Reminiscing about an ‘exam’, which included an oral interview with the hawkish US boss of a business process outsourcing firm and his bewildering second-in-command, I undertook at an American firm years ago gave rise to an interesting poser during a discussion with an NRI, recently.
When was the last time I properly understood a native or for that matter non-native speaker of English? Possibly never, I thought, even as I struggle to identify the many quirky variants of the language used within the country. American, British, South African, Kiwi or Aussie accent — I have been trying to place them all in context every time I get a chance to talk to people from these countries or while struggling hard to follow Hollywood movies on cable TV, but in vain.
What’s with native speakers of English and their accent? And why do they expect others to use the language the way they have been doing over several centuries, I wondered. Whatever, I thought during the talk with my NRI relative, we have our own distinctly mellifluous versions of English and I, for one, am excited to hear the language spoken the way people converse in local lingos across the country.
Sample this. “I have dumbed the file in folder,” an ex-colleague of mine from Kerala used to say in a sing-song twang in one of the companies I worked earlier. Now, what was that? Dumped, he emphasised, meaning, he had placed it. Oh, that. Luckily, he was not a staffer at the American company. He may have “bumbed” into the boss frequently leaving him flummoxed. “I am doing this bijinesu for the last 15 years,” an electronic repair shop owner told me during my sojourn in Hyderabad in the noughties.
He added, “Nowdaysu, I don’t get much bijines. Everyone has cellphonesu.” A Telugu version, if you like. Tamils seem to be masters at articulating in their native tongue while still conversing in English, maybe due to the Butler English hangover. “Saar, you have tonty rupees? Please give, I want for my tipin bill,” a middle-aged man at a restaurant almost importuned me once, adding, “I misplaced my vaalat. Itt has all my caish, ID card.” While on a trip to Delhi years ago, when the train was travelling through a particularly unsafe stretch in Madhya Pradesh, an elderly co-passenger from Kolkata declared, “Naxal-affected areas are turning into jones of piss due to government efforts.” Zones of peace, phew, I later found out. A famous politician from Bengal had also used the same phrase, someone whispered.
R Anantha Subramanian
Email: anand1910@gmail.com