fashionable dame, love messages were started exchanging through visual contact. Geeta put a bewitching and killing smile on her lips. Vijay didn’t find her unsuitable for an immoral act. “My business pertains to counterfeit currency and alongside I also do swindling. I will indulge in such novel acts of sex that your spirits will blossom and cheer you up and you will not feel sorry….”
Geeta: “Would I prepare for celebration?”
And so on. Anyway, here’s my question: as odd as Indian English can get, is this at all representative? Maybe I’ve just been sheltered from the worst of it. If so, feel free to rupture my illusions, preferably supplying your favorite examples. But if not, what exactly was the purpose of this column?
siddhartha on July 20, 2006 09:39 PM in Literature · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Sure, some speakers of Indian English may use outdated phrases or idioms, but this article is taking things to the extreme.
"If so, feel free to rupture my illusions, preferably supplying your favorite examples."
This will ensure that the responses to your post are in the same vein as the article you quoted.
aha! you have seen through my evil plot!
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people who can speak only one language (English) proceed to ridicule a non-native speaker who is writing/saying something poorly in English. This includes your average SoCal anglo who thinks foreign accents are funny.
But it also includes so many Hindi speakers who make fun of the "bad" Hindi accent of a non-native speaker in India. X and Y speaks different languages and X goes into the bother of learning Y's language to communicate. Y doesn't come half way and just sits around on his/her ass and then makes fun of X's accent.
Well, I guess, if I can convince myself that my language is the "right" one, and "normal" and "national", all this would seem quite natural to me.
Hmmmm... So this was written for "True Crimes" you say (he says). If you've grown up in urban India and have learnt English, doesn't the title alone tell you something? This writer is being quite disingenous. The included passage is as representative of Indian English as India's image is of jungle, kids like Mogli, and snake-charmers and rope-magic.
A truer representation of Indian English can be found in newspapers like Times of India. Only of late (over the past 10 yrs or so) has the paper's english begun to resemble some of what's written in the USA. Most of it before was true blue Indian English with strong shades of UK English in it. Of course that would take some careful read of multiple writings in the newspaper, and would not be so brightly different from the author's english as "True Crimes".
To read real, well researched/observed differences, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English. Gems from the list on wikipedia are "Dicky" for trunk of the car, nose-screw (woman's nose ornament), updation, would-be (fiancé/fiancée). Now these are ones I can attest to being used on a daily basis over yonder.
Here's some classic Masala English. Some I have actually heard as used by my various teachers (who were not teaching english!).
* Open the doors of the windows
* Both of you three come here
* When you talk, you talk. When I talk, I talk. Don't talk in the middle of my talk!
Here's one that we made up - direct translation from Hindi into English. Sounded funny to us (friends & I) - "What goes of your father" when someone objects to whatever you're doing. Comes from "Tumhare baap ka kya jaata hai". I guess a better translation might be "None of your business" or "Why do you care"
Siddhartha: you must be knowing, this is utter crap.
And now, I am going to go to bed.
*****
Dialect, idiom, whatever Indian English is - it's not that purple prose. I'd love to know his source; the man's neurons are misfiring.
SLOW THE VOLUME. Now I'm off to bed, so please close the light.
I loved the passages. I can see why the writer got a kick out of them. I did too. Sort of reminded me of the complaint someone had posted where the man sued because the bride had crooked teeth. It's hilarious to read and I don't blame him for deciding to comment on it. So now we also know there's a whole set of people who write this way and read such stuff. It's probably the same genre as the pulp romances. But that doesn't mean many people in India don't speak very good English. There's enough evidence of that as well.
Does anyone know if the columnist has actually written other pieces like this showing "friends of friends" writing in french english, german english, english english, or dare we say ebonics? I'd be curious to find out what people's responses have been.
Come on! Do we really know that this was even written by anyone or just some cruel joke (a friend of a friend) and no references- please.
Madras college anecdotes:
Famous head from MMC infamously said to a student:
"Last Night I saw you at the movie theatre with my wife..."
Now anytime he begins a speech students shout, "In English, In English!"
Professor from MCC, who diffidently refered to girl students as 'skirts' and boy students as 'pants'.
[This was said to students streaming into a large hall with stadium seating]
"Students sit orderly...I want the pants down and the skirts up"
This scribe has indulged in overmuchness. He is just taking delight in our lacking English knowledge. Those lines can never be printed in any redeemed Indian paper and journal. True crime must be one third-class missive. I have never listened of such a name. Also what I am suspecting is that a journal of that good name is not present at all. This scribe or his certain friend discovered certain vernacular missives like Satya Aporadh and then interepreted good bangla stories by themselves after looking at Samsad dictionary. This is a misdeed and not a very amusing misdeed either. I am thinking just because Madhusudan and Bankim Chandra resigned from english writing, the scribe can not infer that we bangalis can not express us in English. Just behold the illustration of Niradbabu.
In Atmaghati Bangali, one of many misconceptions that Niradbabu argued against is the myth of the British encouraging English education in India to ensure a steady supply of clerical workers. He contended that the English, in general, always resisted the idea of Indians learning English, hated the Indians with a good command of English and favored the desis who did not know English or knew very little. He gave an exmple of Genral Sir Pratap Singh's English -
Now that is bhery good Indian English.
Divya:
You are only knowing why you get 'KICK' from this! If I see the fellow I will give him a nice one only! Why is this female encouraging these fellows.
The SF Chronicle is birdcage liner.
A few thoughts:
1. Using this story as "evidence" of the inferiority of Indian English is like TOI using Lynne Cheney's Sisters as an example of American Literature.
2. I find it ironic how anyone could have the audacity to suggest that American English is somehow canonical. Ask anyone in the UK, they'll tell you American English is the language of riff-raff.
3. Jon Carroll can laugh all he wants but pretty soon his job will be outsourced. To an Indian. Who speaks better English than him.
I don't know if this counts, but... in high school I wrote a paper and used the word "learnt" and my teacher circled every learnt (which was used several times!) and told me she wouldn't read a paper with such an egregious misspelling. I assume that's British thing I got from my parents - and I managed to get through American 10th grade without being corrected.
I must admit I've always loved English spoken "foreign" accents. I have a high level of tolerance, so the only time I get a bit annoyed is when I have absolutely no idea what a person is trying to say. Otherwise, it's all good. I'd like to think of it as accidental poetry. I'd also like to point out that it's not just Amreekans that feel this way when it comes to foreigners speaking "their" native tongue. I speak Tamil with a pretty bad accent and my relatives tease me to no end whenever I'm back in India.
"Geeta smelt a revolting odour in what he spoke. But Vijay was influential and also commanded much muscle power. Although he was in love with another girl called Lucy, a modern and highly fashionable dame, love messages were started exchanging through visual contact. Geeta put a bewitching and killing smile on her lips. Vijay didnt find her unsuitable for an immoral act. My business pertains to counterfeit currency and alongside I also do swindling. I will indulge in such novel acts of sex that your spirits will blossom and cheer you up and you will not feel sorry ."
I swear I read this very same line in The Da Vinci Code, last week only :)If it works for Dan Brown...
I've met a lot of Americans who have expressed their surprise at the fact that 'Indians speak good English'. Some of them even remarked that they had the notion that all foreigners used broken sentences and mispronounced words.
English medium schools in India (esp. ICSE board) don't teach "Indian English". We were taught our fair share of Shakespeare, Shaw, Tennyson and Wordsworth. In fact we had very few texts by Indian authors (which is a pity).
Somehow we all picked up "Indian English" because its a literal translation of the Hindi(or any other native language) words and phrases. While some of our teachers made sure that we wrote (and spoke) "gramatically correct" English, others didn't object to the Indianized version.
Seeker wrote:
My physical training teacher in school ("games sir") used the exact same sentence.
i have heard so many similar jokes about indian professors trying to speak english , that now i believe a lot of them are not said by professors but students create such myths. Though one of my professors was strikingly similar to other such professors .
"give me a red pen of any colour "
"open the window and let atomsphere come in "
"come backward"
"all are attendance"
Now about "True Crimes " .It is a D- grade magazine similar to "Manohar kahaniya" ,"sachhi kahaniya","apraadha kathaye " etc.
Eh, I don't think this is such a big deal. Americans also make fun of Aussie and Canuck English. India is just relatively new material. Pico Iyer did the same thing in one of his recent books. They make fun of us too, and the Brits make fun of all of us. I guess the unfairness is how do you distinguish between speakers of Indian English who are genuinely speaking their own English with full mastery, and Indian speakers of English who are in fact not totally aware of what they're saying? We all know that there are two kinds, but it's hard to make a distinction.
Okay, so a long rant for your reading pleasure on this bored Friday afternoon. :-D
--
I define Ind-glish as a über-cool, ironic language invented in a playground by bored schoolkids. Ind-glish, I assert, is funny, expressive and profound, with constructs such as "cool-eshwar", "light-chood", or to take a commercial example, "Hungry hai kya", it isn't a higher state of language that we ascribe to in our exams or in formal correspondence; it exists in itself, and by itself.
It is also slightly problematic it defines me (or us) into which I don't want to step into; while it does, arguably, describe the post-colonial-Indian condition, whether it is unique in doing so is something I wouldn't want to answer at this point. Perhaps in a generation or two, but not now; personally, I'll stick to Telugu for the time being.
Now, you'll note that the extract in the column was written in English and not Ind-glish; there's nothing uniquely Indian about wooden pulp fiction, or disdain for accepted grammar. More to the point, it isn't inherently (to use a computing metaphor) self-replicating, in that, some other Indian is not likely to read this and decide that she'll use this turn of words in her own text. She would, at best, understand where the author is coming from, but that's because she's already dealt with badly written prose before; even without the related tense problems, she wouldn't, certainly, "expect such demeaning activity" in "freely flowing" article elsewhere.
In short, if you replace the Indian proper nouns with, say, East European ones, the text will no longer "feel" Indian anymore. It will still feel wooden, arcane and stodgy, but not Indian. For a text to be dialectally Ind-glish, it will have to be Indian beyond its desi placeholders, and that's something this text can't do.
Hi
This blog reminded me of Nissim Ezekiel's poem "Good bye party to Miss Pushpa TS"
Friends,
Our dear sister
is departing for foreign
in two three days,
and
we are meeting today
to wish her bon voyage.
You are all knowing, friends,
what sweatness is in Miss Pushpa
I dont mean only external sweetness but internal sweetness.
Miss Pushpa is smiling and smiling
even for no reason
but simply because she is feeling.
Miss Pushpa is coming
from very high family.
Her father was renowned advocate in Bulsar or Surat,
I am not remembering now which place.
Coming back to Miss Pushpa
She is most popular lady
with men also and ladies also,
Whenever I asked her to do anything,
she was saying, "just now only
I will do it. That is showing
good spirit. I am always appreciating the good spirit.
Pushpa Miss is never saying no
Whatever I or anybody is asking
She is always saying yes,
and today she is going
to improve her prospects
and we are wishing her bon voyage.
Now I ask other speakers to speak and afterward Miss Pushpa
will do the summing up.
Something makes me uncomfortable about the sense of superiority with which this poem was studied as part of curriculum in an "english medium school"
Ah....the hierarchies that language can create...
Sumita
"aha! you have seen through my evil plot!"
Siddhartha, here is my contribution!
I can supply the unique expression "Sit square", by which (I think) my teacher meant that she wanted us students to sit up straight/sit "properly". Actually sitting square might be a rather difficult proposition, don't you think?
And at some public function, the principal of my undergraduate college thanked the guest of honour for "honouring us with his fragrant presence".
One interesting thing to note is that while I had the odd teacher who came up with these expressions, I don't remember other people saying such things. It was always some teacher, and being cruel children, we would have a laugh at his/her expense. I feel quite bad about my immature behaviour back then.
"...in high school I wrote a paper and used the word "learnt" and my teacher circled every learnt (which was used several times!) and told me she wouldn't read a paper with such an egregious misspelling."
Tamasha, a friend of mine moved here from Hongkong. His son had gone to a British school there, and he used "learnt" as well, in some written assignment. His teacher also marked it as incorrect, upon which my friend met the teacher and showed her that "learnt" was quite standard (he had some grammar tome or the other).
So the teacher requested that my friend's son switch to "learned" but agreed that she would not mark "learnt" as incorrect. My friend felt his son should not be told that he was wrong, merely that there is more than one way of spelling the past tense of "to learn".
Big issues about regional dialects in issues. Here's a Scottish poem.
From a series called 'Unrelated Incidents' -
from ''Intimate Voices' - 1984
(3)
this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.
Tom Leonard
I am thinking that all you boys and girls have too much free time and are not busy doing good Indian things like studying (no, we parents don't send you to college to have fun, we send you there to work), concentrating on getting decent jobs so that you can support us in our old age, and marrying a nice girl from the desh to press your feets and give you lots of pahelwaan sons. And no hanky-spanky before marriage; we did not engage in the kissing before marriage, in fact some of us do not even do the kissing after marriage, apart from a quick chumma on our wedding night to prove we are not of the gay. And there are none of the gay in India despite the bukwaas you may tell me, including the kitchen gossip about this handsome fellow (we must find him a nice girl, isn't it ?).
The passages read like Caroll's friend's friend took a Hindi story and translated it into English rather than actually writing it in English to begin with.
No one captured this peculiar brand of Indian English better than the Bombay Jewish poet Nissim Ezekiel. Check out another one of his poems:
The Patriot
I am standing for peace and non-violence.
Why world is fighting fighting
Why all people of world
Are not following Mahatma Gandhi,
I am simply not understanding.
Ancient Indian Wisdom is 100% correct,
I should say even 200% correct,
But modern generation is neglecting-
Too much going for fashion and foreign thing.
Other day I'm reading newspaper
(Every day I'm reading Times of India
To improve my English Language)
How one goonda fellow
Threw stone at Indirabehn.
Must be student unrest fellow, I am thinking.
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I am saying (to myself)
Lend me the ears.
Everything is coming -
Regeneration, Remuneration, Contraception.
Be patiently, brothers and sisters.
You want one glass lassi?
Very good for digestion.
With little salt, lovely drink,
Better than wine;
Not that I am ever tasting the wine.
I'm the total teetotaller, completely total,
But I say
Wine is for the drunkards only.
What you think of prospects of world peace?
Pakistan behaving like this,
China behaving like that,
It is making me really sad, I am telling you.
Really, most harassing me.
All men are brothers, no?
In India also
Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Hindiwallahs
All brothers -
Though some are having funny habits.
Still, you tolerate me,
I tolerate you,
One day Ram Rajya is surely coming.
You are going?
But you will visit again
Any time, any day,
I am not believing in ceremony
Always I am enjoying your company.
Nope. As an alumnus-reader of true crime, crime and detective weekly,madhosh digest, and vagera,vageras, I can aver to such passages' existence.Many great pleasures were derived on lazy afternoons India, thumbing the above, plumbing the belows, underbellies examined, and the over the top language of the prurient author, mangled by the feverish lust of his neighboring aunty, splashedon to paper, where the rascal-stranger,the bored housewife, and the beancounting-husband, dance a James Hadley Chase'ian dance of deceit, seduction, retribution, and with a concession to local taste- reconciliation thrown in, always careful to set the story in a fictional north indian town- sitapur,bheem-garh,kachodi district etc, yes sir, it sounds very familiar.
:)
This definitely sounds like a bollywood film dialogue too. "Tumhari baaton se hinsa ki boo aa rahi hai!" The old masala films also used a specific word for 'passion' that I just can't remember.So, the junta thinks along the same lines as the columnist...well, I guess it's all good as long as it's fun...
Actually, listening to Smack My B*tch Up and reading these comments made for a nice 15 minutes or so.
One of the project managers in my former lie was an endless source of fun with his shocking one-liners. When a team lead complained about a team member of his being a bit lax with her work, he asked him to 'jump on her'. He was also quite fond of saying 'I'll pump you towards quality' to the second in command, a middle aged lady. Someone actually made a nice compilation of these and placed on it the VAX server, saving it for posterity.
my former lie = my former life...oops!
Saheli said :
That's exactly right Saheli --- the distinction between Indians who speak "Indian English" with full mastery and Indians who don't. An example of the first is, say, the use of "paining" (example from TheBarmaid's blog) and examples of the second are the ones in mastervk's comment.
And the speakers of the first variety (english-speaking, middle-class school-children) often make fun of the speakers of the second (the P.E-teachers of these kids, for eg.). And there are class issues involved here, obviously (just like the class-issues involved in american english --- ebonics .vs. southern-english .vs. canonical american english).
Actually there are more varieties of Indian english --- Indian-newspaper-english ("scribe"), Indian-formal-letter-english ("the same"), etc. etc.
Nanda Kishore
Hahahahaha. Haahahahaha. I'm 12 years old! My gym teacher Mr. Thappan of the very round belly would often scream things like, "Watch me, gerls, I am erecting myself!", when trying to "teach" march-past to a bunch of tweenies.I'm unsure about the purpose of the column however after reading those examples I'm not terribly surprised. If you spend some time on Sulekha.com reading thru the columns or even conversing with people on the boards this kind of English is quite common and of course it comes from someone for whom English isn't the primary language. I don't see it being exclusive to Indians. I deal with the French and the Brazilians at work on a daily basis and the English communication sometimes requires 4 people to translate but so what. It isn't their primary language.
I don't see it being exclusive to Indians.
True. My Swedish friend, who has lived in France most of his life, comes up with some nice ones too. He says 'whipping' when he actually means 'wiping' - has led to an interesting situation or two.
i remember this secretary my dad had way back in kuwait, she was a texan native with the swankiest southern accent ever! my brother and i, who weren't accustomed to such an accent at all, used to laugh our heads off after hearing her speak!! it was hilarious to us that someone could talk that way! in my dad's workplace mainly dominated by indians and arabs at that time, her accent stood out and was very difficult to understand for most.
i also happened to go to a british high school in kuwait. all our teachers were british and i remember several occasions when they would comment on how the americans have 'bastardized' english, commenting on the messed up mainstream vocabulary and accents in US etc...
when i was in a french school in montreal for a few years, i had a teacher from france and she had a lot to say about the quebecois version of french... (which i totally agree is an abomination to the ears! 'real' french is so soothing...)
i have to admit it took me a little while to adjust to the canadian and american english 'dialects' when i came back here for university. the general terms, slang are quite different from the british and indian english i was used to. and the greatest barrier was with hip-hop music! my friends had to very patiently translate for me... it was a whole other language! i would retaliate, "how am i expected to know 'yo i'm hangin in my crib' means 'i'm at home'? why not just say what you mean and use proper english!?"
and if i had a penny for every time someone would respond to "i'm from kuwait" with "oh really, how come you speak such good english and don't have an accent?" or better yet "oh i didn't know thay had english schools there!".... (all the while holding myself back from hitting them upside the head!... ignorant morons! deep breath!)
anyway, back to the article, i also spend way too much time reading as a kid.... and when i ran out of books of my own i would grab my mom's 'women's era' magazines or any other indian magazine that would have some kind of story section in them. while reading the story in carroll's article, i was reminded of some obscure stories about marital infidelity and clandestine love affairs in those darn magazines. i still don't know what subliminal damage they may have caused. the language used was so similar, it also brought back a nostalgic smile.
people use english differently ALL over the world. somewhere across the globe YOUR english will be perceived as wierd or may be mocked. who the hell friggin' cares?!? only those perhaps who are self-centered enough in their world view as to discard the hundreds of other cultures across the globe. language is meant as a tool to communicate. communication needs are unique in different countries, in different cultures. communication is molded by the cultural and social values in those communities. we ARE diverse... thank goodness! communication WILL be diverse. and any one language (e.g enligh!) will be used differently by these diverse communities... there are multiple dialects of english... american english, canadian english, british english, punjabi english, mallu english, bangla english all being part of the mix. who can claim the 'right' way of speech and condemn the others? let's leave that for the ignorant and the arrogant...
I'm erecting myself.
Priceless.
let's leave that for the ignorant and the arrogant...
Who don't realise they may actually bring some fun to brown people :)
i don't really think indian english qualifies as a dialect, there are no new words or new grammer (at least not intentional). rather, indian english is just mispronounced english with improper grammer and stretched definitions
Concierge at the Oberoi Maidens Hotel in Delhi, fielding a request from a guest on the phone: "Oh, no, that is impossible please, sir."
I make no sense to my francophone friends when I go on about "What's your keeda, man?" and vice versa when they're parlezing franglais. But we end up learning new words and our vocabs are turning into a strange mish mash. Soon we will have our own language.
In honour of this discussion, I would like to quote Canada's ex-PM Jean Cretien:
You tell 'em, bad boy!this conversation was supposedly recorded between a hotel guest and room service and published in the Far East Economic Review:
i swear this blog is adding to my OCD! now i can't get this scene of the movie 'Namak Halaal' out of head! if anyone can find a video/ movie clip of this scene it would be awesome!
Amitabh Bachchan said it best in his role of Arjun Singh:
"I know such English that I will leave the British behind. You see sir, I can talk English, I can walk English, I can laugh English, I can run English, because English is such a funny language. Bhairo becomes Byron because their minds are very narrow. In the year 1929 when India was playing Australia at the Melbourne stadium Vijay Hazare and Vijay Merchant were at the crease. Vijay Merchant told Vijay Hazare. look Vijay Hazare Sir , this is a very prestigious match and we must consider it very prestigiously. We must take this into consideration, the consideration that this is an important match and ultimately this consideration must end in a run. In the year 1979 when Pakistan was playing against India at the Wankhede stadium Wasim Raja and Wasim Bari were at the crease and they took the same consideration. Wasim Raja told Wasim Bari, look Wasim Bari, we must consider this consideration and considering that this is an important match we must put this consideration into action and ultimately score a run. And both of them considered the consideration and ran and both of them got out."
In most of the schools in india, the male teachers are usually referred to as Master, no?
BTW, why is it always the PT Master who spoke funny english?
In Indian schools, male teachers are usually referred to as "Sir" and female teachers as "Ma'am".
My PT teacher
"Yesterday when I came in the class during recess, the fans were moving and the lights were burning".
He used the literal translation of "pankha chal raha tha aur light jal rahi thi"
In re. your article on the 20th inst. I find it aggravating that you should not bear in mind the other type of Indian English, viz. the species that is afflicted by a epistolatory style that was more in vogue circa the 19th century. I expect comments of the above nature to be forthcoming, inasmuch as many among us know many others who continue to communicate in such outmoded fashion - esp. in their missives. Many of those were educated well in St.Xav, St. Ed, Fr. Wm. High and other such saintly institutions of grammatical edification that fortunately remained untainted by the presence of journals such as the ones that you make mention of. Thence, these students, armed with their superiour education have climbed to the very heights of the civil services, in the business professions and other positions of influence by dint of their dilligence and lucubration. One may venture, nay hope, that in the fullness of time, these able professional men of sound faculties will be able to expunge such publications from Society.
Your most obediently,
DDiG Esq. BS MS ABD
hehe brown_fob, I have heard this complaint once.
\"But Science-Ma\'am, PT-Sir told us to extinguish the tubelight since the electric-meter for the school will go up fastly and then we will have to be increasing our school-fees. We tried telling him that we will burn the tubelight for the late afternoon only in the winters only when it is becoming dark outside. Also we are not rotating the fan in the winters, no? So that is saving the electric too, no?\"
When my *entire* family gets together, my aunt calls us the "whole jing-bang."
And I agree with whoever said, "I don't understand the point of the original article."
One of the many dead-end jobs I held in my first few years of immigrant hell in America was that of a restaurant worker in a very expensive Indian restaurant, a Gaylord, in fact. American patrons would often aske us what the names of certain dishes meant in English, and we were happy to oblige. One day a pretty white lady asked a waiter what rasgullah meant. He said, with a completely straight face, "Ras means juice, gullah means balls. So rasgullahs means juicy balls."
The lady loved it! What a great country!
Maybe "jing bang" is short for "jingle bangle?" I must call my aunt...
8-o ... Somebody needs this for diwali.
btw- there's a discussion on the subject same as pointed by Seeker #4, but discussed not so muchly - so i beg to bring to your attention down here below/ some excerpts for your kind consumption ...
Fascinating stuff... there's more there if you'd care to over gander
more affectionate dialogs between my fob wife and my boorishly American self:
wife: why do you make me shop at the clearance section always?
me: because i'm a broke-ass-nigga
wife: mean-o! kuthard! cheapskate!
me: it's not like i make you shop there. Besides [my sights locked onto her new Burberry wristwatch] THAT certainly wasn't found at the "clearance" rack. *grumble*
wife: i swear i'll BLOW YOU UP!
me: how about just a "BLOW YOU"? we'll leave the "UP" part for another time, no?
wife: hut! nalayak! out of my way [storming towards the dressing room with a stash of clothes]
Neha:
I started to learn Hindi from my dad's 'Learn Hindi in 30 days' book at the same time I was taking French in High School because I wanted to know what Madhuri was saying to Salman. Qui, Kya, Que, Kaisa, Quoi, Quelle, Kaun, Quand, Kiska, Qu'est-ce que, etc totally confused the hell out of me and I had to keep away from Hindi. Did anyone else have this problem?
Uff, learning hindi and french at the same time, gotta hand it to you, girl. well done. i learnt hindi (and gujarati) much before i attempted french. i found that it helped me quite a bit when categorizing nouns as masculine/feminine in french bec. the system exists in hindi as well. my teacher spoke french horribly, it was more like Frindi, so i never really figured out how to produce speech correctly :-)
AC,
you're my hero
No, I say the British are the only people pronouncing English properly. It's their language, they get final say over the proper pronunciation just like Spain gets authority on the pronunciation of Spanish over Mexico, Portual gets Portugese over Brazil, France gets French over African countries, India gets Hindi over anyone else, and Britain gets English over USA, Australia, and certainly India.
Siddartha, the quoted passage reads like a crappy Bollywood subtitling job, with all the overly flowery language, etc. ;)
While I understand the sentiment, I don't think that a language belongs to anyone group of people. I feel that kind of thinking just creates another barrier that keeps people from understanding one another. And if the Brits want to gripe about the world speaking their language incorrectly, they should have thought about it before trying to take over and subjugate the whole planet. It's a problem that they created.
Neha, if you are still having trouble pronouncing French words with the proper accent, here are two tips that would have saved me much heartache if someone had told them to me when I first learned, or rather, learnt, ;), French. When you are trying to pronounce the "r" sound, make your throat do the same thing it does when you are gargling water. For the "ou" sound, put your lips in the shape of an "o", but say the letter "e". Let me know if it works.
You cant take the culture out of a language and you cant take a language out of a culture.
Wow, I created a cliche!!
That's not how language works, sa. "Proper pronunciation" is an ever evolving thing, and the lines between "language," "dialect," and "patois" are not at all firmly drawn. Something is always on its way to becoming something else.
If one were to hew to your theory, sa, Italians would be dictating to Romanians, Spaniards and the French how to speak the language (which, after all, is only a Latin vernacular); the French would have to get together with the Germans to decide how "English" should be spoken; and Bengali and Hindi would both be dismissed as nothing more than mispronounced Sanskrit.
Linguistics, in other words, should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. There is such a thing as Indian English, and it's a beautiful thing. And there is such a thing as American English, and it's a beautiful thing, too.
Long Island English, on the other hand..... (kidding!!)
Well, yes. At least this reasoning is grounded somewhere, there are some roots to find the objective pronunciation and definition. Also, I note that Italian is actually a different language than French even with the Latin roots. American English is not a different language than British English so the reasoning breaks apart.
Taken to its logical extreme, if you don't ground language in some objective criteria, then any word can be pronounced however one wants. Without some objective standard, we're all speaking gibberish and no one will be able to communicate in even the same language.
I know the response to this is that language is an evolving creation. Of course. But wholesale abuse of a language in the form of mispronunciation and wrong meanings is not evolution and development, at least it shouldn't be.
Yo, life is too short to spend converting prescriptivists. To each her own.
If you enjoy interesting articles about linguistics that are shy of academic prose, I'd also recommend Language Log, a blog run out of Penn that I read from time to time.
It shouldn't be, but it is. Also, who decides what is abuse? The French have L'Academie Francaise but does that make the version of French spoken by a person in Senegal any less valid? Likewise, many, including myself to some extent, don't appreciate the mainstream acceptance of ebonics, but the very nature of American English has changed as a result. Is it still "abuse" if the language itself is changed and conforms to influences from those who have not been properly schooled in the language? Even the Oxford Dictionary has a central goal of documenting the evolution of the English language.
You iz right. We should not spend any tyme jivin' about da past an' future o' language. Why try an' change someone who likes werdz an' grammer ta be correct? Let's just keep evolving our language into whatever we's wants it ta be an' screw brothas else. what the fuck sup now?
I can write "correct English" with the best of them, but no amount of huffing and puffing will keep my "correct English" from sounding peculiar and outdated two hundred and fifty years from now.
My lovingly crafted sentences will sound just as weird to future humans as Addison and Steele sound to me now. But, with any luck, it'll be at least a fraction as delightful.
By 3006, though, it will certainly be completely incomprehensible. Our fiercely defended "correct" will be their "meaningless scribbles."
(sigh) This whole thing is, for some reason, reminding me of The Big B in Namak Halal, walking English and talking English. I think the article is lame, however. The Chron seems to alternate between covering interesting second-gen stories (Jeff Yang's article that cited Abhi!) and completely exoticized stories (see Manish's tearing of a Chron article covering new writer Shangvi).
French colleague to me when I told him I miss India: So you have a sick home?
There was this colleague who, on her resignation from the firm, sent an email saying "It was funny working with you all.".
And then there is the great Indian imperative : DO NOT COMB!
BTW Any one eaten good udipi lately?
I am being reminded of a clever poem, written by that dear true soldier of American poetry who often used his license to bend his language into mind-bogglingly witty rhymes:
*ahem hem hem*
The Purist
by Ogden Nash
:-D
My two reactions:
1. Hilarious!
2. I miss my grandfathers.
My "sick from cough and cold" letters to my schoolteachers from mum and dad were of this nature.
Dude... I learnt writing like this. From Messers Wren & Martin no less. I could Wren-&-Martinize a post about Kaavya V. Or Wren-&-Martinize Opal Mehta itself. "How Opal Mehta came to be Osculated, to be Rampant and to be Self-Realized"
"Dude... I learnt writing like this"
You wrote your sickness letters from scratch? I'm very impressed :) I used to copy mine from the English textbooks, they always seemed to have a ton; like one for you being sick and one for your mom being sick etc. etc.
You are all having it going on!
Anyway. I am in India right now, and my 8 year old cousin speaks English WAY better than I speak our mother tongue. Granted, it's with an accent and occasionally funny expressions; but she speaks quickly, accurately, and can convey humor and sarcasm in English. That's impressive to me. What the hell do I care if it's with an accent? I've rarely met an Amreekan who speaks a foreign language with the same mastery that many, many immigrants have of English.
Ofcourse not! Why would you think I forged letters? From scratch that too :)
To sum up this discussion, an Indian might say
..."we are like that only".
On the other hand, an American might say "Indians don't know no good English".
I am loving it.
Anyways, do you know of the cow?
The cow is a successful animal. Also he is quadrupud, and because he is female, he give milk,but will do so when he is got child.He is same like God,sacred to Hindus and useful to man.But he has got four legs together. Two are forward and two are afterwards.
His whole body can be utilised for use. More so the milk. What can it do? Various ghee, butter,cream, curd, why and the condensed milk and so forth. Also he is useful to cobbler, watermans and mankind generally.
His motion is slow only because he is of asitudinious species. Also his other motion is much useful to trees, plants as well as making flat cakes in hand and drying in the sun. Cow is the only animal that extricates his feeding after eating. Then afterwards she chew with his teeth whom are situated in the inside of the mouth. He is incessantly in the meadows in the grass.
His only attacking and defending organ is the horn, specially so when he is got child. This is done by knowing his head whereby he causes the weapons to be paralleled to the ground of the earth and instantly proceed with great velocity forwards.
He has got tails also, but not like similar animals. It has hairs on the other end of the other side. This is done to frighten away the flies which alight on his cohoa body whereupon he gives hit with it.
The palms of his feet are soft unto the touch. So the grasses head is not crushed. At night time have poses by looking down on the ground and he shouts his eyes like his relatives, the horse does not do so.
This is the cow.
Hello all. I'm Jon Carroll's "friend of a friend" that took the quotes from the True Crimes magazine. You can see my original post on my blog here:
http://www.daveadair.com/blog/2006/07/true-crimes-whom-are-you-calling-as.html
All of the sentences were taken directly from the magazine, but as I said on my blog, I searched long and hard to find the worst (and funniest) examples of what I call "mangled English." I've always loved terrible English, and as an avid traveler I get to see a lot of it. But these examples weren't at all representative of the magazine - only the worst/best examples. I'm sure I would find it funny in any other language that I speak fluently - but not surprisingly, I only speak English! And I would never criticize bad English. I just think it's funny.
If anyone is curious, I bought that magazine in Kalimpong, near Darjeeling. And I'm writing now from Srinagar, where I've just arrived two days ago.
Dave
Matrimonial columns seem to insist that brides be "fair." My daughter, only 8 at the time she happened to read India Abroad's matrimonial, wanted to know if there were a lot of unfair people among Indians - hence the need for "fair" brides.