By S. Nihal Singh

The English language has stood India in good stead before and after the success of the independence movement. Mahatma Gandhi wrote "My Experiments with Truth", which remains a classic. And India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, created a worldwide awareness of the country's struggle for independence through a series of books, including his landmark autobiography, and in his interactions with world leaders.

After India became free, the country was punching much above its weight, thanks partly to the eloquence of Indian leaders in English in articulating their own and other developing countries' urges for independence, development and dignity, the last in particular in apartheid South Africa.

More recently, the boom in India's information technology is at least partly due to Indians' fluency in English, in addition to their mathematically attuned mind. Yet the mushrooming of English language news television channels broadcasting 24 hours a day foreshadows the bleak prospect of India losing the language advantage within a generation.

The truth is that the young are more inclined to learn from television than the print medium, and the distortions and plain bad English that is the norm of major English-language channels today mean that the language they are learning and how it is pronounced and accented will render communication with the rest of the English-speaking world more and more difficult.

No one expects anchors and reporters of Indian news channels to speak in Oxbridge accents. What one has the right to expect in broadcast journalism is legibility, the ability to pronounce words intelligibly and correctly and to follow the basic rules of English grammar. And one does expect anchors to take some trouble to pronounce non-English words accurately.

Let me take some examples of India's major English-language television channels. Take grammar first. How often is the basic rule of "accused of" and "charged with" abused and reversed? And patients are hardly ever admitted "to" hospital, as they should be, instead of "at". Times without number running streamers at the bottom of the television screen spell "defence" and "licence" as "defense" and "license" in their American avatar, as is "practise" spelled with two "cs" as a verb. And our anchors delight in using split infinitives.

Hearing some of the anchors and reporters on English-language channels is often a revelation. One would expect of the major channels, particularly those with a prosperity bulge, to run in-house training courses to put their staff through the paces. Is it too much to expect of our broadcasters to pronounce and articulate words correctly? Must "development" be invariably mispronounced or "industry" and "interesting" wrongly accented? One had not imagined that "mechanism" would be so difficult to pronounce correctly.

Little attempt is made to discover how foreign names are pronounced, that the former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun who recently committed suicide, for instance, is pronounced Noh. The piece de resistance was a news anchor's conversion of the legendary French artist Gauguin into our very own Gagan! He must be turning in his grave. And no one has apparently informed our TV channels that the surname in Chinese names, unless anglicised, is the first word. The veteran Singapore politician is Mr Lee, not Mr Kuan-yew.

Sometimes, it is difficult to discover the criteria for selecting anchors and reporters. Voice, presentation and ability to communicate are essential ingredients in broadcast journalism. Yet some reporters are barely intelligible and some anchors have such a strong Hindi diction that it is difficult to find out if they are talking in Hindi or English. Here I am writing about English-language commercial television channels because Doordarshan often has other compulsions in appointing staff.

Indeed, the conclusion is inescapable that sloppiness is the rule, rather than the exception. There is no inclination to focus on quality and accuracy in running television channels. It is sloppiness, not "Indian English", that is responsible for the basic rules of grammar not being followed . Indianisms have a contribution to make in enriching the language of Shakespeare, but there can be no excuse for speaking bad English and shelter behind the slogan of "Indian English".

There are, of course, honourable exceptions as anchors who speak impeccable English and know the virtues of voice inflection, rather than relying on belligerence, in seeking information from those they interview. Yet these anchors, even those who have managerial and decision-making functions, treat the distortion and abuse of English with placidity. Our major English-language television channels do not seem to be starved of money. Either they do not bother about enforcing quality or they do not wish to devote resources to running classes for staff to train them in speaking English correctly.

Are we then, a generation hence, destined to see our language advantage frittered away in bad, unintelligible English? Will the breed of Indian writers in English -- God bless them -- remain the only Indians reminding us of a time when Indians spoke English well and fluently and were listened to around the world with admiration?

 

By Azera Rahman

Wearing a pair of black shades, Neemo literally grins through his profile picture. Looking for a mate and proudly claiming that it will be "love at first sight" for anyone seeing him, Neemo is not a biped like us but a cocker spaniel registered on a pet networking site.

An offshoot of Pawprints, a dog grooming centre, www.puppylove.in is a meeting point for dog lovers eager to share information and other tit-bits about their pets. But more importantly it provides them a platform to find a suitable mate for their adorable canines.

Geetika Nigam, the woman behind the initiative, said the birth of the website - with the tagline "it's a dog meet dog world" - happened after Pawprints came into being in 2006.

"In the grooming centre I came across a lot of dog owners distraught over finding a suitable mate for their pet. They usually went through two channels - either through their vets who themselves have a limited circle of people or newspaper ads which they didn't entirely rely on," Nigam told IANS.

"Therefore, I decided to create a common ground for all dog lovers across the country so that they can interact and choose a perfect mate for their adored pets," she said.

So while Neemo is a four-year-old male cocker spaniel from Gurgaon, "fit banda" Brownie, a golden retriever, prefers not to disclose his location. Mumbaikar Shelly, a labrador, is looking for a play mate. So if anyone is interested, they can add these canines' owners to their buddy list and get in touch.

Although the website started small in 2007, almost in a casual manner, the response to it was "overwhelming" in the first week itself.

"Most of my clientց in the grooming centre are from the expat community. But puppylove.com got some 1,000 users registered in the first week itself from amongst a wide range of people. That egged me to add more information on the site and make it more fun," said Nigam, the proud owner of five dogs.

A commerce student who had done a designing course at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) but wanted to be a vet, for Nigam this has been a dream come true.

"The website has more than 6,000 registered users. Each user makes the profile of his or her dog, giving its photograph, breed, date of birth, place of residence, health details and other information, just like you would in a networking site. Of course, they also add what their pet is looking for - a mate or a playing date," said Nigam.

Having set up one of the first home-based grooming services -- in which professionals come to your door step to give your dog an oil massage, shampoo and condition its hair, blow dry it, style and give a hair cut if need be, clean its ears and teeth -- Nigam said that she now has other big plans, again to do with "dog services".

"Pet owners need to be trained on how to train their dogs beyond the 'fetch' and 'sit' commands. They need to learn about grooming. I am working on those lines now," Nigam said.