English- Or is it?

People who know me, know me as a person who loves languages. I don't know when or where my love for languages started. But it seems to be a hereditary problem in our family. As a weird, not-cute, not-beautiful, not-the-top-of-the-class, but among-the-above-average child, I loved reading all the time. Summer holidays were spent reading the texts for the forthcoming year and after my books were done, I used to read my older brother's. (And yet, if you wondered why I was not a class topper, it was because I chose which subjects I wanted to do well in. If it was a subject that did not interest me, such as History or Geography, I simply did not try)

I grew up loving every moment of Mansfield, Saki, Maugham, Dumas, R. K. Narayan, Wodehouse, Dickens, and many more eminent writers of those times. Wordsworth and Blake were unforgettable. When we read/wrote English at school, there was so much importance given to the grammar and the language. It was a sweet struggle to outdo your peers. And yet, when it came to watching English movies, all I did was sleep in the movie theater. The curled R's of the Americans and the speed of the English tongue remained a mystery to me. I couldn't help but wonder how the same language spoken by two different people (Indians and the Westerners) could be so different.

While growing up, each season was laden with new English or Tamil "the it-words" such as "Dhoda" or "Verupaethaadhe" in Tamil and "shit" or "man" in English. The girls and boys who wanted to be popular used to mix these words in every sentence. For example, "Shit, I was supposed to be there" or "Man, this is bad" or even mix them up and say, "Shit man! What is happening?" The more fluently someone used these words, they were considered to be among the more popular club (although it was not as bad as it is nowadays). Maybe, I too as an adolescent, used some of these words, but more out of hearing them so often in the vernacular than to impress anybody or belong anywhere. This is the reason why I refuse to curl my R's or ace my A's and speak "American English" to blend in. I have not been convinced so far as to why I should do that... So I lecture in the same Indian English I speak (probably a bit more crisper version, but the same) and leave it to the students to adapt to my tongue (Hell, they would gladly do so if they had a "cute" French Professor with a French accent! Why not for an Indian?).

As an academic, I have a boon and a bane. I get to talk and interact with young minds which is refreshing but the downside of it is that I get to hear their English. This is a sample of the current vernacular of young adults. "I was like... whatever man... But then I understood that this is like that... That was so cool... Like, duh... You have like known this like forever...you know? It is like probability or whatever". What exactly did this person mean? I have to parse the text to find out that this student understood that the concept under discussion is probability. I realize that "like", "you know". and "whatever" are the current "in" or the "it" words. But when did people feel that they are substitutes for everything? I often joke that today's youth combine verbs, adverbs, nouns, adjectives, and every other part of speech into one word - "Like"!

When your mind searches for words, it more often than not chooses the most heard word and substitutes it. For example, "I was so....this thing" or "I was like angry". Sometimes, but very rarely, I too am guilty of the crime. But when I say such sentences, all that runs through my mind is, "When did my vocabulary get so bad? Why can't I search for the correct word?" And I realize that this realization is the first step to correcting my mistakes. I try to avoid the word "like" and grope for the correct verb instead even if it means that my students stare at my blank face for that extra second or two. I certainly prefer that to speaking wrong or improper English. I often feel like replying when people use the phrase, "You know?" "No, I don't know and that's why you are telling me this". When you ask a teenager if he/she wants to do something such as going to the movies, the reply is, "whatever". What in heavens does that mean? Is it a yes or is it a no or is it their way of saying, "I am way too cool to answer your question respectfully"? I certainly prefer hearing the Indian English we heard in"Malgudi Days" to a contaminated, but stylized western English that even Indians are trying hard to ape.

I cannot help but feel like stopping each person who talks like this and say, "Can you please repeat that in ENGLISH?" My ears hurt when I hear the words "like, whatever, and you know". Where do these styles and fads begin? I do not know. When do they end? Probably when another fad or "in-word" takes its place. But as an English speaker, I cannot help but hope that the new words are not that powerful that they form every part of speech known to the language. I cannot help but pray that contamination of a language does not form the norm to becoming popular. To the saying, "God save the Queen" I'd like to add and appeal, "and the English tongue". Else Shakespeare and Milton might rise from their graves just so they can die again.