Download Chapter 18: WOrLD eNGLISheS COMMeNtarY ON aCtIVItIeS

Chapter 18: WORLD ENGLISHES
COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES
Activity 18.1
According to the most widely accepted figures (e.g. Crystal 2008), there are around half
a billion native speakers out of a total of more than two billion speakers of English overall.
But the figures are only suggestive. You probably correctly situated most of the native
speakers in the USA, where there are more than in the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and
New Zealand combined. Large numbers of non-­native speakers of English are located in
the Indian subcontinent (South Asia); in large patches of West Africa, and from East to
South Africa; scattered across Southeast Asia; and now all across Europe, especially
Scandinavia.
Activity 18.2
With respect to pragmatics, you will probably have noted the formality of the reader’s
query, as reflected in the salutation ‘Respected Sir’ and terms like expenditure instead of costs.
A prominent feature of the astrologer’s response is its cultural specificity and expertise, as
reflected in the terminology used (both English words like propitiate and the Hindi words
listed below) and the emotive vocabulary choices (like wrath).
Grammatical features include: the use of the progressive instead of simple present
(I am having a lot of debts); variable use of articles and possessive pronouns (almost completely
absent in the reader’s query); non-­native word order (let us see when can you expect improvement);
variable use of prepositions after verbs (e.g. seek for); plurals on ‘non-­count’ nouns (➔ 7)
(e.g. expenditures).
We have already indicated some noteworthy lexical usage. Other non-­native vocabulary choices correspond to ‘archaisms’ in native Englishes (e.g. afresh), or differences in
collocation (e.g. soften your ego). Most striking in the astrologer’s response are, of course, the
borrowings from Hindi:
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roga means ‘sickbed’
shadabala is the Vedic astrology system
khandita means ‘damaged’
pooja is a form of ritual worship (of a Hindu deity)
visarjan refers to the ritual immersion (of a Hindu idol)
pranapratishtha refers to the ritual invocation (of a Hindu deity)
dasha means ‘position’ here
Sadesati refers to the astrological phase of Saturn
Ganeshji refers to the elephant-­headed Hindu deity, Lord Ganesh
VighnaHarta refers to an aspect of the dual nature of Ganesh
Ganesh Sankata nashan stotra is from a devotional song or prayer
Unconventional spellings (e.g. loses and troublesum) are similar to those made by native
speakers, and so in the absence of evidence for their systematic use by other Indian English
speakers, are probably not significant.
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Chapter 18: WORLD ENGLISHES COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES
Activity 18.3
The principal differences between AmEng and BrEng uses of the words are listed in Table
18.1. Of course, speakers of other varieties of English may well have other usages to add.
(For example, what in BrEng is a pavement and in AmEng is a sidewalk is in Australian English
a footpath.)
For more, look at one of the many online collections, such as Mark Glicksman’s English
(British) – American Dictionary (➔ W18.8).
Table 18.1 Different uses of words in British and American Englishes
Ambiguous word
In BrEng the word is
used where AmEng
speakers would use:
In AmEng the word
is used where BrEng
speakers would use:
jumper
lift
hood
pavement
truck
pants
rocket
purse
bill
sweater
elevator, ride
dress, suicidal person
sidewalk
underpants, not good
arugula
coin purse
check
(car) bonnet, gangster
road(way)
lorry
trousers
handbag
note (of currency)
Activity 18.4
This commentary is in comparison to standard British English.
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There are some inconsistencies in the spelling in that me is spelt ‘mi’ and ‘me’ and
unconventional spelling is used e.g. yute, dem, neva, sen’, u, subjec’, dweet for ‘do it’.
The unconventional spelling is an attempt to represent pronunciation: <D> for [ð],
<T> for final [θ], <A> for final [ə], the apostrophe in sen’ and subjec’ indicating the
simplification of the final consonant cluster [nt] in sent and [kt] in subject.
U for ‘you’ may represent pronunciation or may be an abbreviated spelling.
The first person pronoun is used in the same form, whatever its syntactic function in
the clause (mi always hear, evry bady know mi).
The first person singular possessive determiner appears in standard form whereas for
the first person plural, wi is used where in Standard English our would be used.
Fi is used for to in the infinitive of the verb in the clause of purpose ‘to save us from
our sins’ and is reminiscent of the older form of Standard English ‘He did this for to
save us from our sins’. Fi is used elsewhere to mean ‘for’.
‘Dead’ is used for the verb in die on the cross to save us from our sins.
The adjective hungry is used for the noun hunger.
A is used to indicate a past participle in ‘did a put on’ and ‘did a talk about hell an’ fire’.
Chapter 18: WORLD ENGLISHES COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES
Activity 18.5
Plurality on nouns is expressed with the suffixes –s and –dem (from them).The suffix –im (from
him) corresponds to the possessive –s used in most Englishes. A free-­standing version of dem
is used for both subject and object third person plural. Like the Caribbean example in Activity
18.4, wi (from we) is used for the first person plural possessive (but note that the we occurring
in sentences 1 and 6 is related to the subordinating conjunction who, not to the pronoun we).
Activity 18.7
The proverbs exemplify different attitudes to language. The Welsh proverb demonstrates
how a language can be seen as an oppressive force and the oppression may be political or
social. The Romani proverb, and to a certain extent the Filipino proverb, demonstrates the
importance of language in an individual’s sense of identity – to make this more concrete,
consider how you might feel if, overnight, you were told that your education was to be
through the medium of another language. Consider also how your lecturers might feel!
The Hausa proverb is concerned with the importance of language in development (of the
individual or the society) and how the imposition of one language on another can disempower one group of people in relation to another group.
Activity 18.8
You might reasonably conclude that the Scots version of the line resembles the English
version as much as the varieties in the preceding activities resemble BrEng or AmEng.
There are spellings that correspond to pronunciations you might be familiar with from
visits to Scotland or from hearing Scots in films or on TV. For example, the vowels in mony
(corresponding to many) and aboot (corresponding to about), or the penultimate consonant
in feelins. At the lexical level, you should be able to recognize 15 of the 16 words, with kent
being the only potentially ‘foreign’ one. Again, those familiar with Scottish speakers of
English might recognize this verb, which is used as a dialectal variant for ‘Standard English’
know. The syntax of this sentence is identical to that of ‘Standard English’. (How do you
interpret the fact that the Scots line is directly addressed to the reader (Ye hae mony weys …),
whereas the English line is impersonal (There are lots of ways …)?)
The non-­linguistic grounds for treating Scots as a separate language are essentially social
and political, the same as those which lead to the recognition of other dialectal differences
as demarcating separate languages when they are spoken by separate national communities
(such as Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan – linguistically the same language, as are Flemish
and Dutch, the former in Belgium and the latter in the Netherlands). In cases where instead
of spilling over borders, the ‘national’ language is not spoken by everyone in the country,
the opposite case can hold, as in the case of China, where the macrolanguage of Chinese is
actually a family of different languages united by a single writing system. As Calvet (1974,
cited in Phillipson 1992: 39) put it: ‘a dialect is never anything other than a defeated
language, and a language is a dialect that has succeeded politically.’
Activity 18.9
If you want to know more about the implications of this way of thinking for English
Language Teaching, look at Graddol (2006) and Kirkpatrick (2007).
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