Sunday 28 September 2014

IS THAT ENGLISH?


The answer is NO!
 
In India, the English language gets messed up in some way or the other. They butcher the language!
 
I had a really hard time trying to understand people in India. Only one person about me (my friend) could speak decent English; the rest couldn't even say much more than: you had your breakfast? And, mind you, some of them were teachers in an English Medium School where they were supposed to teach all the subjects in English!

I realized how tough it was going to be to teach English there my first day at school, when I told the children to pronounce the letters and they said, "yem" (m), "yen" (n) and "yel" (l).

Indian English acquire the attributes of specific Indian languages, sometimes to make it incomprehensible to anybody unfamiliar with Indian English speakers. Colloquial English there is so heavily spiced with their other languages that it has become the patois of a growing number of people. Some people call it Chutney English!

Examples:

-"what is your good name?" It might sound like a parody, but I think it's a literal translation from Hindi. It makes you wonder if anyone has a bad name!

-"hotel"; any restaurant is a hotel in Indian parlance, even  a small street eatery.

-"little, little" or any other repetition to emphasise a subject.

-"only" and "but" make unexpected appearances in any part of any sentence, specially at the end.

-"what to do?" instead of "what can be done?".

-"simply" rather than saying, "I don't know why".

-"is there" in place of "it is" or "there is".

-"paining" and not "hurting".

-"come fastly" is also very common.

-And last but not least "full". They don't use the word "very". People are "full tired" or "full busy", but you have to extend the "u" when you say it if you want to seem Indian!

Then they use the future tense a lot. Everything is future, it doesn't matter if it happened yesterday or it is happening in this moment. Will!

And they also make up words. For instance: brinjal (eggplant), tiffin (lunch) or loose motions (diarrhea).

As pronunciation regards, they have different issues. For example they can't pronounce the "w" properly. They make a "v" sound. Try to say "where" pronouncing a "v". Difficult eh? The "th" is nearly always pronounced like a "t". So they say "ting" in place of "thing". And they roll the "r" in such a way you'd think they are Spanish!

The irony is that English has seen a revival inasmuch as it has become the language beckoning youth because it's the language of aspiration that will fetch jobs and money.

Another chapter apart deserves the spelling mistakes displayed on posters and writings on walls. Oh, my! Only in India can you see:

 





They have mangled the English language beyond recognition. What to do, but? They are like that only!

If you fancy, take a peek at this hilarious video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfcBrc1zwes

P.S.: This post is NOT meant to insult any Indians.