(Quirk et al., 19 72, p. v)
The language I speak
becomes mine
Its distortions, its queernesses
all mine, mine alone.
It is half English, half Indian
funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is human as I am human
Don't you see?
(Das, 19 73, quoted in Verma, 19 82, p. 17 8)
The first quotation above comes from Tom McArthur's book The Oxford Guide to World English. As the title suggests, the book is about English around the world - the varieties of English used in different regions, often alongside other languages, The book takes account of the diversity of different 'Englishes', in terms of their linguistic characteristics and the sociopolitical contexts in which they are used.
On the other hand, the grammar produced by Randolph Quirk and his colleagues emphasises a 'common core' of English. This kind of grammar may give the impression that English is relatively fixed, something unified and discrete, playing down the diversity highlighted by McArthur. This is hardly surprising because such grammars provide a model that can be consulted, that will tell the reader what structures are possible in English and what are not possible. In this case, although the grammar is meant to cover 'the world's major English-speaking communities' it focuses, in practice, on 'educated' British and American usage.
Quirk's grammar was produced thirty years before McArthur's guide. A more recent successor, the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999) does provide more evidence of different uses of English. The editors of the Longman grammar consulted a substantial corpus of written and spoken English: texts taken from conversations, fiction, newspapers and academic writing that together amounted to over forty million words. The grammar deals with differences in the way English is used in these contexts (e.g. forms of English found in conversation may not occur in academic writing). In terms of regional variation, however, the grammar restricts itself, like Quirk's earlier grammar, to (standard) British and American English. Such usage has frequently been taken as a model for teaching and learning. If you learnt English in school as a foreign language, this is the kind of model you will probably have encountered.
Kamala Das's poem, Summer in Calcutta, focuses on what English means to the poet, writing in an Indian context. Speakers and writers of English in different parts of the world respond to the language in particular ways, and may sometimes seek to emphasise the distinctiveness of regional varieties. In the remainder of this section, I look more closely at some of the ways in which English varies. Later in the chapter I return to the different meanings English may have for its speakers and writers.
ACTIVITY 1.1 Allow about 10 minutes
Please read through the extracts which follow. Which look to you like recognisable varieties of English? How many do you understand?
| 1 | Yu noken draivim kar long sipid nogut. Igat bikpela tambu long dispela. Maksi tingim igat tambu long winim 30 mail tasol. Nogat. Sapos yu ron long 20 mail na planti manmeri wokabaut, em tu i tambu. | You are not allowed to drive a car at an unreasonable speed. This is strictly forbidden. It does not matter; for instance, that the official limit is 30 miles per hour. If you drive at a speed of 20 miles per hour and many people are walking in the street, this is illegal. |
| | (quoted in Mühlhäusler et al., 2003, pp. 159 and 161) |
| 2 | Maist aw fowk that nou uises email will be acquent wi emails that's been sent athoot invite adverteesin guids an services, or willin fowk see it on tae ithers thay ken for tae cairy on some kin o steer an stour anent thair guids or services ... Thir kin o spam mails reenges fae offerin help in reddin credit tae peels that gars bits o fowk growe. Maist o thir guids an services is o coorse o a quaistenable naitur |
| | (Eagle, 2004, p. 103) |
| 3 | Shutyorgob | Please keep quiet |
| Yegotnehyemteganti | Please leave |
| Letshowaydoonthabooza | Allow me to take you for a drink |
| Broonsaalroond | Drinks on me |
| | (Douglas, 2001, p. 35) |
| 4 | Trust chi. Ry. Jaggu has safely landed at Gainsville. We heard that he landed safely at New York and had to stay there for the night as he did not have time to catch his flight to Orlando. Perhaps he must have reached his destination safely by Saturday evening (American time). He may join his duties as per schedule on 23/5/94 by the grace of God. |
| 5 | This Banaras very old city. Nobody know how old. Varanasi our very oldest city in India. Varuna plus Assi both jointed called Varanasi. The most important temple the golden temple. |
| | (quoted in Mehrotra, 1998, p. 107) |
| 6 | Having destroyed the gang's ‘iron and steel and hat factories’ and condemned its crime of savagely attacking and persecuting them, our cadres are displaying renewed revolutionary spirit. |
| | (quoted in Cheng, 1992, p. 170) |
| 7 | The ECMS must support the association of alternative content object renditions to a content object. |
| Content object renditions are alternative digital file formats of a given content object. For example, a Microsoft Word document may own an XML document as one rendition and an Adobe PDF document as another rendition (i.e. different file formats of the same content). In another example, a bitmap image may own a JPEG file as one rendition and a GIF file as another rendition (i.e. different quality format of a given image). |
Comment
- This is a brief extract from the first (1969) translation of the Highway Code into Tok Pisin, a language variety based on English that is spoken in Papua New Guinea. Tok Pisin began life as a pidgin, a contact variety that develops between people who do not share a common language. Pidgins, at first, may be quite rudimentary, but they may develop as lingua francas, and eventually become the mother tongue of a group of speakers, in which case they are usually referred to as Creoles. Tok Pisin began as a contact language in the European colonial period when people from Papua New Guinea worked as indentured labourers on European-run plantations. It is now often regarded as a Creole, serving as a lingua franca within a multilingual community; it has an official orthography and a standardised variety (you will read more about pidgins and Creoles in Chapter 4 Section 4.4). Can varieties such as Tok Pisin be referred to as English? They have taken a lot of their vocabulary from English (if you look at the extract and its standard English translation you can see connections between draivim and drive, mailand and mile, yu and you, etc.), but their structure is rather different. They are sometimes referred to as 'English-related', but also sometimes as 'Englishes'.
- This example comes from an article on email spamming, written for the Scots Language Association's journal, Lallans. Lallans refers to the Scots language; it has sometimes been termed 'literary Scots' or 'new Scots' (Aitken, 1984, pp. 530-1). The journal is written entirely in Scots. Scots looks similar in some ways to English, although there are distinctive words (athoot, acquent) and spellings (adverteesin, quaistenable, naitur). Spelling may be intended to reflect different pronunciations, but it also has the effect of making Scots look different from English on the printed page. Scots, like (English) English, developed from Anglo-Saxon or Old English. It has been regarded by some as a dialect of English, by others as a separate language. The Scots Language Association has as its aim the promotion of Scots in literature, drama, the media, education and everyday usage.
- This is an extract from a booklet entitled Geordle English. Geordie is a variety of British English spoken in the north-east of England. The booklet contains Geordie words with translations into Standard English, as well as sections on grammar and pronunciation. The main readership for the booklet, however; is local Newcastle people rather than those who do not understand Geordie. While some of the entries look serious, the phrases above are clearly humorous, playing on stereotypes of a macho, beer-swilling culture. Geordie has quite a distinctive pronunciation, but in terms of vocabulary and grammar there isn't an enormous difference today between the variety many people speak and Standard English. However; the phrases suggest - again, humorously - that Geordie is quite distinctive, almost a 'foreign language'.
- This is an extract from a letter my friend Jayalakshmi received from her father in India. 'Jaggu' is my friend's brother; Jagadish, who left India to work in the USA. The family's first language is the south Indian language Kannada; they also speak other Indian languages. The English in the letter sh...
