Opinion Going Globish

Not quite.

It so happens that Sridevi’s later enrolment in an English-speaking class in the United States does not just give her the vocabulary — and,consequently,confidence — to negotiate people and situations in a foreign land. Ease with English also,and this is what EV’s Indian wit at the US consulate fails to reflect,rewrites the domestic dynamic for her in India,a country where,in fact,it is currently not so difficult to get by without knowing any other language. Her need for English speaks not so much about the lingering traces of colonialism,but about the nature of the beast the English language now is: the dominant lingua franca.

We in India have internalised too deeply the debate on English as the vanquisher of our many languages versus English as a civilisational choice to tap into globalisation’s opportunities. But as some of the set pieces in EV suggest,it is useful to rework our perspective on English as our “link” language in a larger context,away from the two extremes of our usual debate. Simply put,at this point in time,English is the language that allows us to comprehend the chatter around us,and to be understood. Should another language offer that utility more usefully anytime soon,it would be adopted in English’s place.

The character played by Sridevi utters an innate need for the linguistic ability to code-switch. In any case,we in India are especially accustomed to having a command of more than one language,certainly more than one dialect — that is why the English language classes in EV are such an advance on the Mind Your Language stereotypes of the 1970s and ’80s. The EV classroom underlines a point made in recent studies on English as a lingua franca: that its vocabulary is being distilled in unique ways by its new speakers,and that they are able to use the language in ways that could be unintelligible to its native speakers.

As Robert McCrum explains it in a book by the same name,Globish is Frenchman Jean-Paul Nerriere’s word for a utilitarian 1,500 English vocabulary,for use by non-native speakers. A former IBM executive,Nerriere is the author of such guides as Don’t Speak English: Parlez Globish,which is as much an exercise in spreading the use of English as in inviting those fluent with the language to pare down their lexicon in order to be comprehensible to the largest number possible. But even by Nerriere’s exacting definition,Globish encapsulates a wider phenomenon: that two non-native speakers,with no language but broken English between them,may sit on either side of an English-speaking person and get through to each other but lose the native speaker in their midst.

So,is Globish,and not the Queen’s English or even Merriam-Webster’s,the real lingua franca? Determining a lingua franca,incidentally,is a factor not of its total number of speakers,but of the number of speakers for whom it is a second,or vehicular,language. Nicholas Ostler,a prominent linguistic historian,recently compiled a chart of the percentage of speakers of a language for whom it is not the first language. Swahili tops the list,at 98 per cent — that is,a very small proportion of Swahili-speaking persons count it as their mother tongue. English is third,at 71 per cent,behind Malay. Hindi is ninth,at 40 per cent and Mandarin Chinese,the second most widely spoken language in the world,is at 17 per cent.

Interestingly,Ostler has followed up on his history of English’s dominance with the claim that it will not last,and that it may not be replaced by another language of such widespread use — that is,it will be the last lingua franca. It will be “a long retrenchment”,he argues,adding that with electronics removing “the requirement for a human intermediary to interpret or translate,the frustrations of a language barrier may be overcome without any universal shared medium beyond compatible software”. It’s a controversial thesis,and it is still tentatively stated,but you could argue that the way the rest of the world was kept updated on Twitter about Iran’s anti-election Green protest in 2009 was a snapshot of how this software-based communication could happen across the language barrier.

Another way of hypothesising the end of English as we know it is based less on its probable decline,and more on its scattering into local pidgin forms,turning its very strength of malleability against it. From Pune to Kingston to Singapore to Tokyo,there are hybrid forms of English that locals ever more easily lapse into that are closed to other English speakers. Websites like Samosapedia are cheerfully tracking Indian Englishes,but elsewhere,this tendency is already provoking state action. In Singapore,the state has undertaken a campaign against Singlish,and former prime minister Goh Chok Tong actually worried that Singlish,and not English,could become the city-state’s common language.

Were English to retreat as a common global language,could we salvage something of it here in India? Back in 1972,while delivering the convocation address at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University,actor-scriptwriter Balraj Sahni worried too about India’s emerging language menu. His concern was the growing gap between the state-adopted Hindi and the bazaari Hindustani that is at once more rooted and more open to new words,influences and speakers,and the differential life chances of people amidst an English-speaking elite. He wanted English to be replaced by the people’s language,and for easier access to this people’s language he suggested retaining the English script: “Because no one has any prejudice against it. It is the only script which has already gained all-India currency.” Also,as he pointed out,the army has long been using Roman Hindustani.

It’s a thought. Hindustani Vindustani,or perhaps,Tamil Vamil anyone?

Mini Kapoor is contributing editor,‘The Indian Express’

express@expressindia.com