"We Still Use English Lifts instead of American Elevators to go Up and Down in Buildings" ❤️

The  ‘English’ language | & Its Different Avatars

10th November 2023 | The Times of India

#newspaperinlearning

If you’re a regular reader of The Times of India, you would eagerly wait for the ‘Second Opinion’ column, every Wednesday, and the ‘Jugular Vein’ column every Friday, by noted columnist Jug Suraiya.

Well, Jug’s real name is Jagdish Suraiya. It was his elder sister who gave him this quaint moniker, ‘Jug’ after the comic character Jughead Jones, in the Archies comics.

Calcutta usually forms the backdrop to many of Jug’s columns.

This one is no exception, for the 77-year-old humourist, satirist, and columnist.

Jug is a voracious reader, an avid traveller, and a compulsive writer, says Scupin Richard, a long-time fan of the writer.

In today’s column, Jug has an interesting take on the different avatars of the English language.

Today's Times of India

Over to Jug -

It’s been said that England and America are separated by the Atlantic Ocean and a common language.

There is English English, the Queen’s English which is now the King’s English, and there is American English, or Americanese as some call the Stars and Stripes version of the tongue.

The King’s English and Uncle Sam’s English have a number of divergences in matters of spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary.

The Calcutta of my childhood had a lot of commercial vehicles called lorries.

Of recent times, lorries have largely disappeared from the linguistic landscape of the country and have been replaced by trucks, which is what Americans call lorries, which is an English English word.

As England, the former ‘Mother Country’ of America, has been relegated by its offspring to the familial status of poor cousin in terms of cultural dominance, American English has increasingly replaced English English in India, where vehicles drive on American highways and not on English motorways.

In India people live in apartments instead of in flats, the British word for such accommodation.

Children refer to their mothers as Mom in the American way, instead of Mum, which is English, and the kids ask for french fries which in England are called chips, and are eaten with toe-mah-toe sauce, and in the US with ter-may-ter ketchup.

However, English English fights a rearguard action in India where the American hood of a car is called an English bonnet, the luggage space is called the boot versus the US trunk.

And we still use English lifts instead of American elevators to go up and down in buildings.

Pavements, where they exist at all in India, are English, as opposed to Yankee sidewalks, though in our case both are misnomers in that they are neither paved nor walkable.

However, by far the most popular brand is our own mishmash or khichdi English, spiced with the mirch-masala of doing jugaad, being bindaas, urban Naxals, lathi-charges, police bandobast, airdashing, preponing, watching tamashas, and other ugrum-bugrum happenings.

England and India are countries separated by Independence and an uncommon Angrezi boli, which we are liking to speak like that only,

signs off Jug Suraiya, on his inimitable, satiric, jugular ‘vein’, punning on the Indian variety of English! 😊

On a related ‘vein’, me thought of recommending a similar book, authored by Robert Fuchs, Associate Professor for English Linguistics, University of Hamburg, Germany.

It’s actually a monograph based on the author’s PhD thesis, and it’s titled,

Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English: Evidence from Educated Indian English and British English.

This book, I personally feel, would prove quite useful to all of us teachers and researchers, especially in the Indian context.

The book is highly engaging on many counts.

I would like to share just a few interesting excerpts from this particular section which deals with the historical and social context of Indian English!

Over to excerpts from Robert’s book -

23% of the Population in India Speak English | 4% Speak Fluent English

English was originally introduced to India when it was a British colony, and today English is spoken by about 23 % of the population of India, of which 4 % are fluent, and many belonging to the latter group might be regarded as educated speakers.

This translates into around 50 million speakers of the educated variety of Indian English.

The vast majority of these use it as a second language and have acquired it in classroom contexts through its use as a medium of instruction.

The English language is used by Indians primarily for communication inside India

During the era of colonisation, the English language was spread from England to countries around the globe. Contact usually began with the establishment of trading outposts and the arrival of missionaries, and at first only coastal regions were occupied.

The Role of Indigenous Intermediaries in the Spread of English in India

Colonies differed by how the indigenous population faired and how many settlers arrived. In what was to become the United States and Australia, for example, the indigenous population was dispossessed by growing numbers of settlers and many were killed through war and disease.

How English Became a Pluricentric Language with Multiple Standards

In other colonies, such as India and Nigeria, few settlers arrived and the local population was usually ruled by means of indigenous intermediaries. The spread of the English language around the globe eventually transformed it into a pluricentric language, with multiple standards alongside BrE, such as AmE and AusE.

The Tussle between the Orientalists & the Anglicists

The Orientalists maintained that Indians should be taught through Indian languages, while the Anglicists favoured spreading English.

The debate came to a close with the arrival of Thomas Babington Macaulay in India, who, in his 1835 Minute on Indian Education, envisaged the creation of ‘a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in morals, and in intellect,’ that would serve as intermediaries between British colonial officials and the rest of the population.

A Transition to Hindi after 15 Years | Constitutional Provisions

When, in 1947, India became independent, English continued to be used for official purposes. However, the 1949 Constitution contained provisions for a transition to Hindi after 15 years.

[On an aside – and quite interestingly at that, ‘Fifteen Years’ is also the title of a humorous essay by R. K. Narayan, about the important role played by the English language in India. The two main characters in the essay are - the English language, personified as a woman, and a judge who is opposed to the concept of communicating in English in India].

Before India got her independence, the English Language was considered by Indians as the language of the colonising oppressors, and hence Indians had an innate tendency to hate the language.

Hence, many were of the firm opinion that, post-Independence, English would be out of India.

However, they were proved wrong.

Hindi: Totally Unacceptable to People from the South

That’s because, Hindi was not acceptable to people from the South of India. Language wars and language riots at many places.

Since India is a multi-lingual country, a common link language was needed, for the purpose of governance, administration and commerce.

The Three-Language Compromise [& Formula]

This resulted in a compromise of sorts, with the nation adopting the three-language formula.

In schools, three languages, Hindi, another Indian language and English, were to be taught.

English as an Additional Official Language of India, Alongside Hindi

Moreover, English was to retain its status, alongside Hindi, as an additional official language.

English continues to be widely used in the media, education, the economy and as a pan-Indian link language. The question of which standards to use and teach is characterised by paying lip service to BrE while in practice promoting the emerging Indian standard,

says Robert!

I strongly urge our dear readers to read this book and get one for your College / Department’s Library as well.