So beautiful, so elegant, just looking like a wow?
I stopped writing many years ago. After reading ‘The God of Small Things’, I just couldn’t convince myself that I should.
Why am I writing today? A recent Instagram viral trend, followed by a reel from one of India’s most influential celebrities.
The reel was meant to be humorous, but it left me wondering. While some people might have found the original creator’s video cute (often-read-as-stupid), one reason they appear funny to social media users is because the woman speaks in incorrect English with an Indian accent.
Why are a non-native person’s attempts to converse in the English language ridiculed? We’ve cultivated a culture of ridiculing those who miss a conjunction or misplace a pronoun. It raises some questions — why is it ‘cute’ when an Italian guy speaks incorrect English but oh-so-mediocre when done by an Indian? Unfortunately, we all know why.
My parents are not native English speakers. They were first-generation learners who learned to speak as many languages as life needed them to learn, and to as much proficiency as needed. Words are often spiced with original ‘mallu’-ness (the language spoken in the southern state of India), some broken rules of grammar, and many random connecting words to articulate the meaning of what sounds right in their heads. ‘English literature’ was my first academic passion, and I lived half a decade gloating over the aristocratic English-speaking abilities I learned. During my undergraduate studies, I had also been a self-assumed grammar Nazi. It felt so cool to pretend to be better than everyone else, speaking better English and using words no one understood. But best of all, correcting someone’s grammar publicly.
Why? because I knew when and where to put the ‘whom’ and the ‘who’. Our desire for validation shows up in many ways, and this wasn’t very different. The joy was inexplicable. It was almost sadistic.
When I was working for Teach for India, I would often visit classrooms to meet the underprivileged kids we were educating. Some of them speak the kind of English my parents do. It didn’t take me much time to realize the nature of chauvinism that exists in us — the need to patronize the misgivings of others for self-appreciation. I realized that one’s ability to speak fluent, rich English is only a factor of where and who they learned it from. It’s only a factor of privilege.
As we question the many rules as millennials, why not question this? After all, one’s English-speaking ability is only as good as another’s ability to fluently code in SQL. Why are we so unforgiving when it comes to English?
English, as we know it today, has taken many forms and shapes. Globally metamorphizing into whatever it needs to mold into for effective communication. I wonder how much really remains common between the quality of England’s original English and what we speak today. A lot has been lost in translation between what is taught and how it is learned. What was brought by the German tribes as a language to talk about farming with ease, is the sophistication we all pledge by today. It was a language meant to simplify communication. And yet here we are, doing what we do best — creating hierarchies, concepts, and classes to differentiate us from one another, yet again. (Refer to examples: apartheid, casteism, colonialism, racism, colorism, feminism, and the like.)
The true purpose of the English language is just that — to evolve as people do. So people can communicate most effectively about what’s important to them during that period of time. It is a reflection of the taste, sound, and vision that reverberated among the masses and resonated with what they stood for. It is a reflection of our unique identities, piercing through an echo of cultural cohesion.
But here is what I have to say: if being that person is how you still find humor, superiority, or self-assurance, I’m sorry. I wish that you have the courage and willingness to look beyond what’s convenient to see. I hope that someday you see the heart behind the ‘a-wows’ and ‘the-Pilates’. I hope that someday you will grow beyond the incorrectness of these articles.
Let language unite us, not divide. It is a global language; it will be spoken in many different beautiful ways across the globe. Live, love, and cherish the beauty of evolving as a culture.
