Mourning the desecration of a great language, again

When you watch any video on YouTube these days, you are sure to be accosted by an advertisement of an app called Grammarly which very aggressively insists that you need to know and write correct English in order to make a good impression on everybody around you who matters. And that is precisely what I have been trying to teach a lot of people all my life. I don’t think I have had much success.

English has, as everybody knows, spread far wider and deeper in India after the sahibs left. We are often called the third largest English speaking country in the world, and given the speed with which the use of the language is spreading coupled with the sheer size of our population, the time may not be too far off when Englishmen and Americans and Canadians and Australians who hiccup or wince to read or hear ‘our kind of English’ will have to accept, however ruefully, that that is the kind of English they will have to live with hereafter, every great user of yore from Shakespeare through Abraham Lincoln and Wodehouse and Hemingway and Jawaharlal Nehru be damned.

Now as I have often said, I am not a rigid purist; I have always known and been comfortable with the idea that a living language is a flowing, ever-changing thing like a river or a tree; that the writer of Beowulf would have been as uncomfortable with Shakespeare as Shakespeare with, say, J.K. Rowling, and I have absolutely no quarrel with the possibility that a genuine Indian English might be evolving: witness R.K. Narayan, Amitav Ghosh, Chitra Banerjee and Jhumpa Lahiri. What I cannot stomach is that so many Indians, including so many who firmly believe they are well-educated, mangle the language, spelling and grammar included (I shall not even begin to talk about pronunciation and accent), simply because they could never be bothered to learn Received English well. Consider the following (very small and unfinished-) list of the kind of expressions we use:

We are like that only.

Cousin brother, return back, repeat again.

Shifting houses, not moving.

One of my brother (not brothers).

Avoiding ‘the’ (‘PM says that…’, ‘Punjab is in turmoil’) where needed, and slipping it in where it makes no sense.

He told that/ He said me that…

Bunking classes (most Indians haven’t heard of ‘cutting’ them!).

Friend circle, head injury, chalk piece, spot dead.

I am having a child (and yet I am not in hospital!).

Going for shopping, regret for doing something.

Putting ‘but’ at the end of sentences: He is a good teacher but.

Doctor Vijay, Vijay Uncle.

Sir, I can tell the answer? (instead of ‘Can I …?’)

Comming, shinning, writting (come and see the homework books I correct to find out how common these spellings have become: the culprits in fact insist that many of their teachers spell that way!)

Catched and teached and striked (believe it or not).

Did not came, did not had (this is becoming near universal – these days I am pleasantly surprised when a pupil actually says or writes ‘did not come’)

No idea about the difference between ‘few’ and ‘a few’, ‘little’ and ‘a little’.

He suggested me to try that book/ He insisted me to go with him.

Using ‘society’ to mean ‘neighbourhood’: as in ‘there are a lot of stray dogs in our society’.

No idea about the difference between a flat and a block of flats.

He has got very less money (few Indians know any longer that ‘less’ is the comparative degree of the adjective little, and must be followed by ‘than something’).

More better, more cooler.

Number of ointment tubes in the carton: 20 nos. (why not just 20, for heaven’s sake? And how many even know or care that no. is not really the English diminutive for ‘number’, it derives from the French ‘numero’? Ask yourself, did you spend half a second in your entire student life wondering where the ‘o’ came from?)

Telecasted, forecasted (I read such words in our foremost national English dailies these days).

I could double the list without reflecting overmuch. It makes the likes of me cringe with shame and embarrassment. I quite understand that most of my readers are not likely to have such intense feelings: I happen to worship languages, and English in particular, so to me they are cardinal sins, like doodling a moustache and putting horns on a Venus de Milo. But my point is, those of us who think and say that ‘misunderstanding’ means a girl standing below because they are first generation learners who haven’t had the chance to learn enough may be forgiven, but should teachers and journalists with post-graduate degrees use the same excuse, and feel equally shameless?

I’ll add to this post in a day or two. Do come back to visit.