I hear voices. Voices in English to be precise – that’s cheesy.. am pissed off.. screwed up totally.. catching up old blokes.. Oh my ghosh.. its rocking yaa.. awesome mahnn..blah blah blah WOAAAHH. I turn left or I turn right each day I hear people conversing in English. Undoubtedly, English is fast emerging as the lingua franca and over the years Indians have surely developed a strong liking or if I may say love for this global language. English has always conferred many advantages to the influential people who can speak it right from the time India secured independence. Well this is certainly not about bestowing English its impending glory but its unrivalled importance to Indians and the associated tasteless pride on their own spoken English.
Each one feels that the way they pronounce words is the ideal and correct one and leave no stone unturned to prove it. They are so obsessed with the correct pronunciations and intonations that they completely jettison the situation and surrounding and jump at the opportunity to correct the other person. “Oh its not Photographer its (fo-tow-grapher)- with the British/American accent”. Absurd reasoning, justification and unapologetic ostentation go to the extent of their affluent schooling backgrounds – Convent, Military, CBSE board, State board and hence their enunciations are the right ones. Immature as it may sound this is absolutely true.
The fact of the matter is that in India how well one approximates British English often determines how well educated he/she is. From times when it was considered a matter of immense superiority if a person in the family could manage to write and speak English to times when a family was equated to being extraordinarily well educated if they conversed with each other in English to now where parents take pride that their wards don’t speak their mother tongue but only English, the transition has been painfully remarkable. I dread to predict what the future could be.
Not many of us know that what we speak in India is very less of British English and we have developed it in our own way influenced by our linguistic, regional and socio-cultural contexts. They are all mutually distinct varieties and I just hope that this uniqueness is valued and appreciated.
