Just imagine yourself mispronouncing any english word or a white guy's name or speaking english in a desi accent; what would be the impression bestowed upon you ? You would be unanimously seen as a yokel.
Now imagine an english guy pronouncing your (desi) name or any hindi or telugu or Indian word. or even worse your fellow desi mispronouncing or "trying to" mispronounce desi names and words; now what would be the impression conferred upon him ? A westernized, modern, stylish etc.
I don't disrespect English language. Infact I love the language; my whole life, like most of my peers', revolves around english and most often I think in english. I know the importance of the language in contemporary communication, presentation and I completely subscribe to the idea of enhancing english skills out of love and necessity of the language. But does that mean that all those who are good at english are intelligent and all those who can't are mindless creatures ?
Mani Shankar Iyer, Indian cabinet minister recently ridiculed his cabinet colleague Ajay Maken that the letter written by him (Maken) contains complex english words and hence the letter could not have been written by him as he studied in so and so college (!!!). This is heights of snobbery and psecudo-elitism. English speaking or pronunciation is never a yardstick for intelligence or success. Did Anna Hazare speak sophisticated english to capture the imagination of India ?
Blood boils when some telugu anchors of Gemini TV, Maa TV shows talk telugu in "accent". I don't really understand the influence under which they were brought up, but even if they were completely westernized (which I don't think so anyway), nobody in India gets a firangi accent even if they talked in English at home, period ! But these chicks try to emulate that accent while speaking vernacular languages. That's BULLSHIT and stooping down to the shoes of English masters !
Pronunciation, grammatical accuracy, phonetics make the language sound good, not accent. Accent or slang is something which is developed by social influence especially during childhood. And Indian residents never had/have such society. Celebrated Indian english scholars and authors like JL Nehru too didn't have that. Accent needs a mixture of idioms and slang to sound authentic.
Among NRI's the perceptive discrimination is striking. For immigrants, its a vogue to "sound" like localites and since they can't bleach their skin, they try doing that with their tongue. But the hidden truth that can be applied to most of these neo-firangs is that they desperately want to conceal their inferiority complex of being an "Indian English" speaker.
Heights of inferiority complex: Some NRI parents never let their children learn their mother tongue and take pride in telling their relatives and friends back home that their kids are completely angrez and don't know their mother tongue. Pity on them !
The fact that most new immigrants don't realize is that white guy's accent is not uniform. In US alone there are almost ten accents and people of one region often find difficulty understanding others'. There is a brooklyn accent, south accent etc. Canadian accent is different, British accent is so much different. All these people take digs at each other's accent and we guys try to copy them, but we don't know whom we are copying among so many tribes :D
Italian-english is well acknowledged, east-european english too has its flavor. Unless and until italians or east europeans were born in US, they don't really change their accent or way of speech. Indian- english is unique too and is well acknowledged. There are certain words only Indian english speakers use, for example: doing the needful etc. But that's perfectly fine boss, every dialect has its flavor ! Nobody is a shakespeare !
English is important, but so are other languages. So when a white guy pronounces my name as "Shraawt" or "Churot" (yes, they even wrote this, once) instead of "Sharath", I don't really take offence because I know they are not made to pronounce Indian words, that's how they were raised in their society and that's perfectly normal. I would be confused and puzzled if he addresses me like my Indian friends. We should also share the same equation. We are not made to speak english (or hindi or telugu) in westerner's accent and that's normal and hence any artificiality only reflects desperation. I just agree that our pronunciation and phonetics should be right so that others can follow our speech, nothing else !
I've been an NRI for last 5 years and I didn't get a bit of accent and neither will I in another 50 years. Because that's something I can't get and don't want to get either. But I take pride in the fact that my english is better than 90% of those who try to ridicule desi accent-ed english and also many indigenious english speakers. I take EQUAL pride in my knowledge of my mother tongue (telugu), it's grammatical nuances like sandhulu, samasalu, chandassu, alankaralu and also in my conversance with my national language (hindi). I'm not ROOTLESS !
Now imagine an english guy pronouncing your (desi) name or any hindi or telugu or Indian word. or even worse your fellow desi mispronouncing or "trying to" mispronounce desi names and words; now what would be the impression conferred upon him ? A westernized, modern, stylish etc.
I don't disrespect English language. Infact I love the language; my whole life, like most of my peers', revolves around english and most often I think in english. I know the importance of the language in contemporary communication, presentation and I completely subscribe to the idea of enhancing english skills out of love and necessity of the language. But does that mean that all those who are good at english are intelligent and all those who can't are mindless creatures ?
Mani Shankar Iyer, Indian cabinet minister recently ridiculed his cabinet colleague Ajay Maken that the letter written by him (Maken) contains complex english words and hence the letter could not have been written by him as he studied in so and so college (!!!). This is heights of snobbery and psecudo-elitism. English speaking or pronunciation is never a yardstick for intelligence or success. Did Anna Hazare speak sophisticated english to capture the imagination of India ?
Blood boils when some telugu anchors of Gemini TV, Maa TV shows talk telugu in "accent". I don't really understand the influence under which they were brought up, but even if they were completely westernized (which I don't think so anyway), nobody in India gets a firangi accent even if they talked in English at home, period ! But these chicks try to emulate that accent while speaking vernacular languages. That's BULLSHIT and stooping down to the shoes of English masters !
Pronunciation, grammatical accuracy, phonetics make the language sound good, not accent. Accent or slang is something which is developed by social influence especially during childhood. And Indian residents never had/have such society. Celebrated Indian english scholars and authors like JL Nehru too didn't have that. Accent needs a mixture of idioms and slang to sound authentic.
Among NRI's the perceptive discrimination is striking. For immigrants, its a vogue to "sound" like localites and since they can't bleach their skin, they try doing that with their tongue. But the hidden truth that can be applied to most of these neo-firangs is that they desperately want to conceal their inferiority complex of being an "Indian English" speaker.
Heights of inferiority complex: Some NRI parents never let their children learn their mother tongue and take pride in telling their relatives and friends back home that their kids are completely angrez and don't know their mother tongue. Pity on them !
The fact that most new immigrants don't realize is that white guy's accent is not uniform. In US alone there are almost ten accents and people of one region often find difficulty understanding others'. There is a brooklyn accent, south accent etc. Canadian accent is different, British accent is so much different. All these people take digs at each other's accent and we guys try to copy them, but we don't know whom we are copying among so many tribes :D
Italian-english is well acknowledged, east-european english too has its flavor. Unless and until italians or east europeans were born in US, they don't really change their accent or way of speech. Indian- english is unique too and is well acknowledged. There are certain words only Indian english speakers use, for example: doing the needful etc. But that's perfectly fine boss, every dialect has its flavor ! Nobody is a shakespeare !
English is important, but so are other languages. So when a white guy pronounces my name as "Shraawt" or "Churot" (yes, they even wrote this, once) instead of "Sharath", I don't really take offence because I know they are not made to pronounce Indian words, that's how they were raised in their society and that's perfectly normal. I would be confused and puzzled if he addresses me like my Indian friends. We should also share the same equation. We are not made to speak english (or hindi or telugu) in westerner's accent and that's normal and hence any artificiality only reflects desperation. I just agree that our pronunciation and phonetics should be right so that others can follow our speech, nothing else !
I've been an NRI for last 5 years and I didn't get a bit of accent and neither will I in another 50 years. Because that's something I can't get and don't want to get either. But I take pride in the fact that my english is better than 90% of those who try to ridicule desi accent-ed english and also many indigenious english speakers. I take EQUAL pride in my knowledge of my mother tongue (telugu), it's grammatical nuances like sandhulu, samasalu, chandassu, alankaralu and also in my conversance with my national language (hindi). I'm not ROOTLESS !
1 comment:
Anna, this is your best blog so far.
I tend to slightly disagree with you though, the reason why people like you don't normally have any inferiority complex about speaking English in your own accent is because through years of speaking Enlgish, your accent is kind of 'neutralized' already. (sorry for pre-judging you)
I can raise my hand up and say I'm one of those people who consciously made an effort to speak English with (if not British) at least with a neutralized accent. This fear comes years of embarrassment I had to feel being a Telugu medium guy. I remember many instances during my engineering days where I felt at loss of words since I didn't know the appropriate word or how to pronounce it, ten years later I'm more than comfortable speaking in English with my own accent.
Having said this, I completely agree with you about keeping ones "roots" in tact. I don't see how learning telugu or hindi reduces ones ability to speak English, on the contrary being a multi-linguistic is such a luxury. I wish I could speak Tamil. Neither I understand why so many of us emulate western culture so much so we speak telugu with an english accent ( I'm not talking about Lakshmi Manchu of course, she is totally American ..ha..)
Anyways, keep them coming Anna.
Looking forward to your next blog.
Regards
Sree (Copenhagen, Denmark)
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