The Anglicized Tamilian

To us south indians, anyone coming from north of andhra pradesh is a North Indian, and any language he speaks is Hindi. And to the 'north indians', anyone south of bombay is a south indian and any language he speaks is Tamil!! Yet, ask the Malayalee, and he will say how much he feels out of place when people speak Tamil around him, and vice versa.

India has more than a hundred languages including dialects. We still survive because there is at least one in a thousand who can speak hindi. Hey, thats a large number of people considering the population of India. Most of our political transactions are done in hindi. But even there, the hindi spoken by various people can take different forms. Just try to compare Lallu and Vajpayee! Or Venkaiyaa Naidu and Advani, or even Sonia & Manmohan. In fact one of our prime ministers once said "Bhaiyon aur Bhaiyon" in the Independence Day address ... to think how much of a male chauvinist he should have been!

When I listen to something, and ask a chinese friend of yours... " is this chinese? ", he will never agree to it. He will always say " Zis is not chinesu. Zis izu one ofu dialecthu from ____ part of China. Have you heardu of ze guanxouzi province??" And the only reply that I have is "O yes, is it the one with the big river flowing through it?" because to me, all chinese names sound the same! In fact for us Indians, its always a nightmare trying to remember the names of our colleagues. You change one syllable in his name and your talking about food! You change 2 and you either love his wife or you're swearing at your boss real bad!!

These are times when I thank God for English. But then English also has a million dialects. No, Im not referring to Shakespearean English or Biblical English. I am referring to the following, which are non-exaggerated adaptations from talks by representatives of two of the largest populations in the world:
" Plees welcome to thi Hyderabad, the Bill Clinton, United States of Amerika Precident. Dear Sir, I would like to introduce to you, the Ramalinga Raju and also the Narayanamoorthy. As the Chief Minister Andhra Pardes, I am the Chandrababu Naidu would like to present .... "
" When you substitoottu the yikkuzakkutu (exact) valoo ofu 'aenn' (n) into the ikuashing (equation) you will do the differenshiashing and the intigrashing to obtain the sulooshing (solution)... "

But the interesting fact is that English still rules! Despite those people who say "fly lice" for 'fried rice', and those who say the same thing whether they want to say 'fox' or 'focus'; despite those who use an article before adjectives and verbs and some who dont use verbs at all; and despite those people who need English subtitles on BBC & CNN when they are actually talking in English, the world still works in English!!

So the next time someone asks you "Is this English?" say "NO. Thats just a dialect!!"

The Anglicized Tamilian