The English Language!!

In this post, i attempt to conquer a hitherto unknown territory in the jungle of languages, chronicling the quirks of a language so used and abused (much like my pants in hostel that are so often used (and circulated!!!) but seldom returned!!).. No, no wiseguy, i am not talking about Swahili or the Bushmen tongue (that has more clicks than even a well-used computer mouse!!!).. What i am referring to is our wonderful lingua franca...err. English for those yet non-plussed (thats sitting with a vacant expression and a stupid smile, for all you laymen!!)..

English...The language of the empire (No not star wars man!! I am talking history where all these pale chaps from an island country with bad weather and worser food, but bloody good accents(Damn!!!), came over the sea to rule over us brown-skinned people wearing our sacred loinclothes and much longer dhotis and err..sarees too)..

I would try to limit myself to the provenance (thats posh for 'origin' my dear chaps) of English in this space...that would be England or Great Britian (Ah!!! social and political formalities)..Whenever i think of english, i get reminded of this english lady sitting in a stand-up comedian's show... when asked where she was from, she suddenly underwent a complete facial translocation, contorting her neck, pulling her upper lip back, pushing her lower lip out... No, she wasn't having a bad twitch ((like the ones you see on severely stress-affected poor American war veterans who have undergone god-knows-what in Korea, Kuwait, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc etc etc in their government's war for Justice and Democracy (I can hear a lotta guyz there sayin "ya right!!'))).. The lady was just sayin "Bedford!!" in a very english accent..

English accents... I mean, How weird can they get!!!... The other day, i was watching this english (err..British, really) movie on the telly (yep.. thats very british too) where there was this chap talking in a world-renowned Glasgow accent..I was having a really hard time understanding him whenever he said 'has' or 'horse' or 'house' or anything else starting with H coz hey!!! guess what??? he didn't pronounce any Hs... so i ended up earing..err... hearing (Bloody impressionable me!!!) 'House' as 'Ouse' or 'has' like...no, lets leave that be.. But hey even the poor bloke (good lord!!! The effects of the english society is on me!!) could be forgiven... He was just being colloquial..

But poor old english is probably one of those unfortunate languages that have been horrendously mutilated by their own countries' cities.. In london, Getting robbed is being "Blagged".. the suspiciously american metaphor for courage, that is, guts, is "Minerals" here.. as in, "Have you got the minerals to do that laddie??" and "I gotta go to my mother" becomes "I gotta go to me mum".. Grammatical genocide of a language that has been, for centuries, an indica of socio-political status..

But hey!!! languages are meant to be corrupted so that they may be widespread.. i mean, Afrikaans was born from a hotch-potch mixture of Dutch-Malay-Portuguese-french in south africa.. But this versatility of English is its strength too.. i mean, it has borrowed words from all the languages it has come in contact with, like.. say.. 'Thugs' was coined from the name of an indian tribe of theiving buggers (Now, there goes our higher moral ground in the english-speaking world!!).. Hey!! Hold you horses!! (Thats just a phrase, you bum... now, let go of that poor animal!!)..Even English was born as a corruption of High German language of ancient times (There!! You english-purist fools!!).. So it would be sensible to conclude on the behalf of all humanity (yep!! I would be doin that :-P ) that "Miscegenation of languages is the Mother of communication"..

Getting back to our (currently) beleaguered English, It has been found that in British universities that lesser and lesser number of young english people know proper (read "Grammatically correct") english..Seems our asian brethren (a sizeable, ever-increasing number.. just like my waistline!!!) are better off in this field, they know good english and make better english teachers... Now thats what i call a Colonial Kick-Back..

But lets...err... let me, quit yapping about that language, those people and that bloody beautiful, envy-provoking, posh British accent (I mean, which self-respecting Cricket-crazy-crackpot can ever forget Geoff Boycott's lovely accent) coz who else could have given us "High Tea","Tip-top,"Tin-heads", A Drowned-in-Illicit-love-affairs Royal family and Princess Diane (Besides Jallianwala Bagh, The Partition and finally, Freedom of course)..

Hell, off with it!!, India is booming (or so they say....ever heard of Inflation, Corruption and Farmer suicides, you Balloon-heads!!!).. so its only prudent that we break up this gathering of mourners to lament the loss of English.... and get on with learning Chinese and a few Indian languages coz its gonna be us guys who form nearly 90% of this world's populace tomorrow B-)..