Secondary school pupils aren’t taking modern languages. I can’t claim to be surprised at this news: in 2004 the Labour government made it non-compulsory to learn a foreign language after the age of 14 and the invitation to dump vocabulary tests and listening exercises has been gratefully received. What an error. Having carelessly dropped Spanish, German and finally French when I was at school, I am now enrolled on not one, not two, but three evening courses. The most exciting is Thursday night: Hindi Stage 1.
The Statesman is Kolkata’s most venerable English language newspaper, read throughout West Bengal and beyond. It is my memory of working in its dilapidated headquarters in Chowringhee Square that has drawn me – now back in London and nostalgic for that city – to learn Hindi. It’s slow progress. I’ve been attending classes since last autumn and I would still be hard-pressed to have a conversation that didn’t revolve around siblings, furniture or pets. But, for struggling beginners like me, there is one reprieve: the language that tends to be spoken in India is not Hindi; it’s Hindustani. Most people don’t speak Hindi, but rather a creole of many strands. It’s a flexible language which incorporates English, Urdu and local languages which vary from region to region. So, if in doubt about a Hindi word, it’s quite permissible to slip into English.
If you don’t believe me, try some Indian telly. The other day I watched Masterchef India, presented by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar on Star Plus TV. India’s version of the popular cooking contest is much more dramatic than its British equivalent: when cooking time is up, each contestant places their dish on a trolley and jogs down a darkened corridor to the waiting panel of judges; judgements are announced, tempers fray and speech grows faster and faster. As the programme progressed I became increasingly baffled about what I was hearing until I was only picking out odd words – the odd words that were in English: ‘tasty tasty’, I heard the judge cry; then ‘flavours’…’sauces’…’superstar’…’apron’; and finally, ‘best of the best’.
English seems to be incorporated into Hindustani in an indiscriminate but natural way; the speaker is in
charge and there aren’t any rules. My Hindi teacher Kamlesh tells me she has seen great changes in the way English is used in India; she describes how today people flit between English
and Hindi during conversation, barely noticing as they do so. In the past there was much greater separation between the two. What’s more, the huge popularity of American TV and
cinema means that ‘text speak’ is infiltrating English, particularly amongst the younger generation.
It is hardly surprising, particularly in a country fanatical about movies, that American English is the dominant influence. Gone are the days when Englishmen could write in wry tones about the quirks of Indian English; today, England’s literature and language have little to do with the evolution of English elsewhere in the world. Then again, the Victorian English of Empire remains in existence. Rosanne Das Gupta, a recently retired secondary school teacher at South Point School in Kolkata, recalls the grammar books she used to teach by, neither of which had been updated since their publication in the 19th century. She read me, out of one of them, the recommended template for a letter to a newspaper: ‘Through the columns of your esteemed newspaper, I want to draw the attention of the government to the discomfort caused by the indiscriminate use of microphones during religious festivities.’ I wonder what kind of response you’d elicit if you followed the book’s example.
Martin Cutts is the director of the Plain Language Commission and he’s campaigned for clear communication throughout the world, including in India. He pointed out that the use of plain English is critical to a fair society in India. Through Martin I got in touch with H Devaraja Rao who promotes the use of plain, comprehensible English in legal documents. In a document entitled Lawyers, Write Plainly, Please, he laments the stuffy Victorianisms which continue to clog legal communications: ‘Whereas’, he remarks, ‘ seems to function as a harrumph—a kind of ritual throat clearance—to get the document under way. Lawyers’, he goes on, ‘appear to love hereby almost more than life itself. I hereby declare means nothing more than I declare.’ With the same ends in mind, the Consumers Association of India (CAI), campaigns for companies to revise their documentation so that people have half a chance of understanding what they’re buying.
For the vast majority of Indians, English is the language of American youth culture; the language of the country’s colonial past is passing with the elite of an older generation. The work of H Devaraja Rao and the Consumers Association is designed to make English clearer and simpler for ordinary citizens. The linguist David Graddol has argued that expanding economies such as India will play a major role in the development of global English; in many South Asian countries, Indians qualify as ‘native-speaker’ English teachers; this will inevitably lead to the development of distinct forms of English in the East which branch away from the language spoken here in Britain. India’s vast literate population (333 million ‘use’ English, according to one estimate) makes it a powerful force in the formation of global English for the future. As India rises as a global superpower, perhaps it’s appropriate that I should be learning Hindi, just as Indians once learnt English.
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