Will 'British English' survive?

JAKARTA (JP): The purpose of a language, according to an English author, "is to get an idea as exactly as possible out of one mind into another".

English is owned by all the English-speaking people on this planet. English is no longer a British language, nor can it become "American English" either. However, puritans may be shocked at the way English is spoken around the world.

For instance, Australians pronounce the word "day" as "die". For "today" they say "to die". "Today" is such a powerful resource at our disposal that it's a pity Australians associate it with "death".

Socio-cultural factors influence how a language evolves. For instance, foreign businesspeople are often exasperated trying to figure out when a Japanese means "Yes" or "No". The Japanese don't like to say "No" directly, it is felt to be impolite. So, instead of just saying "No", they seem to have perfected many ways to avoid saying "No". They may respond vaguely, remain silent, ask a question or just get up and leave.

Indians, on the other hand, have the habit of rotating their heads, left to right -- meaning denial or agreement, depending on how you perceive it.

Indians also say that someone is "pretty old" -- a nice way to describe older people, I suppose. Of course, some elderly people, particularly couples, do look pretty despite their advancing age.

Only in India can you hear people pronounce the word "receipt" with the letter "p" clearly enunciated.

Human communication, it is said, is composed of three elements. The words we use make up 7 percent, the way we say something 38 percent and body language 55 percent.

Push-button telephones have been in use for many years in India, but Indians still have the habit of pointing and making a dialing motion in the air with their index fingers to convey that they intend to call you.

I've heard educated Indonesians using "you know" in conversation, apparently to give themselves time to think of what to say next.

In official correspondence in Indonesian firms, an assistant manager is abbreviated "ass. manager"!

An Indonesian manager once said "my under" referring to his subordinate. "I am forget" is another phrase commonly heard here. To say "monthly", some Indonesians utter "monly" without the "th".

Here's yet another example from a prerecorded message on telephones in Jakarta: "The destination you are calling is 'injured'" -- what's to be understood here is "engaged"!

Above all, where else, other than in Indonesia, would you find a store selling "adult milk"? Have a look at the sign in the aisle selling milk products in Carrefour!

It was amusing to read the other day in The Jakarta Post that the gorillas shortly arriving from England can only understand English. This is rather a tribute to the gorillas, for humans are still struggling to learn the language!

The late E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (EVR, for short), a great social reformer in India, once asked his assistant to send a telegram using as few words as possible, with a view to reducing the cost. The assistant duly complied with the instructions. When he returned, EVR queried how many words were used and the assistant replied that the message contained just two words: "ALREADY TOLD". EVR scolded him, saying he could have simply used "TOLDED", thus saving even more money. Quite ingenious, isn't it?

In my younger days, in a letter to my father, I used the word "actioned", meaning "action taken". Promptly, I received a reply from him that I shouldn't have converted a noun into a verb. My Dad, who had worked for British bosses during colonial times, was a stickler for using proper English, and used to say: "If English rulers had known that this was the way Indians would speak English, they would have packed their bags and left the Indian shores at least 100 years earlier."

At an Indian company in which I was employed, we had an office boy who relished speaking English. One day he was reading the newspaper aloud, and we heard him read "troducing". We couldn't make out what he was trying to convey. He insisted that the word was actually "troducing".

We pulled the newspaper out of his hands and examined the relevant passage. The word "introducing" had been split, as "in-" on one line followed by "troducing" on the following line, and he was merely reading it as two different words. From then on, he was known by the nickname "troducing"!

Another day one of my colleagues was suffering from an upset stomach, and the same office boy, who overheard our conversation, intervened and commented, in a sage-like manner: "My 'satisfaction' is that your pain may be due to an ulcer in the stomach." All of us were appalled by his statement. How could anyone derive satisfaction from someone else's suffering?

It transpired that he meant to say "suspicion" but ended up saying "satisfaction". Poor man, how was he to know that there was a difference between "suspicion" and "satisfaction"? We, of course, pardoned him for his "tongue of the slip" (I mean "slip of the tongue"!)

At another company, during a job interview for a clerical position a candidate was asked: "What's life insurance?" Pat came the reply: "If you die, you'll get the money, Sir." The interviewer was flabbergasted, to say the least.

Indians have long ceased to regard English as a "foreign" language. It is theirs to use and they are entitled to mould, pound and batter into any shape. Many Indians, in fact, think in English -- "Indian English", to be precise.

A language created in the daily illogical lives of people need not necessarily be logical. Should British English be an exception?

-- D. Chandramouli