Let's Talk About

… the English language. Specifically, how it has suffered throughout this dire and needless election campaign.

Do not be surprised if on Friday 9^th June a battered, bruised and heavily swollen amorphous figure turns up at the Royal Courts of Justice, on the Strand, central London to sue all the major political parties, except for the Greens. That figure, my dear readers and fellow bloggers, will be the English language.

Where to start? Enough has been said! Actually, that is a good place to begin, “enough”. Was it used as an adjective a few days ago, describing adequacy and sufficiency, or as an adverb, meaning “fully” or “quite”? Or perhaps it was deployed as an interjection? Enough is enough!

But the truth is that enough has been enough for quite a long time. What the speaker forgot to add was that when it comes to cutting police numbers to the bare minimum, thus, putting the UK population at risk of terrorist attacks, enough is enough. That on the subject of stripping the education budget to the bones, leaving headteachers holding a begging bowl instead of a book, enough is enough. That when it comes to privatising our free healthcare, one of this nation’s proudest achievements and leaving it under-resourced with overworked staff, enough is enough. There, I sussed it for ya.

If you happen to be a businessperson and you are desperate to close a deal, especially one where you have not got the upper hand at all and you are at the mercy of the other party, how can a “no deal” be better than “a bad deal”? Especially, if your livelihood and that of your tribe depend on it. English language, I beseech thee, pray, tell me, is the world going mad or is a transaction that can always be improved in the future  not a better option than one where there is no transaction at all and no bargaining possibility?

Sometimes the best answer is honesty. Of course, I am not saying that every time an interviewer asks a question, the interviewee should answer: “Honesty”. What I mean is that if you don’t know the answer, please, just say “I don’t know”. You see? That’s easy. Or, “I don’t know the answer to that question now. I do have the figures you asked me about but I am going to have to check them and come back to you.” Fluffing your lines, being seen checking your iPad and mobile, doesn’t cut it. And the worst thing? That amorphous figure on the corner. It has just been decked once again.

I am aware that in the world of fake news we all suffer, including language. I am just hoping that the English language can mount a challenge, a counter-attack against those who have mistreated it so much recently. Perhaps we could help. After all, enough is enough.

© 2017

Next Post: “Thoughts in Progress”, to be published on Saturday 10^th June at 6pm (GMT)

Living in a Multilingual World (The One About the Dying Languages)

I have just become acquainted with the music of Tanya Tagac, a Canadian singer with firm roots in Inuit culture. Her melodies – if they can be called that by western standards – are a blend of feral intensity and heavenly lyricism. But on the whole her songs lack words. They are made of sounds, very often of  a guttural nature. Yet, I can’t stop watching this performance of hers here and this clip from her latest album here.

Tanya reminded me of an article I read recently on the last known speakers of some of the world’s oldest languages. I am afraid to say that I did not recognise the names Wukchumni, Kusunda and Amurdag. It probably says more about me than about the languages themselves. Nevertheless, I did wonder what those last speakers must have felt like. Seeing their lexicon disappearing in a multilingual horizon, being swallowed up by the likes of English, Mandarin and… why not? Spanish.

There is a certain romanticism of mythical proportions in being the last bastion of a cultural phenomenon, like language in this case. Especially ancient ones in which words are much more than carriers of meaning. As explained in the article, some languages echo the voice of the plants, animals and objects around us, from trees to stars. That is philological magic.

Yet, linguists reckon that by the end of the 21^st century fifty percent of the world’s languages will either disappear or remain only on hard drives and online archives. We are talking vanishing here, not assimilation, not development, not evolution. A language, one day, will come across a cul-de-sac. And will die. End of the story.

It is not a surprise that many of these endangered “linguistic species” are to be found in places like Papua New Guinea and Nepal. Remote places where there is still a strong connection to the elements, to the natural world and to the spirit. Personally, I believe that by losing these languages we are also losing a vital link to a part of humankind whose cultural worth is on a different level completely. Neither higher nor lower, just different.

I know that there will be some who will say that this is all part of human evolution. Languages appear as a need to communicate with one another and with the passing of time, some become predominant and others are obliterated. My only response would be that a language covers more than a body of words and systems for them to be used. A language means more than a distinct manner of conveying ideas. Sometimes, a language is the only way through which  inanimate objects come to life or a singer, like Tanya, expresses her emotions.

© 2015

Next Post: “Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On”, to be published on Saturday 23^rd May at 6pm (GMT)

Living in a Multilingual World (The One About "Correct" English)

It don’t ma’er coz it ain’t about being rich or poor, innit?

I had to resist the temptation to correct the speaker on the spot. Also, if I did, which I did in the end, by the way, where would I start? Would it be the “it don’t” howler? Or the typical London-accented “ma’er”? “Coz”, perhaps? Or, “innit”, again, a Cockney-influenced linguistic prop commonly used by the villagers of Londontown? In the end I just corrected the “it don’t” and the “innit”. Couldn’t be arsed to deal with the rest.

And that’s English for you, my dears.

Where do the boundaries of what is considered “good” English start? Where do they end? This was the subject of a recent, fascinating debate in the pages of Prospect magazine between Simon Heffer, author of Strictly English: The Correct Way toWrite and Oliver Kamm, who recently penned Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage.

Enough to give a pedant a heart attack

I could write another hundred posts like this, a thousand articles, a million words and the message will always be the same: as a non-native speaker, I am truly mesmerised by the seriousness with which the English language is taken. I was never surprised about finding linguistic pedants in my own native Spanish. Nor was I to find them in French, too, when I began to study the language. Both Spanish and French have academies that act as the guardians of the language. Compared to both, English was a breath of fresh air.

How wrong I was. From slamming miscreants who violate the rule that dictates that pronouns change their case when they follow prepositions to indulging in the peccadillo of fused participles, the English language (or at least its defenders) can sometimes come across as modern inquisitors.

Heffer makes a good point about correct English being the standard from which most dialects are derived. It is true that if you do not have a word like “father”, it is unlikely you will come up with its patois equivalent “fadda”. On the other hand, Oliver’s riposte that the problem is not English grammar but the constant, obsessive linguistic nit-picking, is the type of argument with which I totally agree.

Where I think both columnists fail miserably is in not moving their debate beyond the narrow confines of language. Not everyone who uses slang, or falls into the trap of the grocer’s apostrophe is an illiterate person. Social, historical, economic and even political elements come into play in daily parlance. If you were born in one of Britain’s former colonies, your patois might be a way to defy the old, imperial status quo. If you feel that society is out to get you, language becomes a barrier with which to defend yourself. The wall you build around you or the trench you dig to duck in is made of words that only you and a select group of people will be able to understand. In that case pedants will become ammunition for your cause.

To be sure, there are various shades of grey in this discussion and I find myself siding slightly with Mr Kamm rather than with The Heffza. Parents, teachers and society in general must act together to teach our younger generation the context in which they can use a particular phrase and when it is better to default to Standard English. Replacing “they’re” with “their”, “would have” with “would of” and “you’re” with “your” is grammatically incorrect. Same with “don’t” in the third person singular. We live in a world where the job market has shrunk considerably in the last seven years. It would be irresponsible and plainly idiotic for a young person to deny themselves the opportunity to break into that market just because they can’t be bothered to switch to Standard English. At the same time there is a time and place for “ma’er” (“matter”, but with a London accent) and “innit”. In my opinion, these are not mistakes but identity markers.

Knowing when to use one and not the other is one of the most valuable lessons I have learnt in my life. Not just in English but also in Spanish. We, Cubans, have a reputation in the Hispanic world for being hard to understand, given our proclivity for chopping off the end of words (especially those ending in “s” and “r”) and leaving sentences unfinished. Taking into consideration that this contravenes the rules laid down by the “holier-than-thou” Royal Spanish Academy, I should be on Oliver’s side, wearing my linguistic rebelliousness on my sleeve. Yet, I am also very practical. Nail that job first, son, and then go back to your natural, linguistic, niche, aw'ight mate?

© 2015

Next Post: “Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On", to be published on Saturday 7^th March at 6pm (GMT)

Living in a Multilingual World (The One About MLE)

Michael Rosen is an acclaimed British author who has written countless books for children and adults. Whilst not familiar with the latter that much, I am well acquainted with the former. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Sonsense Nogs and Tea in the Sugar Bowl, Potato in My Shoe are some of the titles I have read over the years. Michael’s imagination knows no limits.

That is why I was really looking forward to reading his contribution to Radio 2 and the New Statesman’s What Makes Us Human series. The name might ring some bells to some of you as, back in the summer when I was away from my blog, I uploaded a couple of articles from the series. Mr Rosen did not disappoint me. His essay was on history and what he called the “paradox” of it. Like his monthly “letters” to Michael Gove, our education secretary, his column was thought-provoking as well.

Reading Rosen’s wonderfully crafted write-up led me also down a path I had not considered before. On musing over what history represents for humans (I’m the bloke scurrying about trying to find out stuff to do with my great-grandparents or great-uncles and aunts. More history. Or I’m the bloke wondering why British people say “I’ve got” and Americans say “I’ve gotten”) Michael reminded me of the role language has played in the making of our history. As part of our human culture, regardless of nationality, gender, class or race, language is a key element of our identity. No two human beings speak the same way, have the same inflection or even pronounce words the same way. The current rising-intonation-at-the-end-of-affirmative-sentences epidemic sweeping the UK teenage population might mortify some, but, believe you me, these adolescents still sound British, as opposed to Australian.

Recently I have been hearing more and more people talking about the correct way we ought to speak English. Or rather, about the incorrect ways some people speak it. More specifically, there are self-appointed guardians of the English language who are terrified of a new phenomenon: the linguistic melting pot. We all know about the melting pot. New York is one, so is London and Paris does not lag behind. It is the confluence of different nationalities and races in one place. It is what makes an ordinary, run-of-the-mill city a metropolis all of a sudden. Language is a logical part of this process. So far, though, linguistic contributions had remained in the periphery with the host nation being able to fend off (unintentionally) most advances. Think of the RP accent that dominated the BBC for so many years. But the landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade or so. Regional intonations are frequently heard now on both radio and television. What could have been thought of niche accents years ago, are taking on a more prominent role nowadays, if not on mainstream media, at least amongst the youth. It is this last group that is calling the shots. They are changing the rhythm with which English is spoken, stressing syllables that are normally unstressed.

Without wanting to come across as a fence-sitter, I understand both camps. Those who criticise the expansion of what’s come to be known as Multicultural London English (although it’s not a phenomenon that only takes place in the British capital) might be striving for a linguistic structure that is easily accessible to all and perfectly understandable. I can sympathise with that feeling. As a non-native speaker, I find my language resources wanting when faced with a regional dialect or a slang-ridden sentence. Even those born and bred in English-speaking countries sometimes struggle with certain speech patterns. The desire for a linguistic level playing field is, thus, justified. Besides, with a job market getting narrower by the day, people need to show as many skills as possible. In order to do this, they have to be able to be fluent, confident speakers. Someone who ends her/his sentences with “innit?” is not going to get very far, no matter how much we protest and say that experience and the ability to perform the role efficiently is what counts.

However, that would be almost like denying the evolution of language. To me that would be as if the creationist movement suddenly took control of the way we spoke and built its own Royal Academy of the English Language. God made us this way and this is the way we ought to speak forever and ever. Again, I turn to Michael Rosen for a beautiful reflection on history: People all around us sing songs, tell stories of what’s happened to them, talk about their parents and grandparents, where they used to live. We remember some of this, and somehow it all becomes us. Becomes us. That is what happens to language, too. It becomes us. We become it. When we sing “Old pirates, yes, they rob I; Sold I to the merchant ships”, we forget about the objective case of “I” and lose ourselves in the message of redemption the song conveys. I say “ourselves”, I can’t vouch for you, but I do. When I talk to older people in my barrio who have lived in it for so long they can’t remember any longer, they tell me tales of exodus, of Cockneys migrating to Essex and Poles, Somalis and Turks replacing them. Whether the self-appointed guardians of the English language like it or not, this influx has an impact. On our lifestyle, our habits, our culture and, of course, it has a deep impact on our language. I have no other option but to (willingly) embrace it. Will you, too?

© 2014

Next Post; “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 2^nd March at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Multilingual World (The One ABout Twitter and the Spanish Language)

Going through my Twitter feed the other day, it struck me how strange my mother tongue, Spanish, has become. There were words and phrases in my co-Twitterers’ pages that I could not recognise. Sometimes, it was only after the third or fourth attempt that I was able to decipher what had been written.

Because English is so dynamic, fluid and adaptable I no longer bat an eyelid when I see a LOL or ROTF. I expect that. After all, social networking sites’ roots are mainly Anglophone. But that such an austere language like Spanish dares to use a verb like “Twitear” (literally, “to tweet), is taking the biscuit.

Yo twiteo, nosotros twiteamos...

And that’s where the challenges lie. You could say that the Anglicisation of Spanish was foreseeable. An irony, really, as in the real world Spanish is overtaking English in the US and could be the official language of the largest English-speaking country on Earth in a generation from now. But online, English still holds the triumphant card. In our cyber-world we speak Spanglish. The second challenge is that social media’s spontaneity invites grammatical sloppiness and typos. Lots of them, in fact.

Because of the Spanish language’s structure – long, three or four-line paragraphs can easily be made up of one single sentence with many subordinate ones – Twitter would be the last place where you would find fluent and articulate Spanish speakers. Which logically poses a hurdle to us. And where there is a hurdle, there exists the desire to overcome it. That’s how we come up with aberrations like “ke” (“que”, “what” or “that”).

Is there a way back from this situation? There has certainly been a backlash. Unfortunately it has been led by academics and language specialists for whom even my Cuban accent would be an anomaly. That, to me, is taking it too far. I would dare to ask Twitter to increase its word limit, just for the sake of Hispanics. But having read recently that he media giant is planning to float in the New York Stock Exchange in November, I thought that maybe Jack Dorsey would be too occupied to answer my phone calls. Or my tweets.

The linguistic fate of the Spanish language on most social media, especially Twitter, is one of those topics that becomes like the annoying fly that drives you mad at dinnertime. Very rarely you will be able to swat it and when you least expect it, it will alight on your food. “Twiteando” to the whole world.

© 2013

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 27^th October at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Multilingual World (The One About Words and Their Meanings)

The word “radical” has an interesting history. It’s a term that, in the political sense, is the equivalent of “reform” or “reformist”. Hence when you say “radical reforms”, you’re indulging in a bit of pleonasm. However, whether you’re being redundant or not, “radical” is one of those words we need nowadays, especially to separate the wheat from the chaff at Westminster. Michael Gove’s educational reforms are not radical, whether they are a pleonasm or not, they’re stupid.

The reason why I have been musing over the term “radical” is that it’s one of those words whose meaning used to evoke images of someone advocating deep economic, political and social transformation. Very rarely did it refer to extremists, even if some radicals did make use of non-conventional, unorthodox methods to achieve their aims. I don’t mean to sound conservative (small “c”) or precious about language – English or Spanish, or both. Languages change, that’s what they do. They evolve over time. But sometimes I am puzzled as to how some terms lose some of their meaning.

Take the word “gay”, for instance. No longer does this word mean “having or showing a merry, lively mood”. No, it either means “homosexual”, or – and this is the coup de grâce – “lame, rubbish”. It was former Radio 1 DJ and misogynist-in-chief at the BBC, Chris Moyles, who made use of the latter meaning more often. Why? How do you go from being cheerful to being stupid? At the moment I am about to finish Jerusalem, a wonderful, doorstopper of a book about the history and culture of that beautiful city. One I would like to visit someday. The text is full of quotes and references to times and people gone by. Some of the passages talk about “gay this” and “gay that”, always conveying a sense of joy and happiness. It’s hard to read these sentences without feeling annoyed at the glib use of the word “gay” nowadays.

Of course, sometimes linguistic developments do have a deep social effect. In Cuba the equivalent of the word “millionaire” – “millonario” - was given a revamp after the triumph of the Revolution. It no longer meant a person who had millions stashed away in the bank, but someone who went the extra mile on the sugar cane field and whose labour resulted in "millions" of tonnes of Cuba's former main economic staple. The impact this change had on our collective psyche was that in a very short time we began to see farmers and other country folk in a different light and as a consequence accorded them more respect.

Back to the word “radical” and one of the ways it has been used recently is as an adjective to describe the actions of the two men who killed Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London a fortnight ago. Whilst I agree with the noun to which the word “radical” has been annexed, “fundamentalist”, I think it’s misleading to think that these two murderers had social, economic and political reforms in mind. To me a radical person is s/he who seeks a thorough reorganisation of society, the wo/man who wants to eliminate privilege and inequality. I am all for linguistic evolution and forward-thinking when it comes to languages. Sometimes, though, it is better to call a spade a spade. What those two men did in the streets of London was not radical. It was savage, cruel and inhuman.

© 2013

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 9^th June at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Multilingual World (The One About Formality and Informality)

One of my favourite poems by the late Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti is Sery Estar. Although heavily political the piece also has a nice combination of humour and didacticism. The latter is illustrated by the author’s poetic explanation of the difference between the verbs ser and estar (hence the title) in Spanish to an imaginary US marine. This is always confusing for people learning Spanish. In English, there’s only to be. Or not, as Shakespeare put it. In French, there’s être and in German there’s sein. But in Spanish we have two verbs, one of which denotes identity (ser) and another one that infers condition (estar). Confusing, uh? You bet.

Yet, Anglo speakers can occasionally indulge in the pleasure of hanging a sign outside their houses that reads “Schadenfreude” (or epicaricacy, in English) and watch us, speakers of other languages, struggling to come to terms with modern linguistic currents. For instance, when to be formal and when to be informal.

Spanish has a common trait with French and German, the other two languages I speak (although not as fluently as I used to). They all have formal ways of addressing someone according to age or social status. For instance, if I were in Spain or any other country from the Diaspora, it would never occur to me to use the “tú” with a new acquaintance unless he or she was my age or younger. Anyone over fifty would be given the “usted” treatment straight away. Same with French and “vous” and the German “Sie”. Besides, in the case of German, one of the reasons why I usually stay with the formal is that it makes it easier for me to conjugate verbs. They usually keep the infinitive form – with the exception of “sein”, methinks. Even when my interlocutor assures me that "Wir sagen doch du, ja?", I still sometimes use the "Sie". Which is just as rude as "Du-ing" someone without his or her consent.

I can hear Anglophones laughing their heads off now. But we only have “you” for both singular and plural, they’re probably shouting out. And they’re right. What makes matters more confusing is that nowadays the distinction between “tú/usted”, “tu/vous” and “du/Sie” is fading away rapidly. Part of it is technology. There are five letters in “usted” and 140 characters to contend with in Twitter. Guess which of the two addresses is handier? Well done for figuring that one out. Another reason for this linguistic shift might be the drive to turn less dynamic languages (Spanish and French come to mind) into lexica more attuned to the times we’re living, like English has done for the past few decades. Readers of this blog know that I’ve neither time nor patience, for the Real Academia Española, the body tasked with looking after the correct use of our grammar and syntax. The overhaul of the “tú/usted” division might be a way of reacting against centuries-old, traditional dogma which made even relatives observe formality when addressing each other. In fact, I know that in some countries in South America (Ecuador and Peru, for instance) children still address their parents as “usted”.

There is a third reason why the confusion about when “se tutoyer” and when “se vouvoyer”, or when to “du” or “Sie” someone, has come to the surface in recent years. There are countries, mainly in Europe, that are still resistant to the Americanisation of their culture. They see US influence as detrimental to their heritage. I’ve no truck with this attitude, but it was interesting to see a few years ago the short shrift the British ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair was given when he was presumably addressed as “Yo, Blair!” by ex-White House dweller, George W. Bush. Never mind the lack of a formal second person singular in English, this chumminess was a step too far. Especially on the back of the ill-fated invasion of Iraq a few years before and the too-close-for-comfort relationship between Downing Street and Washington during that period. In these circumstances, maybe keeping our “tú/usted”, “tu/vous” and “du/Sie” dichotomy is a sign of showing respect to people we meet for the first time. It also creates a space between individuals to get to know each other progressively. In the same way I wouldn’t dream of calling my former line-manager (a headteacher) “mate” in public, I wouldn’t “du” anyone just because it’s cool to do so. Surely a question for the marine boy of Benedetti’s poem to ask the Uruguayan master. After all, the poet uses “tú” al the way through.

© 2013

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: “Coffee, Music and Reflections”, to be published on Sunday 24^th February at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World

It baffles me somewhat that I have left this section unattended for so long. I love writing about the wonderful world of languages. After all that’s what I majored in at university. And “Living in a Bilingual World” has always had an appreciative and receptive audience on this blog. In fact, my regular linguistic outing was included in a book a couple of years ago, “Multilinguals are…?” by educator and scholar Maddalena Cruz-Ferreira. It was a recent essay in Prospect magazine that made me bring Living in a Bilingual World back. Under the title Let them learn English, the article focused on the division that exists in the teaching of the English language in India and how the poorest are, as usual, the ones faring worse.

That the language of Shakespeare, Alice Munro and James Baldwin remains the lingua franca worldwide should come as no surprise to anyone. I’ve written here before about English natural ability to adapt to the modern world. Its malleability means that anyone can learn the language; even if its phonetic and spelling systems remain a mystery (there are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet to represent its forty-four phonemes!). And I’m talking from the point of view of someone who taught the language for a number of years as both as an undergraduate student and teacher.

 

This resilience and flexibility benefit people in countries like India where, according to Zareer Massani, the author of the Prospect piece, there’s no truly national language. He states that “Hindi, the central government’s official language, is an artificial, 20^th century construct created by purging Hindustani, the colloquial language of the north, of most of its Islam-derived Persian and Arabic words. Now, 65 years after independence, Hindi is still a little spoken officialese one grapples with government forms.”

If Zareer is right and this is the linguistic panorama in India, it then makes sense to default to a language with which the rest of the world is at least acquainted. But of course, there is the small problem of the British Empire. India was a prized possession of it. And not everyone agrees that the imperial legacy was benign and beneficial. In fact opinions have always been divided on the matter. This is the reason why many in the Asian nation are opposed to English becoming the de facto language. Plus, English apparently carries with it a whiff of privilege and elitism in the subcontinent. It’s still mainly used by those occupying the upper echelons of education, media and the judiciary. By contrast outside this mini-world, there’s a whole Babel of dialects nationwide that merit as much attention as or maybe more attention than the language of the former conquistadores.

It’s a dilemma with which I can sympathise from a personal perspective, even if it is to a lesser degree. When I moved to the UK my accent was still heavily American, with a North-eastern lilt. This was the consequence of having had three or four postgraduate teachers hailing from or living in Boston and New York. Over here in the UK, people were at a loss as to why a Cuban would choose to speak like an American when we were supposed to be at loggerheads with them.

The answer is that first of all, it’s our two governments that have locked horns for more than five decades. When it comes to common, ordinary folk from both the US and Cuba, we leave our political differences aside and get on pretty well most of the time. And the second element is that most schools, further and higher education institutions in Cuba teach American English as opposed to the British standard. The latter is seen as distant, not just geographically, but also practically. But what is non-practical for a Cuban can become very useful to an Indian. So, when our compadres and comadres from the subcontinent use (chiefly British) English as a way out of poverty and deprivation, they’re being neither anti-nationalist nor pro-empire, but resourceful. In order to explain this approach, Massani quotes Mumbai-based businessman and journalist Jerry Rao: “Even if you flunk your schools finals, if you can speak decent English, today you can get a nice job. But even if you have a master’s degree and your English is poor, you’re likely to end up in a labour market where salaries are significantly lower.”

I witnessed a similar situation in Cuba in the early to mid-90s when many professionals, including doctors and teachers, defected to the tourism sector. Their motivation? The green Yankee dollar. Whilst their hard-earned salaries in Cuban pesos were getting more and more devalued, those working at hotels and tourist resorts were minting it. And that was just from tips. There was a problem, however. Many of these highly trained professionals had been educated either in the old socialist bloc or in Cuba but with socialist ideals. The language they’d learnt, used and were used to, was Russian. Russian. In a globalised world trading in English. Yes, you can imagine the rest. Scrapheap doesn’t even begin to cover it.

That’s how in my first paid job as a teacher I faced a classroom full of people coming from a wide variety of professional backgrounds. There were mechanics, lawyers, journalists, ballet dancers (in fact, Lorna Feijóo, prima ballerina at the National Ballet of Cuba, was one of my students). You name it; they were there, trying to do the same thing their Indian counterparts are doing now: getting at least one foot on the first rung of the social and economic ladder.

The irony is that despite the strong presence the Brits had on Indian soil, the influence the empire had on Indian life and the ubiquity and usefulness of the English language in the world, Gandhi’s sons and daughters are headed in the wrong direction. It is said that in ten or fifteen years’ time Hispanics will be the largest minority ethnic group in the US, replacing African-American in the process. And in probably ten more years after that, Spanish will replace English as the official language of the States. And where the US goes, the UK oftentimes follows. Spanish is, then, the way to go, my lovely Indian chums. And here’s the first word for you to learn: ¡Bienvenidos!

2012

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 9^th December at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About the Queen's English)

Language is a funny thing. Just imagine, we're 7 billion souls in the world today and if I was to write this post in Spanish, more than three quarters of my regular readers wouldn't understand it. Similarly, if some of you opted to communicate in vernacular Scottish or Punjabi slang, I would be floored. It just goes to show what a diverse bunch we, humans, are.

That's why we've always tended to simplify words, phrases and sentences. Create linguistic shortcuts, if you like. Looking for a common denominator, a template to which we can default in order to communicate better with each other. Languages don't just exist as tools to get our message across, but also as canvasses on which we experiment and give free rein to our imagination. The first time I heard a conversation between a London-born Asian guy (of Indian ancestry) and a Jamaican patois-speaking black man. I was clueless about what they were saying but spellbound by the musicality of their lexicon. Later on I found out that the Asian guy had adopted rhythmic linguistic patterns from his interlocutor's Jamaican lilt, whilst his counterpart had done a similar thing but in an Asian style.

All this probably explains why, faced with an ever-expanding globalised world, groups like the Queen's English Society are destined to fail. In the era of textspeak and 140-character-long speeches, not a lot of people care about the difference between "refute" and "rebut".

I pity the QES, because I'm also a stickler for good grammar and syntax. I don't mind neologisms and modern-day slang, as long as the speaker knows how to use proper language. "Proper" in this context shouldn't be confused with the snobbish attitude that some people display towards those they think inferior just because they use different words or phrases, or have a different accent. I mean it in the sense of having the capacity to communicate in a way that most people will understand you. I welcome English's all-inclusive approach to importing words and phrases from other languages. But I also think that we're letting the next generation down when we don't tell them that they shouldn't say "Peter is more intelligent then Paul". That's what I call bad English, or bad language.

However, I think that the Queen's English Society shot itself in the foot when they came up with their name, even if it was forty years ago. I mean, Queen's English? Really? At a time when on BBC Breakfast News, Middlesbrough-born, business reporter Stephanie McGovern's melodic northern accent is a welcome wake-up call for this blogger at ten to seven every morning? And she even mixes it with Irish dancing? Really, Queen's English? Forty years ago they should have seen that the game was up when the 60s introduced us to swinging London.

Language exists in a constant state of motion, changing and moving forward like the society around which it develops. Most languages carry with them subtleties and nuances that render them elegant, regardless of whether this amounts to no more than the word "blatant" uttered by am Asian young man to emphasise an idea. To pick on certain dialects or forms of speech, like the Queen's English Society used to do, smacks of snobbery.

Moreover, what I've found as a non-native speaker is that English is by its very nature subversive and so are its users. I don't believe that in a country like the UK, someone would come up with a body like the Academia Real de la Lengua Española to act as a judge and adjudicate on all matters linguistic.

This dogmatic approach to language displayed by the QES has also infitrated other sections of society. If not, look at the recent outcry by the Church of England about government plans to change the law and enable gay couples to marry. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Armageddon had arrived. Just because the definition of marriage as the union of two persons of opposite gender is deeply embedded in the English language doesn't mean that in this time and age we have to follow the same linguistic rule to the letter. To me, the motive of the Anglican church is clear: they want to claim ownership of the legal definiton of human relationships. But with an ever dwindling membership, can the Church really afford to be so blind? Even followers of its faith have expressed support for the changes. We already have civil partnerships, why not go the extra mile and grant gay unions the right to marry, too?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we're a diverse bunch. And as it sadly happened to the Queen's English Society, those who fail to adapt to the demands of modern living, including the way we speak now, fall by the wayside. I'm not saying that the same fate awaits the Church of England, but as everyone knows God moves in mysterious ways.

©2012


Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 1st July at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About the Festival of New Words)

If I was to choose my favourite word of the year that's about to finish it would be neither a neologism nor a slang term, but a quaint, short beauty I came across whilst reading The Road: "bivouac". It means "a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire" and it encapsulates in its brief but complex spelling the tribulations that the two main characters in the book have to face on a regular basis.

However, having a "word of the year" is not an activity in which I normally indulge. I usually have a record or book that becomes my highlight of the previous twelve months, but very rarely does my attention centre on a word that stands out amongst the myriad vocables I come across every day whether they are just a sequence of sounds or considered as a unit of meaning. Sometimes, though, I put on the mantle of eccentricity when it comes to linguistics. Especially when it's about sticking two fingers up to the establishment.

In France they have a similar attitude. Since 2002 in the Gallic nation, a festival has been held in both Paris and Le Havre in the third week in November to choose a new word and sound. As reported in The Guardian recently the latest winner at the Festival XYZ was attachiant(e), a term whose literal translation could be something like captivating or attractive nuisance. Or Marmite in good old British English. You either love it or hate it. Speaking of the famous yeast extract which usually ends up spread on so many of our sandwiches ( I love it), it had something of a PR disaster recently when a lorry carrying more than 20 tonnes of the stuff got overturned on a busy motorway. Cue endless jokes about the driver "being yeast extracted from the wreckage" or people wondering if the accident had affected the "yeastbound carriageway". And that's the key to language and its uses sometimes: humour. Which is an element usually found wanting in the puritanical bodies tasked with looking over our languages, for instance, L'Académie Française and La Real Academia Española for French and Spanish respectively.

Unlike these rather austere meddlers, the organisers of the Festival XYZ, by their own admission, seek to highlight the contributions that keep French live and kicking. Whilst having a jolly good time. As they put it succinctly and clearly on their Facebook page, " ce festival d'hiver apporte sa contribution en musique et en textes à une langue vivante et sonnante... Le Français. En y associant un son nouveau, elle va plus loin encore dans le déchiffrement du mot Mot (mo), n.m. (lat. vulg. mottum, mot et grognement, du v. muttire, grogner, murmurer). Son articulé, composé d’une ou plusieurs syllabes réunies." You have to love the etymological component in their mission statement.

Some of the terms included in the newspaper's article made think of English equivalents. Thus, the new French word "aigriculteur", a farmer upset with the hand life's dealt him/her, could easily become "angryculturist" or "angrycultor". This would describe a farmer from a developing nation really vexed with the huge subsidies enjoyed by members of the European Union.

Likewise, the Gallic "bête seller", the type of novel that hasn't got much going for it from a literary and artistic point of view, but sells in its thousands (no names mentioned, but there's a certain author who writes political thrillers that comes to mind), could easily morph into "beast-seller". In Cuban Spanish we've come very close to a literal translation. When a movie or a book is really good, especially from a commercial point of view, we sometimes tend to say: "¡Qué monstruo de película/libro!"

We need more events like the Festival XYZ to remind ourselves that a language is a living body of words and it cannot be confined solely to a canon of syntactic and grammatical rules. I'm all for the correct use of our linguistic norms including syntax and grammar, however these standards do not operate in an abstract world but in a very practical one. Even if we sometimes, unfortunately, we have to deal with "phonards".

© 2011

Photo taken from the Festival XYZ Facebook page.

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflection and Music”, to be published on Sunday 11th December at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About Endangered Languages)

According to Genesis, the Tower of Babel was supposed to be human beings' way to "reach unto heaven". I think we're all acquainted with what happened in the end: God grew jealous and punished the puny transgressors by confounding their language. No one could understand the other person's speech anymore. And so, that's how New York came into being.

Sorry, did I confuse you, too? Well, just.

Recently I came across an article in The Economist magazine that dealt with one of my favourite topics and this column's raison d'être: languages. In this case the feature focused on the disappearance of a number of unusual tongues, which have found a home in the US metropolis. In order to address this situation a group of academic linguists got together to collect, record and codify grammar, pronunciation, syntax and in some cases traditional songs and stories from a dozen languages. The results are spellbinding: samples range from Mexico to Indonesia. And they're all under the same (metaphorical) roof.

Some people might scoff at the attempt to "rescue" these languages. After all, how many of them, in the history of humankind, have run their course and become extinguished? Surely there must be reasons for that. Disuse, complexity, geopolitics, to name a few. Furthermore, once we welcomed the arrival of a lingua franca, i.e., English, we helped, unintentionally, dig up the grave into which we condemned all these other "esoteric" languages.

But, I can't be the only person who greets news of a research into endangered languages with open arms. For one, the study gets the better of my inner linguistic Snoopy. For instance, in Mahongwe, a language from Gabon, the word manono, translates as “I like” when spoken in soft and flat tones, but “I don’t like” when the first syllable is a tad sharper. No information is given about what happens when you're down with a cold. Then, there's the cultural side of it where we get to learn about oral traditions that, in many cases, are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

I'm not surprised that it's New York where this research is taking place. Although it could have equally happened in London. After all, there's a lot more linguistic diversity in the British capital than in the US metropolis. But with its skycrapers attempting to "reach unto heaven", this modern Babel is the closest we'll get to its biblical counterpart. And you know what? By confounding those hubristic humans, maybe the Lord gave us the best gift of all: a cultural mix that has enriched our human experience.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 23rd October at 10am (GMT)

Image of Ibimeni (Garifuna traditional music from Guatemala), taken from Black Star Liners blog.

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About Body Language)

Maybe you belong to the two-fingered peace sign brigade à la Paul McCartney (as long as both forefinger and middle finger are facing out to your adoring audience). Or, perhaps, you're part of the raised-eyebrow Ancelotti's tribe (Chelsea's manager). Or, how about lifting up your left leg at the same time one of your political foes hoists his in the middle of a television debate? That would surely show your supporters your power for 'joined-up' thinking. Alas, it didn't save Gordon Brown's premiership, whose choreographic movement with Lib-Dems leader, Nick Clegg, was caught on camera. The latter still plumped for the Tories when it came to choosing a political dance partner.

But regardless of what your gestures or facial expressions say about your affiliations, one aspect is beyond doubt: like the rest of humankind, you speak 'body language'.

We're capable of learning as many languages as we want to, even if certain aspects of them might fall without our reach (grammar, syntax, pronunciation and so on), but there's a lingo we can always fall back on: the one spoken by our bodies.

Whenever we, humans, are not displaying our natural skills for rhetoric, we tend to replace words with movements. Sometimes we fold our arms in what could be inferred to be a defensive stance. Or we acknowledge the person talking to us with a half-smile. We even do that when said person is boring us to death.

We also use gestures to back up our speech. In this case our verbal arsenal is given a boost by the physical component. Cuba is a good example where this approach has been woven into a nation's identity. Even on radio we gesticulate wildly, and as someone who spent an awful long time promoting dance and art on that medium, I've got enough evidence. I remember a particular DJ who was banned from carrying anything resembling a mug or a glass into the studio. He'd caused many an accident with his body language.

Corporal expression is also a way to convey our inner world to others even when words fail us. I still remember when we came across Stanislavski's 'The Method' at my uni drama group. We all jumped at the chance of finding our inner truth and subjecting ourselves to a process of rigorous self-analysis and reflection. The results were mixed, at least for me. I recall our drama teacher inviting once a famous actor to one of our sessions. We did various exercises and at the end of the rehearsal the guest spoke to each of us, giving us feedback on our pluses and minuses. When my turn came, he asked me quite a lot of questions: Did you mean this when you were acting out this scene? Were you worried when you were carrying out this particular exercise? Was there something on your mind other than the speech you were given when engaging with this other actor? His conclusion was that, although I had natural thespian skills, my face was a kaleidoscope of expressions, many of which were unrelated to the task set by my tutor.

It was a valuable lesson on the importance of our body language. It also brought back some of my more memorable moments in movies; when the protagonist(s) does/do not utter one single word and yet their expressions say more than what you could convey with a thousand words: Glenn Close removing her make-up at the end of 'Dangerous Liaisons' (from 1:34 onwards), Al Pacino squaring up to Kevin Spacey in 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (between 0:47 and 0:59, then, of course, body language goes out of the window and Al goes all 'Carlitos Brigante' on Spacey) and Antoine Doinel in 'Les Quatre Cents Coups' (3:18 to 3:24).

With all this in mind, I have often wondered what response the late John Lennon would have given to his former The Beatles pal, Paul, when the latter suggested some years ago that their collaborations together be named McCartney/Lennon and not the other way around as we had come to know them. Again, body language would have been handy. A two-fingered peace sign would surely have been the reply from the writer of 'Power to the People'. But this time it wouldn't be hard to guess which way the forefinger and middle finger would have been facing.

© 2011

Next Post: ‘Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music’, to be posted on Sunday 30th January at 10am (GMT)

Greatest Hits - Track 11

Another column from my 'Living in a Bilingual World' series. Still on holidays and soaking up what is left of our brilliant summer.

- Papi, what's this word?

Son’s voice snapped me out of my reverie. His index finger was pointing at a word in italics bang in the middle of a long sentence. All the other words were in English, but this one in particular stood out amongst the others. The reason? It was in Spanish.

The dreaded 'c' word had arrived in Son’s world.

Living in a Bilingual World has very limited patience for pretentious newspapers columnists with lofty linguistic ambitions, but my eye has been caught recently by certain articles I have read both in print and on the internet where the ‘c’ word has been included gratuitously.

Of course, there is a chance you are already familiar with the ‘c’ word. If you speak Spanish, that is. And if you hail from Latin America as I do, you will find it as offensive as I do. I can’t even bring myself to write it so I will have to do the same they do sometimes in written publications; to place asterisks strategically; do not fret, though, you will recognise it immediately.

C stands for c******. Got it? Seven letters. Seven gratuitously offensive letters (Spaniards do not count as I know that they love cursing left, right and centre).

So, why? Why has it become a habit to band this four-letter word about (admittedly, it is actually seven letters, but let’s not get too picky about it, shall we?) as if it was Angelina Jolie’s latest adopted Third World orphan?

I think the reason stems from the desire to sound cool in another language. Given the shortcomings in the learning and teaching of foreign languages in the UK and to which I have referred before here in this space, there’s a zeal to prove that at least when it comes to swear words, British journalists are up to scratch. Timothy Garton Ash, one of my favourite columnists in The Guardian, has used it (sin asteriscos, mind). Catherine Bennett, from The Observer and another features writer I worship, can’t let go of it (or them, and no, no pun intended). Over at the holier-than-thou Daily Telegraph, Andrew Grimson reminds readers that even Liberal Democratic leaders must remember where they have theirs. In case they lose them, maybe. Even The Times is at it with them. And it is not only the Brits; their German counterparts are guilty of the same crime, too.

It is a sad situation when you have to explain to a ten-year-old (Son), that no, this is not a nice word, that a man’s private parts are usually asterisked in the British media (except in The Guardian and The Observer where they delight in using all kinds of expletives without covering them up) and that some words sound very strong to certain cultures.

And what about Son? Well, what about Son?

- How do you pronounce this word, then, papi?

- Well, as you know, the ‘j’ sounds like the English ‘h’. But I bet they don’t know that.

N.B.: For non-Spanish speakers, just in case it has not been obvious to you, either by the tone of the column or by the photo included in it, the 'c' word I alluded to in the above post is a swear word for 'testicles' in Spanish.

© 2008

Next Post: 'Greatest Hits - Track 12', to be published on Sunday 5th September at 10am (GMT)

Greatest Hits - Track 7

Whilst I am away on holidays I will be posting (or re-posting, as some people might prefer to call it) articles that first saw the light many moons ago. In blog years, that makes this column ancient since it first came out in December 2007. Part of my 'Living in a Bilingual World' series.

To swear or not to swear? Esa es la pregunta (That's the question)

And what a question! Especially for someone like me brought up in a family where cursing was frowned upon and my limited childhood vocabulary included the two notions 'palabras feas' (ugly words) and 'malas palabras' (swear words). At age five or six I experienced my late Nana's wrath when I dared say the word 'jodi'ó' as in 'la bicicleta se jodi'ó' (the bike broke down). I cannot remember whether it was a clip round the ear or a 'tapaboca' (a slap in my mouth) but I got smacked pretty hard.

So, with these thoughts in my mind I ventured into unknown waters recently when I explained to Son the meaning behind a particular track he'd been humming to lately. It was 'Ciudad de Pobres Corazones' by the Rosarino musician Fito Páez. Son was already familiar with the Argentinian's music as I play his hits regularly at home, but this particular track has an intoxicating melody and beat that make it stand out from the rest of the songs that appear in the album.

- Do you know what he says in the song? I asked him whilst I was driving.
- No, what is it?
- I think he's talking about Buenos Aires, and the times when the military was in power. He's feeling despondent and angry.
- Uhhh...
- And he's using a word that is actually a four-letter word in that context.
- What do you mean?
- Well, the word 'puta' is used to convey the level of disatisfaction he feels towards the incumbent government.
- What's the equivalent in English?
- The f-word.
- (Gasps).

Did I do right or wrong? My intention was not to become 'Papi Cool', but merely illustrate to him how some of the songs in Spanish he listens to contain 'bad words' (a caveat, though, the Latin pop, rock and salsa I play at home is heavily sanitised). However, Wife and I have yet to have that important 'talk' about the use of certain words, especially as Son is fast moving forward to adolescence. He was nonchalant about the whole 'p' word but I was left restless. Have I opened a can of worms? Have I brought upon myself Claudius curse 'When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions' by opening this Pandora's box? As a Cuban I admit that swearing still stuns me, especially when it is done gratuitously. Some Spanish-speaking cultures are more expletives-prone, not least, the Spanish culture. Many years ago, Juan Echanove, a popular Spanish actor, went on the now defunct live television show 'Contacto' with the then presenter Hilda Rabilero. This was a programme which thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people tuned into at 6pm every Saturday evening. Imagine people's reaction when Echanove innocently uttered the 'c' word (that's 'cojones' by the way and I apologise profusely to anyone who feels offended by the epithet, just writing it makes me squirm) and Hilda went silent. Ten seconds elapsed. And then Juan, realising his error, asked the now famous question: 'Oh, is it because I said 'c...'? Cue embarrassment, shame and Hilda's nervous smile. Other cultures in Latin America are more cautious about their cursing. In Cuba, words even like 'carajo' are scorned and the person uttering them admonished.

Yet, there is another side of me that would like to see Son, and Daughter, too, use these words constructively. I guess it is to do with pride and amor propio. Or just with the desire to see them using words that, although high in the cringe factor, are part of their own linguistic DNA.

And I hope they learn when, where and with whom to use them, too.

© 2007

Next Post: 'Greatest Hits - Track 8', to be published on Sunday 8th August at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About the Preposition 'En')

- Were you at the theatre last night?
- No, I was in the theatre.
- But I asked you to meet me at the theatre, not inside it.
- I'm sorry, darling, I didn't realise that you meant outside the theatre.
- Of course, you didn't sweetheart, you never notice anything...
- What do you mean...?
- That you're always oblivious to the world around you. I could have said I would meet you on the theatre and you wouldn't have dared to look up to see if I was lying on the roof.
- That's quite unfair, dear. Especially when...

Oh, and people still wonder why the divorce rate is going up worldwide. As long as we have this confusion over the use of a preposition that indicates inclusion, people will be often floored as to when to meet someone at the cinema or in the cinema. When to put food on the table or on the boot of the car. Unless you want to leave a trail of rice and peas all over the M5 on your way to Devon.

There are two eternal problems I've had with the English language for as long as I can remember. One is pronunciation. The fact that a word can change the manner in which you utter it just by modifying or adding one or more letters is still mystifying to me (for instance, famous and infamous). The other one is prepositions and specifically 'in'. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to change posts on (or is that 'in'?) this blog because I think I've used 'in' wrongly.

It all comes from the fact that in Spanish we only have one preposition to deal with the 'at the theatre', 'on the table' and ' in the car' scenarios. We just say 'en'. It follows then that when a Spanish speaker learns another language, like for instance German, he or she is never sure whether to use 'auf', 'bei' or 'in' and will wind up using the incorrect preposition. For example, if you are 'an dem Tisch/am Tisch' people will interact with you at a dinner party. Nevertheless, if you insist on being 'auf dem Tisch', people will leave you alone and your only company will be the house children. You'll be behaving like them, because you will be sitting on the table, instead of at the table, which is what 'am Tisch' translates as. I'm sure Franz Ferdinand's (the archduke, not the band) life would have been spared had the perpetrators been taught the correct use of the phrase 'beim Erzherzog zu sein'. That didn't mean to put a bullet between his eyes, Michael (sorry, that was a reference to the band). The fact that in the Teutonic lexicon one has the dativ and akkusativ cases makes things worse. So it's time to turn our backs away from the Germanic languages and head for the safety of romance langua...

Why are you laughing? Just because I was about to say that romance languages such as French, Portuguese and Italian were safer in terms of prepos... Why are you still scoffing at me? What's that you're saying? That... it's the same? No, it isn't. For instance, in French...

Actually, you're right. Spanish-speakers are not better off when they switch to one of our sister languages. Oh, dear, where's that coalition spirit? We need a bit of Cleggza-Camza factor now. If you were to use the Spanish 'en' in French all the time to signify inclusion you would be making gargantuan errors. Because, say, that you were in Switzerland, you would be speaking en français, sitting dans le théâtre and finding out what's au programme.

So, my dear readers and fellow bloggers, it's time to retire to the safety of my own language. How would that opening passage read in Spanish, then?

- ¿Tú estabas en el teatro ayer por la noche? Were you at the theatre last night?
- Sí, yo estaba en el teatro. Yes, I was in the theatre.
- ¿Pero dónde estabas? Yo estaba afuera del teatro. But where were you ? I was outside the theatre.
- Lo siento querida, no me di cuenta que querias decir afuera. I'm sorry, darling, I didn't realise that you meant outside the theatre.
- Por supuesto, corazón. Nunca te das cuenta de nada. Of course, you didn't sweetheart, you never notice anything...
- ¿Que tú quieres decir? What do you mean...?
- Que te pasan carretas y carretones y no te das cuenta. Yo podria haberte dicho que me iba a encontrar contigo encima del teatro y no hubieras ni siquiera mirado para arriba para ver si estaba en el techo. That you're always oblivious to the world around you. I could have said I would meet you on the theatre and you wouldn't have dared to look up to see if I was lying on the roof.
- Eso no es justo, sobre todo cuando... That's quite unfair, dear. Especially when...

You probably noticed it yourselves. Hispanic asssistance notwithstanding, that passage is still confusing and as far from being resolved as the England football team are from winning even a five-a-side Sunday league impromptu tournament. No, Spanish can do nothing for that couple. They don't need a linguist but a Relate counsellor.

© 2010

Next Post: 'Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music', to be published on Sunday 4th July at 10am (GMT)