Better to be a butterfly than learn English .

You know when was the best time to write in English?

Answer is astonishing. 

It was in Shakespeare's time. There were hardly coorect and incorrect spellings.

His own name had  41 spellings and he himself used 5 of them.

God forbid, we are told that root of the problem is the first bible in English language.  About 500 years ago, one was to read it only in Latin and  one can be punished for printing or keeping English version.

So the first bold step was to print it in Germany where people knew very little English.

It was a first ever book for most of the people and it became the sole primer for their reading, writing, and we are bearing the brunt today of those uncorrected prints.

In spoken English today , 

• there are some 43 sounds as against around 50 in European languages . 
• But funnily enough , there about  185 spellings for 43 sounds and children have to learn this. 
• More than 100 words have same spellings 
• About 70 English spellings have more than one pronunciation and as a result about 2,000 words become totally un-decodable! 
• There are about 100 words where pronunciation changes with their context and again , 
• about 370 words  obey the doubling rule and 
• some 380 words  disobey it and finally, 
• the silent letters are just the last straw on the camel’s back.

Generally, it takes about ten years of practice to be a good English speller or speaker. 

Now we know it and must pity them if they are still learning – or admire them if they have learnt it.   

Imagine the plight of about 250 million  users of  Facebook, MSN Messenger and Twitter and add further a few hundred  millions who use SMS or text messages on their cell phones ! No wonder the following parallel NETLINGO spellings are going around in great volume :

CUZ-Because  /  CWOT-Complete Waste Of Time /   CWYL-Chat With You Later /  CX-Cancelled / 

CY-Calm Yourself / 

CYA-See Ya / C

YE-Check your Email / 

CYL-See You Later / 

CYM-Check Your Mail / 

CYO-See You Online / 

CYT-See You Tomorrow / 

D&M-Deep & Meaningful / 

d/c-disconnected / 

DLTM-Don't Lie To Me / 

DMI-Don't Mention It / 

DNBL8-Do Not Be Late / 

DNC-Does Not Compute / 

DND-Do Not Disturb / 

...etc 

• OR

luv U, cant w8t 2C U l8r - love you, can not wait to see you later / 

which 1 of my kdz do U wnt? - which one of my kids do you want?/ 

 IM@wrk - I am at work / 

 ayt – are you there? / 

aisi – as I see it / 

 btw – by the way / 

 ILU – I love you / 

 ruf2t – are you free to talk? / 

 rntuaqt – aren’t you a cutie / 

etc, etc

With thousands of radio messages broadcast every second by aviation and military personnel round the world, with many accents too difficult for the non-natives, we have ended up with PHONETIC / SPELLING ALPHABET 

Letters

Letter	Code word	Pronunciation
A	Alfa	AL FAH
B	Bravo	BRAH VOH
C	Charlie	CHAR LEE
D	Delta	DELL TAH
E	Echo	ECK OH
F	Foxtrot	FOKS TROT
G	Golf	GOLF
H	Hotel	HOH TELL
I	India	IN DEE AH
J	Juliett	JEW LEE ETT
K	Kilo	KEY LOH
L	Lima	LEE MAH
M	Mike	MIKE
N	November	NO VEM BER
O	Oscar	OSS CAH
P	Papa	PAH PAH
Q	Quebec	KEH BECK
R	Romeo	ROW ME OH
S	Sierra	SEE AIR AH
T	Tango	TANG GO
U	Uniform	YOU NEE FORM
V	Victor	VIK TAH
W	Whiskey	WISS KEY
X	X-ray	ECKS RAY
Y	Yankee	YANG KEY
Z	Zulu	ZOO LOO

With all these headaches in spoken and written communication, one day we should not be surprised that more people will turn towards the SIGN LNGAUGE used by the hearing-impaired people. But here also there will be spelling problems. So, perhaps the best option could be "Hieroglyphs" or logograms representing words using graphical figures such as animals, objects or people, used by Egyptians some 5,000 years ago.

Or better still, would be to observe total silence as Hinduism, Buddhism and other eastern religions preach.

Or best of all would be to be born as a star or a butterfly or a flower – I suppose.

Amen!

15th June, English language & Gujarati Students!

Come 15th June and the parents are going mad with the preparations for their school going children. Worst off are those who seek first time admissions for their tiny tots.

Selecting a school, interviews, influencing admission process, donations, and often getting fleeced in the process. In a large city near my town, a residential school is charging almost Rs.1,000 PER DAY for kids who are primary section, a whooping Rs.3,50,000 from NRI parents!

Today, the  mad rush is for English medium schools. Those in other schools go to various outlets for learning spoken Dozens of self-help books are available which even housewives religiously read. Some DTH service providers like Tata Sky provide online help to learners, if I remember their advt correctly. Students prepare for TOEFL as a part of their plans to study abroad.


English is becoming more proficient in this universal foreign language that holds key to the future of this new generations aspiring students.Perhaps, their parents and elders who studied in 1960s and 70s in schools of Gujarat were not so fortunate. They were rather very unforunate.


Mr V Gangadhar came to Ahmedabad in Gujarat in  mid-1958 and started working in the local textile (Little younger to him , I was in  class VI at that time. He has written candidly  about the lack of foresight of the politicians in teaching English to Gujarati students from early age. (http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jan/31gang.htm) : " 

For the first ten years of my life in the city, I witnessed the furious battle between the 'Eighth standard camp' and the 'Fifth Standard camp', the former insisting it was adequate if English teaching began from Std VIII while the latter demanded it should start from Standard V. 

The first group had firm political support from Morarji Desai and his stooges in Gujarat. So, the average Gujarati graduate ended up knowing very little English. 

Most college professors and post graduates would read only Gujarat Samachar or other local dailies, and not The Times of India. As for reading English books,forget it!"

I vividly recall that :

•  Both groups had one Mr Thakorebhai in their camp and to differentiate them for one another, the local news papers jocularly named them Thakore Panchma  (V) & Thakore Aathma (VIII) based on their ideology.
• Also, there was one education minister who was anti-English - Mr. Maganbhai and he propagated  college studies with Gujarati as the medium of instruction. Students were greatly frustrated and named course as Magan-medium' after him!

Elsewhere also,  Mr Gangadhar writes about pitiable English in Gujarat 
( http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/01/14/stories/13140619.htm) :" "For over 40 years, anti-English politicians have used subtle propaganda to brainwash the people into believing that English was "foreign" and was not needed for an "ideal" kind of education taught at institutions like Gujarat Vidyapith.The lobby functioned under the leadership of Gandhian politicians like Morarji Desai ....... Such a fiasco was possible only in a State like Gujarat where people were not academically inclined. The Gujarati middle class which ought to be concerned with the state of education, was satisfied if boys and girls somehow acquired a degree and got jobs within the state......As a result of this lopsided policy on English teaching, boys and girls, who had learnt practically nothing beyond the English alphabet faced problems when they reached the college classes. During the 1960s, when I taught English at an Ahmedabad college, it was difficult to interpret the poems of Shelley, Keats or Tennyson or the essays of Lamb, Chesterton or Addison to students who had little background in the language. The local English teachers solved the problem by "teaching" English in Gujarati. "


So much about the 1960s.


If you are curious why I picked up this topic today, the reason is simple. I stumbled upon yesterday one newspaper cutting dated 19th June 1974 which was published in a renowned Gujarati newspaper " Gujarat Samachar"  (Vadodara edition). One English medium school in a nearby town was recruiting Teachers and the secretary of the school placed the following advt ! (Identity purposefully  masked in the copy below, as I do not intend any disrespect). 


It is placed below  only to reflect the rot that was created by the policymakers few decades ago and was visible in 1974.


No prizes for finding out less than one dozen mistakes !

Long Live Dissatisafaction – the mother of invention !

We learn from Wikipedia  that “ There was dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period, so in June 1746 a group of London booksellers contracted  Dr Samuel Johnson to write a dictionary for the sum of 1,500 guineas, equivalent to about £220,000 as of 2009. 

Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. Johnson took nearly nine years to complete the work, although he had claimed he could finish it in three. Remarkably, he did so single-handedly, with only clerical assistance to copy out the illustrative quotations that he had marked in books. Johnson produced several revised editions during his life.”

Even Johnson's dictionary was not the first English dictionary, nor even among the first dozen. Over the previous 150 years more than twenty dictionaries had been published in England, the oldest of these being a Latin-English "wordbook" by Sir Thomas Elyot published in 1538.

The key word is ‘dissatisfaction”…. and it has continued to survive and inspire people to keep bringing out newer and newer dictionaries.

I must mention here two very novel dictionaries , which  were created  to simplify the life of readers:

FIRST  is a series of several specialized dictionaries by SMH Collin / PH Collin ( published in India by Universal Book Stall under arrangement with Peter Collin Publishing Ltd, UK ). They are for different subjects – Accounting, Banking and Finance, Law, Medicine, Computing, Business, Govt. and Politics and Ecology & Environment, to name some titles.  They contain main entries in the range of about 5,000 words. All the words and expressions are defined in simple terms, and examples are given of how each word is used in context. Short notes point out differences in spelling and construction between British and American English, and encyclopaedic comments are given throughout the text to expand on the definitions. Quotations are given from British and US magazines and newspapers to show how the terms are used in "real life", and the supplement section gives notes on various financial documents.

But there is something special, unbelievable yet true, as each dictionary claims : “The main words are explained in simple English, using a limited vocabulary of about 500 words over and above those words which appear in the dictionary as main words !!

Thus, any one with a limited vocabulary can also understand difficult words which occur frequently while studying technical subjects like medicine, law, computing, etc. ( The 1994 Indian reprint was priced just at Rs.50-60 only ) !!  May God bless those who conceived  & produced them!!

 

 

SECOND  is an equally amazing dictionary , titled "JARGON: An Informal Dictionary of Computer Terms"   by  Robin Williams  

 Here is what Ms Williams ( who is a designer, single mother of three kids, contributing columnist for lots of design magazines, speaker, trainer and all-round wonderful person)  has to say about her creation  -in her own  words, "I wrote this book because I was frustrated with every computer dictionary and glossary I had collected. The explanations were usually so brief and they assumed I knew a host of other things. 

Jargon's purpose is to provide the beginning-to-average computer user with the full meaning of every important term in a way that's clear, complete, and non-stuffy. When I started work on Jargon, I scoped out a book of 160 pages; but eventually it grew to four times that size (700 to be precise) . As a teacher, I knew I wanted to provide longer, richer definitions than those cryptic little phrases you'd normally expect. Fortunately, the publishers  let me get carried away and create a computer dictionary that even my mother could enjoy."

Thumb through Jargon and you see definitions that are remarkably easy to find and to read (what a concept!). Rather than tiny lines of type packed in like sardines, the layout is clear and airy with plenty of white space. To enlighten readers and enliven Jargon even more, the book includes cartoons by John Grimes, whose humor has appeared with great popularity.  Robin Williams's sister Shannon contributed a cross-word puzzle to see whether you've been paying attention. And Robin's daughter Scarlett, age 7, created a delightful font - cleverly named Scarlett- for chapter headings .

It is a  book with hundreds of computer terms explained in such a way that the reader actually understands the word after reading the definition. Covers both the Macintosh and PC world, as well as peripheral terminology. Explains not only the technical definition of the word, but also the how and why of the word.

 
SIMPLE things are always beautiful ! Those who create them are no longer  the ordinary mortals. Our world is worth living because some one , some where is dissatisfied with the status quo and is labouring hard  for  creating a new gift for us


If this was the good news, the bad news is that as per my information, JARGON is out of print now! 

I hope I  am wrong , so that we can but it one more time !!