When I first went to school in Ketti, Nilgiris in 1955 (eight years old), I couldn’t speak English. There was no one in my “House” (OLDHAM) who could speak Malayalam… Many friendly students and staff tried Tamil with me… Although there are similarities, spoken Tamil and spoken Malayalam are poles apart… It may have taken me three months to be able to communicate with schoolmates and teaching staff in broken English…
I am doing some informal research on Indian English accents and came across a concept called, “Language Interference”.
I discovered that, “the concept of language interference is where the structures or sounds of one language affect the production of another language.”
“Individuals may carry the pronunciation patterns of their native language into the new language, resulting in an accent.”
So by the time I finished school in 1962, had I lost my Malayalam accent and developed a “posh” English accent?
No… I had a perfect Madras Presidency Anglo Indian accent… If you are as old as I am and as curious, you would know the difference between the three Presidency (Madras, Bengal and Bombay) English accents. Today, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi have further asserted their domination over English in a natural evolutionary process. Modern ubiquitous communications technology (TV, Social Network Videos) and a prolific Indian language cinema industry have brought about some uniformity in accents. For example, the Malayalam Accent of Malabar, influenced by Tulu, Kannada, Tamil and Arabic has become less singsong and less amusing to the Central Travancore ear.
In Madras State, (after Independence) to my ears, there were four distinct English accents:
- a “pariah” (English) accent, peppered with profanities,
- a Railway Colony accent (a somewhat singsong, expressive accent), and…
- … an educated accent [like our Ketti school teachers… “Her English is too good he said, which clearly indicates that she is foreign…” (MY FAIR LADY) … “She’s been taught to speak exactly, which English children aren’t.”] The perfect sentence construction and careful pronunciation “clearly indicate that she’s foreign…” So learning English at a good school is not the solution!
- An “Upper Class” educated Indian English accent with minimum or no trace of native language structure, intonation or direct translation resulting in incorrect idiomatic English.
(We see that learning to speak “perfect” Wren & Martin English will still not be good enough, because that isn’t how educated English men and women speak…)
Col. Douglas McKenzie our Headmaster in 1958 taught Geography and a course in what might today be called, “Creative English Writing”.
I remember writing an essay on “Wildlife Conservation” for which I actually used a dictionary to select ostentatious words which I thought would be impressive and set my essay apart.
Pop Mac (Col. McKenzie) hauled me over the coals in front of the whole class for using such pretentious and pompous language. “This is ‘Babu English’ and you don’t want to be identified as belonging to a “Writer” (Clerk) class because of your language! The purpose of language is COMMUNICATE, NOT TO IMPRESS …
Who spoke with an upper class Indian English accent? This accent reflected the self-confidence that comes from advanced education and regular use of the language… like that of an Oxford educated uncle of mine… or ascribed and indisputable status … like that of a Malayali, pipe-smoking ICS officer I met in Delhi in 1957.
During the Sixties and Seventies and even now, there was a notion of “Fraud [English] Accents”. It is likely that an attempted reproduction of an American accent with a twang and comical sentence construction was the most popular… I have rarely heard anyone trying to copy a British accent…
My university years helped me to improve my written English and acquire a fairly handy vocabulary.
I still speak an Indian accented English, but foreign acquaintances I meet do ask where I studied English.
I decided that in view of the Constitutional definition of “Anglo Indian” I should define a new category called, “Indo-Anglian”.
The term Anglo Indian is defined as per the article 366 (2) of the Indian constitution; “a person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is a native of India.”
I rejoice today, having access to AI tools to constantly improve my written English. I try my best to keep my spoken English simple and descriptive.
Image from the internet
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