Indian English has been an object of interest, discussion and sometimes butt of jokes. This incident is related to my interaction with an Englishman in the late nineties.
Our electronic manufacturing unit was abuzz with lot of makeover and cleaning activities. The whole shop floor and offices wore a new look for the visit of officials from an organisation with headquarters in England. It was a study tour of our company with the objective of acquisition. Our factory was part of a big group and for business reasons the group management wanted to hive off our unit so that it can focus on its core business.
We had formal introduction and exchange of pleasantries which were followed by visit to the factory. We were greatly relieved that all the visitors had intelligible British accent which made our communication easy. Earlier we had visitors from US and we had difficulty in picking their American accent and had to keep guessing a lot.
My counterpart from quality department, an affable gentleman from New Castle, was pleasantly surprised that all the members in the quality department and staff could communicate in English. This was in total contrast to his experience in China where only the departmental heads could speak English. India was a revelation for him as he had imagined India to be in the medieval times and a country of tigers and snake charmers. However he was aghast at the totally undisciplined vehicular traffic, bumpy Indian roads and the traffic jams. Literally he was at the edge of his seat whenever a speeding vehicle nearly brushed past our car.
In the evening we went out for dinner and he was relishing the spicy Indian curry though it brought tears in his eyes. During the dinner he told me while he was impressed with the English knowledge and communication of an average Indian, he found use of some words rather strange. Words like “Updation”, “Preponement” etc do not exist in English dictionary. He also joked at the Indian expression “passing out of college” used for “graduation” as this conveys a totally a different meaning to an English man.
In a friendly banter he remarked “You Indians are corrupting English Language”. In lighter vein I also retorted “No Mr Fergusen, we are only correcting the small idiosyncrasies of your language as these words sound more appropriate than words like “Updating”, “Advancing the date” etc. We are enriching your language with these additional words. In fact we have already given some Indian words like “Bungalow”, “Catamaram” etc and you can add these words as well in your Oxford dictionary. He laughed saying that he would like English to remain chaste without being influenced by foreigners.
To take my point further, I told him that there is a proverb in the Eastern India which says “If Chatterjee speaks and Bannerjee understands then it is Bengali” referring to the different slangs of the language. Similarly when we communicate and you understand then it has to be English or “Indian English”. What is important is to communicate and this is what we Indians are doing with English. He smiled and nodded in agreement.
