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| The Queen’s English in India | | |
by Harish Dhillon
I read a hilarious book, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”, which deals with the corruption of the Queen’s English due to negligence in the use of punctuation. But the corruption in Newspaper English in India stems largely from a transference of usage from the mother tongue into English.
The most glaring example of this is in the use of articles. Indian languages do not have the concept of the article. In Hindi, for instance, we say: “Main kamare me aaya. Kamare mein ek khidki thi. Khidki Khuli thi.” Translated literally into English this would read: “I came into room. In room there was one window. Window was open”. Naturally, unless paid particular attention to, this results in all kinds of difficulties: an interchange of definite and indefinite articles, absence of articles when articles are needed, use of articles when articles are not needed, a classical example of this is: “The old song took him down the memory lane.” There is now an increasing tendency to take the easy way out and not use articles at all!
Another transference is in the use of the possessive “his” and “her”. In Hindi we will say: “Ram apni kursi pe baitha” or “Sita apni kursi pe baithi”. In both cases the possessive remains “apni” because it carries the gender of the chair, which is feminine. While in English we will say “Ram sat on his chair” or “Sita sat on her chair” because the possessive takes the gender of the possessor. But one finds increasingly, a carelessness in the use of “his” and “her”. A recent example of this is: “Rakesh of Kaimla village tried to rape her neighbour.”
Problems arise with choice of vocabulary items from words with similar sounds. Yesterday I saw a newspaper report headlined “Pramod paddles to victory” and expected to read about a boating event — but the photograph on top was of a group of youngsters on bicycles pedalling away to glory.
A more disturbing carelessness occurs when we have two or more equivalent words for a Hindi word and the writer is careless in choosing the right word. This is a mild irritant when the writer is dealing with words like — “roof” and “ceiling” as equivalents for the Hindi “chhat”. At the most he will say: “There is a display of huge crystal chandeliers which hang from the roof to the floor” or “The accident was caused by too many people crowding on the ceiling to get a bird’s eyeview of the procession.” But real difficulty arises when the writer has to choose in cases like “rear” and “back”. One newspaper report read: “The department has floated a project to encourage schools to establish herbal gardens. Efforts are also being made to motivate house owners to grow herbs in their backsides.”
The English in Indian newspapers may still claim to be “Queen’s English” but I am sure Queen Elizabeth will vehemently deny all ownership rights to this special language.
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