Which English?

Which English is correct? British or American or Australian or Canadian or South African?

As a member of the Queen's English Society, I do not use slang. Nor do I use Americanisms. I keep to standard British English. I spell colour with a u and I differentiate between practise and practice. I say | təˈmɑːtəʊ | and not | təˈmeɪˌtoʊ |

There is no correct English, there is only a variety of the language. Each variety is different, has its own way of being spoken. British English is native to Britain and American English to America. Yet, again, there are the regional accents and dialects. One could say RP is the "standard" language. However, according the Prof. David Crystal, only 2% of Great Britain speak this accent. One cannot refute the claim that RP is changing as well. In America, the Texan accent is not the same as the one in Wisconsin. Here again one must say the "General American" is the right one. How many people speak that? Even that is evolving. Language will always evolve.

An American recently complained about the Indian accent. I shall not state it here. All I can say is that he listen to what many here in Europe or elsewhere think about the american accent. People either like or dislike an accent or a way of speaking. Many are neutral to the accent they hear. So there is no point in running up a war about languages.

Clarity and unambiguous articulation has more importance. Articulate speech should be considered as the prime quality of the spoken language. One should not declare a blanket ban on speakers, who come from certain countries. That is nothing but racism. 

Each individual has his or her own way of pronouncing a vowel. That is true even among the so called native speaker. There is certainly a general colour to the general division of, say, British or the American or any other accent. It is important to let the pupils know the differences.

It is childish to chastise someone for his or her accent. Even in England, it is the truth that people with a pure RP are called old fashioned or outright snobs. I, personally, consider RP as a near perfect way of speaking. Anybody, anywhere, can understand the spoken words.

As English has evolved into a global language, it is only inevitable that there are different varieties of English. It only shows the dynamic nature of the language. We should not forget that language is inseparably bound to the culture of the land where it is spoken and the local language will influence the articulation in a great way. Additionally, English is not a tonal language as Thai or Chinese, where the change of tone can change the semantics. The morphology may not change, the semantics will.

This was published by me as my blog on echinacities.com © Suren Pillai

Education, the new commodity

The whole world has become a market. Every imaginable item, even it if be abstract, has become a ware to be traded for money. Being educated was, is and will be, it is hoped, considered a virtue. However, being educated does not, always, seem to guarantee cultivated behaviour. A certain amount of technical knowledge of the subject or stream studied is considered as the virtue of an individual. A person is considered as educated if he* possesses a degree; be it undergraduate, or graduate or postgraduate or doctorate; and the certificate he holds becomes the backdrop against which he is or will be judged.

We have come down to the level of having a piece of paper that vouches for our abilities. I do not say that such a qualification is bad. On the contrary it is good. It is the certification of the person's efforts. It is the certification of the amount of work he has put in and demonstrated on paper within the framework of time. He has demonstrated, to a very large extent, the capacity of his long term memory. This, obviously, excludes a thesis or dissertation that a candidate presents. That is an academic achievement, which, definitely, proves the candidate's intellectual acumen and his analytical capability.

A lot of research has been done in the field of science or mathematics. Unfortunately, there is no plural for the noun research. A mathematician even went to the extent of researching the phenomenon of a biscuit breaking when dipped into tea. It is neither my task nor my area of interest to comment, if this research was useful or not. Do we also have scientific methods to peel a potato? Methods that might come in handy for housewives; that includes the male members of our race; who have very little precious time on their hands?

Coming to the field of language, we are left with an endless amount of questions. One often hears from; apologies, no offence intended; native speakers: " make less mistakes" instead of "fewer mistakes". There is a general trend in the evolution of language. It is a part of the evolution that we are witnessing. It is not uncommon to hear "he done it again". Can one shout and say the use of tense is changing or rather the usage is changing?

An alarming degree of carelessness is creeping into English and I do not blame only the native speaker. It is the same for the non native speaker. The evolution or deterioration of a language has nothing to do with its nativity.

So the question arises, what is happening with education? The truth is that education os a tradable ware. Education is not even a birth right. If you have the money you can afford it. If you do not have that financial ability, you are simply not going to get it. In my opinion, education should not be a commodity that is offered on the market. Anything that gets traded runs the risk of getting corrupted.

In my opinion education should be free. It is the duty of the state to provide its citizens with a sound education. It is the right of every individual to be given a sound education and it is the right of every state to provide its citizens with exactly that. It should be freedom of the individual to choose his stream of education. Let each individual be given the fair right to choose which qualification he aims for and let the institutions give him the opportunity to involve himself in studies. An examination at the end of a stipulated period can test his knowledge.

I cannot, however, say how all the streams of knowledge can be tested. My field is limited to languages. Grammar can be tested in the usual way. Literature knowledge needs to be tested using theses and not learning by rote and displaying it on paper. Literature lives in a different way. Books are looked into, statements compared, deductions analysed.

Today, education belongs to those who can pay. Those who cannot run up and run into debts. The result of education is not only an increased amount of knowledge but also an increased amount of debt.

We have turned the world into a big market. We have sellers and buyers, we have created degree mills. We should not try to escape by saying, "we have only helped to create degree mills". Each one of us is responsible for this despicable cancer eating into the social fabric of our society.

When it comes to the field of teaching languages, or to be more precise, teaching English, there is an effort to teach "native English" to the world of "non-native speakers". English is, today, a global language and not just the private "dominion" of a few nations, each of which speaks its own variety of the same language. It is, certainly, not my intention to offend the native speaker community. One should not forget that even English is a dynamic language and it has in the years of development and evolution assimilated a large amount of vocabulary, which, incidentally, comes from a plethora of languages. If I am not wrong, English is, probably, the only language that has absorbed the larges amount of words from other foreign languages. It is this dynamism that helped the growth of the factor called global English.

© Suren Pillai