After having been in Bangalore now for a period of a few days, the first true "deep" observation I have had is that I and those who speak English like me do not necessarily speak the most widely used form of English.
Bruce Willis joked in the movie "The Fifth Element" that he only spoke two languages: English and Bad English. First-World educated people worldwide are likely to see much of the English spoken by those not like us as the latter.
I don't think it's as simple as American/Non-American however. There is a growing divide, based not simply on the way people are being educated but also in the way that they communicate. It seems like (and I have no data to prove this) those who speak bad English communicate with themselves very easily. People naturally customize things to the tasks that they seek to accomplish with them.
Language is no different. With that in mind, I would argue that the version of "bad english" that a taxi driver in Bangalore might speak is no less vital to his existence as the version that I speak is to mine. In fact, I often find that my version is ill suited to gathering information here, since my inflection is vastly different from the local norm. The differences in communication ability that I have noted are no different here than they might be if I wandered into one of many American towns where people speak differently than me.
I wonder if we're not at a time, similar in some respects to the rise of romance languages in Europe, where a common language is beginning to adapt itself into the dialects of many regions. Once adapted, it fuses with the existing lexicon to create new versions of the pervasive tongue.
This is one seed that might potentially sow the rise of peasantdom 2.0. For the moment, The version of English in which many informational texts are written is still in the "English" that is as one's primary school teachers taught. What happens when things begin to be published in the "vulgar" tongues?
After all, one of the great things about English is its universality. The informational content and quality of thought in a manuscript prepared for an Indian audience written in Indian English is likely to be vastly different than one written in world english for a world audience.
I wonder if it's something that either can or should be stopped.
Bruce Willis joked in the movie "The Fifth Element" that he only spoke two languages: English and Bad English. First-World educated people worldwide are likely to see much of the English spoken by those not like us as the latter.
I don't think it's as simple as American/Non-American however. There is a growing divide, based not simply on the way people are being educated but also in the way that they communicate. It seems like (and I have no data to prove this) those who speak bad English communicate with themselves very easily. People naturally customize things to the tasks that they seek to accomplish with them.
Language is no different. With that in mind, I would argue that the version of "bad english" that a taxi driver in Bangalore might speak is no less vital to his existence as the version that I speak is to mine. In fact, I often find that my version is ill suited to gathering information here, since my inflection is vastly different from the local norm. The differences in communication ability that I have noted are no different here than they might be if I wandered into one of many American towns where people speak differently than me.
I wonder if we're not at a time, similar in some respects to the rise of romance languages in Europe, where a common language is beginning to adapt itself into the dialects of many regions. Once adapted, it fuses with the existing lexicon to create new versions of the pervasive tongue.
This is one seed that might potentially sow the rise of peasantdom 2.0. For the moment, The version of English in which many informational texts are written is still in the "English" that is as one's primary school teachers taught. What happens when things begin to be published in the "vulgar" tongues?
After all, one of the great things about English is its universality. The informational content and quality of thought in a manuscript prepared for an Indian audience written in Indian English is likely to be vastly different than one written in world english for a world audience.
I wonder if it's something that either can or should be stopped.
Leave a comment