Disclaimer: I’m no English professor and haven’t travelled to all the places that I’d be mentioning below.
Well ( Started in a way how something in Indian English begins – I mean , yes, I’ve heard so many Indian cricketers begin their post-ceremonial talks , may it be the captain, may it be the man-of-the-match winner, with the word ‘Well’. “Well, the pitch was a bit bouncy, but …” , “Well, we batted well, bowled well and fielded well and that’s how we won “ and such; but haven’t to this day heard any native English speaker , may that be Ricky Ponting , or Andrew Strauss or Stephen Fleming or even Greame Smith saying that. Probably it’s the word we use to lend ourselves some time while we prepare for the actual stuff.), this post all about just what I’ve deduced about the various dialects (mostly geographical) of English, based on either my personal experience or having ‘listened to’ , ‘read about’ or ‘indicated by’ means. Making it clear that this neither is a technical analysis nor a scientific breakdown of features of English dialects, I shall pick a sentence and divide it amongst (being British here) the English speaking world in pursuit of , well , just that – the differences.
And the sentence (line – if you preferred an American alternate) I’ve chosen is what you say to your close friend who is asked for some money by someone who’s not known for returning it:
Let’s begin from what I know moderately well, the Indian English. Although it was directly derived from British English, it’s mostly influenced by our vernacular languages. But let me clear it out to you , that all that is discussed here is how the general-public, the common man, the average guy talks and not someone of extreme linguistic quotient!! Of course, if you are considering someone like Harsha Bhogle or Shobha De or Siddharth Basu , it’s so very obvious that their English is impeccable, to an extent of putting the native English speakers to shame.
So ,… a common man mostly tries to speak in English by mentally translating the theme from his mother-tongue to English, although , the translation is so nippy and swift that it’s invisible, but whose effects are seen in the choice of his words. The words would probably be the literal translations of the words in his mother-tongue. So there would be redundancy, the words chosen would be very common ones and not the right ones, although, the sentence as a whole does win in sending out the gist it intended to.
So in the scenario mentioned above, in Indian English, he’d be saying:
If you give him some money, I’ll bet, he won’t return it back again.
Breaking down that, there’s an air of confidence in what he says –I’ll bet ; use of common day-to-day words , not the exact words to be used are used – give him ; redundancy - return, back ,again.
While in the words of an American, infect a common American, it would be:
Lend him some bucks and chances that he’ll return it are feeble.
There it comes – ‘lend him’ . Americans try to elongate what they say using fancy framing of sentences that would still look imposing and of course loyal to the grammar. And the colloquialisms are distinct, the use of the word ‘buck’ implies the speaker got to be an American. British hardly use it, they are happy with their ‘money’(I’ll come to it in a while).
And have you listened to Ricky Ponting?? Well don’t say no. After all, he has ended up on the winning side as a captain the most times, had a marathon winning streak in the world-cups and has been awarded the man-of-the-match umpteen times, you should have listened to him at least once, if at all you ever followed cricket. Australian English is damn very fast, intricate to make out/break down for a non-native speaker. It’s mostly non-rhotic (they won’t pronounce ‘r’ if not followed by a vowel) and is ‘precise’ , ‘to-the-point’ . So if Australians were to say that, it would just be:
Lend him money.. and forget.
No superfluous words, no emphasis on the beauty of the sentence, no beating around the bush. What he wanted to convey was what he told !! Not just Ponting, but I’ve seen interviews of Russel Crowe and Lara Bingle where I had to be so attentive in listening to them as a second of interruption would make me lose a bunch of words!
Coming to French English, let me tell you, their abuse of the English language is impressive. French people hardly speak English. They don’t know it infect. Even today, grandpas and grandmas insist their children should learn only French. For French, setted, hadded, telled all are fine. And a French guy speaking English would do it with as much pain as someone undergoing a dialysis. But the fact is, it’s not coherent to mock their English because they’ve never considered it as a requirement. They hate English, most of them, but know bits of it so they could interact with their American and Asian counterparts. So if a French guy would say it, it mostly looks thus:
Aeee give himmma monhey and .. prrrr… imagine .. it’s gone… forever always…
Yes, that ‘Aeee’ is the equivalent word of our ‘Well’, it should be there for them at the beginning of every sentence. But it has an implicit advantage over ‘well’ in being very flexible, I mean, ‘Aeee’ could just turn out being ‘Aeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’ depending on the speaker’s fluency of the English language. ‘prrr’ is another time-filler they use pretty often to imply almost any emotion – from anger to bliss to nostalgia !
Pakistani English is relatively new and at its best, it looks mostly like Indian’s worst. A sentence in Pakistani English sounds mostly like Indian English but with more redundant words, higher rate of raping the grammar and atrocious use of conjunctions. Like this one:
Give the money to him and he will give it back, will never happen.
I’d have loved to talk about Caribbean English but the only Caribbean whose English I’ve followed is Ian Bishop, so it won’t be generic if I deduce from an individual.
But from him, I could make out that it’s damn fast again, choppy , there’ll be merging of words and glottal stops are evident.
He’d have said:
Lend him money and you will not get it back.
Now the original most form of English: the British English. I’ve seen British tend to frame their sentences in a way it appears more generic, meaning, the framing of the sentences are not just to the demands of the situation. Moreover, they are unaware of it when they do so, it’s just how they are. I can make a couple of my London friends (native Londoners ) vouch for it. So, if they are to say it, it might look like:
Money you lent him will never return.
Clean, compact yet made sense.
Well, after all, all the crap written above are just my deductions and may be faulty too. :)
