England (not the UK), America and Australia must be the only countries where English is the mother tongue. Many other countries (including India) have English as one of the official languages but it isn’t the predominant primary language spoken there.
In this modern world however English has become the indispensable lingua franca.
Almost all business, the internet etc are all predominantly in English.
And every country speaks it with its own inflections and accents as do Indians.
Among Indian education, the convent system is not only one of the best but also produces what is inarguably the clearest form of spoken English.
And yet we can’t seem to get over our fascination with everything ‘phoren’ and unfortunately that extends to language too, or to be more specific, the Accent.
Last week I was watching two different programs on 2 different channels and somehow both the hosts were ‘Accenting” away to glory.
In this modern world however English has become the indispensable lingua franca.
Almost all business, the internet etc are all predominantly in English.
And every country speaks it with its own inflections and accents as do Indians.
Among Indian education, the convent system is not only one of the best but also produces what is inarguably the clearest form of spoken English.
And yet we can’t seem to get over our fascination with everything ‘phoren’ and unfortunately that extends to language too, or to be more specific, the Accent.
Last week I was watching two different programs on 2 different channels and somehow both the hosts were ‘Accenting” away to glory.
The first one was Urmila on Jhalak Dikhla Ja (a dance program based on BBC’s Dancing With The Stars) who tried very unsuccessfully to clip her vowels and round her consonants (or was it the other way round). She hasn’t had any convent education unlike the other star children and I have always been fairly complimentary about her grasp of English. However on JDJ she feels that just fluency in English isn’t enough and that she needs to mimic Angelina Jolie’s american drawl.
Yeah and she does the pout too.
Then of course you have Mr. Obnoxious himself. Himesh Reshamiyya. I never liked him or his music or for that matter his hats and caps but have always defended him staunchly when people said he should be a failure simply because he was not classy enough. Give the man some credit for trying against all odds and star sons, was my argument.
Yeah and she does the pout too.
Then of course you have Mr. Obnoxious himself. Himesh Reshamiyya. I never liked him or his music or for that matter his hats and caps but have always defended him staunchly when people said he should be a failure simply because he was not classy enough. Give the man some credit for trying against all odds and star sons, was my argument.
However with success he is getting more and more cocky and is beginning to lose his underdog status and is now instead just an accented dog. His sentences are peppered with lots of ‘I feel you are gonna win’ and ‘I wanna hug you’ and if you thought his superlative laded battle-cry of “Awesome, Fantastic, Mindblowing” wasn’t corny enough you just have to listen a little more carefully and you will notice that it has now become “Oosome, Faataaastic, Mindblowin”.
Yeah and he chews gum throughout a la Britney too.
And when we are talking about accents in India, can the biggest of them not be mentioned?
Salman Khan, unlike other star sons like Fardeen, Abhishek etc was educated primarily in India but who now speaks English with an accent so pronounced that in his debut English language flick Marigold they had to put special subtitles in English for his dialogues alone.
Meryl Streep who is arguably one of the finest actors of her generation is known for her fine grasp of accents in her movie roles. She can do Irish, South African, Zimbabwean. Southern, Jamaican, British, German….. you name it she can do it.
But even she cannot do what Salman can because he must be one of the few actors in the world who can do all of the above accents. And sometimes in the same sentence itself.
And these are just the film fraternity. I personally know many people who speak what me and my friends call Transit English.
Yeah and he chews gum throughout a la Britney too.
And when we are talking about accents in India, can the biggest of them not be mentioned?
Salman Khan, unlike other star sons like Fardeen, Abhishek etc was educated primarily in India but who now speaks English with an accent so pronounced that in his debut English language flick Marigold they had to put special subtitles in English for his dialogues alone.
Meryl Streep who is arguably one of the finest actors of her generation is known for her fine grasp of accents in her movie roles. She can do Irish, South African, Zimbabwean. Southern, Jamaican, British, German….. you name it she can do it.
But even she cannot do what Salman can because he must be one of the few actors in the world who can do all of the above accents. And sometimes in the same sentence itself.
And these are just the film fraternity. I personally know many people who speak what me and my friends call Transit English.
So what is this fascination with accents?
Is it a leftover from the colonial days when many Indians strived to be more British than the British or is it some deep insecurity that makes us covet everything western or ‘phoren’ ? Should our bench-mark for everything be from a western point-of-view?
And all said and done, in the end does it help that with our newly acquired accents, the British, Americans and Aussies themselves dont understand us now.
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