What Is Truth?: A Reflection on the Idiosyncrasies of Indian English
About a month ago, I took a ten-day trip to Southeast Asia. When I returned, Raveendren, the boys’ warden who also taught English classes, picked up and left. As a result, my mathematics classes were taken away from me and I was given his English classes, as well as a few other classes of his. Although my initial reaction was one of great disappointment (I want to be a mathematics teacher and really enjoy being able to practice that here), I soon found that there was great work to be done teaching English in India.
Just two weeks after I began, the term came to an end and the students had final examinations to take. These examinations are standardized, and some overseeing group puts them together and distributes them far and wide. As I began grading the examinations, I was greatly disappointed. I found terrible errors on nearly every line that each student wrote! I looked at the test papers given to them, and they were littered with typos as well! The very test writers had poor English! I soon found that every question was copied verbatim from their textbooks (some mistakes existing in the textbooks themselves and others created from careless copying), and the answers the students wrote were verbatim what the teacher had given them in class! What a nightmare! This isn’t learning; it’s rote memorization! Memorization of bad English at that!
Just to give an example, here are a few of the sentences I found on the test paper:
“We played football match yesterday.”
“A lightning struck the tree.”
“What was ‘One of the Worst’ of Beethovan’s troubles? How did he oversome it?”
“In what order will you arrange there adjectives to fill the blanks”
Notice the lack of punctuation in the last one, besides its bad English. That question asks students to fill in blanks with a list of given adjectives, as though there was only one correct way of doing so. “a / an ______ ______ _____ _____ _____ man.” is given (why the period? I don’t know) and the options are angry, bald, fat, short, old. Is there a WRONG way of doing this? How do I correct this exam?
To make matters worse, the exam ended with a composition. The students were given an option of writing either about the joys of reading or the value of manners. Some students wrote about Mother Teresa (NOT one of the options) because their syllabus said that the test would give two of the three as options and they had only memorized their Mother Teresa essay. The memorized essays had good English, more or less. Many of the students did not memorize an essay, and what they wrote was entirely nonsensical. Just an example, I had a student write this:
“The reading meth the Reading books and newspaper and the good hapit and the books is very usuful books and the reading the newpapkaper the good hapits and they Books the Reading very much and the study and general Answer him books the not Reading is the not good hapit and study the Reading Books newspaper.”
I looked over it carefully, and I made no typos - those are all his/her random mistakes. Yikes. The entire composition consisted of three paragraphs/sentences that made no sense, just like this one.
Now, all of this said, I am on a mission. We have now begun a new term, the third and final term of the scholastic year, and I want to improve these students’ English skills. I will do so by assigning weekly compositions and grading them. The first week of class just began, so I have yet to see how successful this will be. I have asked them to write three pages about their families.
Okay, now the stage is almost set for my philosophical thoughts. I want to add to this that I see typos written in wedding programs, business signs, and in nearly every sentence of the English subtitles of a Tamil film that I watched the other night. The Indians I have come across are not especially careful about writing professional-looking English, and no one really seems to care.
I was speaking with Mr. George today, and we carried a conversation about how certain words are pronounced. Here, in India, when they are saying a number like 202, while an American might say “two oh two”, they say what sounds like “two no two”. I have asked a few locals about this, and this pronunciation appears to be ubiquitous, at least in this part of India. They tell me they are really saying “two naught two”, where naught is another word for zero. It sounds logical to me, so I checked on the Internet to see if this is done in any other country. I even posted my query on an English grammar website. It would appear that this peculiarity is nowhere to be found in America, Canada or the UK. Mr. George says that it’s just the way it is, and that it’s perfectly correct in Indian English. This idea of accepting Indian English as a legitimate English of its own doesn’t sit as well with me emotionally as I feel it should logically. Americans didn’t create English either, and we agree to disagree with the UK. Why can’t India do the same?
Some other examples of this are: the word “film”, pronounced “FILL-im” in India, the word “manure” pronounced “MAN-ure” and the word “deity” pronounced “DIE-ity”.
As an English teacher here, my instinct is to disagree and teach people “proper” English. Why do I do this? Why not just agree with their English and teach it how it is? In some cases, I do. I call Mathematics “Maths” now, and I call the last letter of our alphabet “zed”. Whenever the UK agrees with them, I go with it. But sadly, the strange mutations of Indian English don’t appeal to me and sound like the result of foreign ignorance to my ears. Frankly, India hasn’t done a whole lot to earn my respect as an authority in having their own brand of English. If I had the impression that they were consistent with their rules and more careful with their English, that they took it seriously, then I might reconsider. For the time being, I’m going to continue looking things up online, seeing how it’s done in the UK, and if it’s not a “UK thing”, then I’ll teach them the “proper” way of doing things. Is that an elitist thing to do? I mean, where do you draw the line when it comes to relativism?
In South Africa I learned (or "learnt" as they would say) that they refer to car rentals as “car hire” and they don’t “rent” houses, they “let” them. They don’t have traffic lights either; they have robots. I can respect that. I have also accepted that in India, the entire restroom is referred to as a toilet. They consistently call restaurants “hotels”. That’s fine, but “two no two” is not going to fly with me. If you ask me, I think someone heard “one oh one” and thought the person must be saying “one no one” and this misinformation soon became widespread.
Phew, that’s a lot of typing and mulling over all of this. Why do I care, you may ask. I care because I’m anal, and that’s why I studied math. In the field of mathematics, things are either right or wrong -- they either work or they don’t, and that brings me great satisfaction. Oh, how I love math :).
Just two weeks after I began, the term came to an end and the students had final examinations to take. These examinations are standardized, and some overseeing group puts them together and distributes them far and wide. As I began grading the examinations, I was greatly disappointed. I found terrible errors on nearly every line that each student wrote! I looked at the test papers given to them, and they were littered with typos as well! The very test writers had poor English! I soon found that every question was copied verbatim from their textbooks (some mistakes existing in the textbooks themselves and others created from careless copying), and the answers the students wrote were verbatim what the teacher had given them in class! What a nightmare! This isn’t learning; it’s rote memorization! Memorization of bad English at that!
Just to give an example, here are a few of the sentences I found on the test paper:
“We played football match yesterday.”
“A lightning struck the tree.”
“What was ‘One of the Worst’ of Beethovan’s troubles? How did he oversome it?”
“In what order will you arrange there adjectives to fill the blanks”
Notice the lack of punctuation in the last one, besides its bad English. That question asks students to fill in blanks with a list of given adjectives, as though there was only one correct way of doing so. “a / an ______ ______ _____ _____ _____ man.” is given (why the period? I don’t know) and the options are angry, bald, fat, short, old. Is there a WRONG way of doing this? How do I correct this exam?
To make matters worse, the exam ended with a composition. The students were given an option of writing either about the joys of reading or the value of manners. Some students wrote about Mother Teresa (NOT one of the options) because their syllabus said that the test would give two of the three as options and they had only memorized their Mother Teresa essay. The memorized essays had good English, more or less. Many of the students did not memorize an essay, and what they wrote was entirely nonsensical. Just an example, I had a student write this:
“The reading meth the Reading books and newspaper and the good hapit and the books is very usuful books and the reading the newpapkaper the good hapits and they Books the Reading very much and the study and general Answer him books the not Reading is the not good hapit and study the Reading Books newspaper.”
I looked over it carefully, and I made no typos - those are all his/her random mistakes. Yikes. The entire composition consisted of three paragraphs/sentences that made no sense, just like this one.
Now, all of this said, I am on a mission. We have now begun a new term, the third and final term of the scholastic year, and I want to improve these students’ English skills. I will do so by assigning weekly compositions and grading them. The first week of class just began, so I have yet to see how successful this will be. I have asked them to write three pages about their families.
Okay, now the stage is almost set for my philosophical thoughts. I want to add to this that I see typos written in wedding programs, business signs, and in nearly every sentence of the English subtitles of a Tamil film that I watched the other night. The Indians I have come across are not especially careful about writing professional-looking English, and no one really seems to care.
I was speaking with Mr. George today, and we carried a conversation about how certain words are pronounced. Here, in India, when they are saying a number like 202, while an American might say “two oh two”, they say what sounds like “two no two”. I have asked a few locals about this, and this pronunciation appears to be ubiquitous, at least in this part of India. They tell me they are really saying “two naught two”, where naught is another word for zero. It sounds logical to me, so I checked on the Internet to see if this is done in any other country. I even posted my query on an English grammar website. It would appear that this peculiarity is nowhere to be found in America, Canada or the UK. Mr. George says that it’s just the way it is, and that it’s perfectly correct in Indian English. This idea of accepting Indian English as a legitimate English of its own doesn’t sit as well with me emotionally as I feel it should logically. Americans didn’t create English either, and we agree to disagree with the UK. Why can’t India do the same?
Some other examples of this are: the word “film”, pronounced “FILL-im” in India, the word “manure” pronounced “MAN-ure” and the word “deity” pronounced “DIE-ity”.
As an English teacher here, my instinct is to disagree and teach people “proper” English. Why do I do this? Why not just agree with their English and teach it how it is? In some cases, I do. I call Mathematics “Maths” now, and I call the last letter of our alphabet “zed”. Whenever the UK agrees with them, I go with it. But sadly, the strange mutations of Indian English don’t appeal to me and sound like the result of foreign ignorance to my ears. Frankly, India hasn’t done a whole lot to earn my respect as an authority in having their own brand of English. If I had the impression that they were consistent with their rules and more careful with their English, that they took it seriously, then I might reconsider. For the time being, I’m going to continue looking things up online, seeing how it’s done in the UK, and if it’s not a “UK thing”, then I’ll teach them the “proper” way of doing things. Is that an elitist thing to do? I mean, where do you draw the line when it comes to relativism?
In South Africa I learned (or "learnt" as they would say) that they refer to car rentals as “car hire” and they don’t “rent” houses, they “let” them. They don’t have traffic lights either; they have robots. I can respect that. I have also accepted that in India, the entire restroom is referred to as a toilet. They consistently call restaurants “hotels”. That’s fine, but “two no two” is not going to fly with me. If you ask me, I think someone heard “one oh one” and thought the person must be saying “one no one” and this misinformation soon became widespread.
Phew, that’s a lot of typing and mulling over all of this. Why do I care, you may ask. I care because I’m anal, and that’s why I studied math. In the field of mathematics, things are either right or wrong -- they either work or they don’t, and that brings me great satisfaction. Oh, how I love math :).