The English Fallacy

Wikipedia ranks India as Number 1 in the list of English speaking populations with about 350 million people able to use English. I am deeply suspicious of this number. Infact, I am filled with disgust since this is yet another number disguising bitter reality.

Sample this :

hello sir iam a.**** i complited my b.tech and iam starting an industry and i want to join our party at the same time i want to meet our head ******* sir how can i get oppintment pls replay me

Humans , particularly Indians, have a tremendous ability to adapt and this trait should enable you to understand the true purport of the sample above. If you still don't , email me.

I got this message through a social networking website popular amongst young Indians. It is not the first time I have witnessed such radical use of English syntax and semantics. I have a feeling it won't be the last, either.

Numbers are what make Indians proud these days - be it demographics ,GDP or the sensex. But beyond the euphoria, one must take a deeper and closer look at quality.That is, the quality of English being spoken by the Indian masses. There are deep-rooted socio-cultural factors at play here. English has made the leap from the lingua-franca of the Indian elite to that of the Indian masses. About 350 million of them, to be precise. But the problem is not many of those joining the league want to accept that their English is not only imprecise, it is precisely defunct. They don't accept this shortcoming because it is "uncool", almost an embarassment in their social circles. These are the kids who never learnt English properly in their primary schools , mainly due to teachers who were incompetent. You will be surprised to know how many of the private school kids cannot speak or write correct English. These are the kids who will get found out , and will lag their peers by a margin.

Does it matter? I think it does. The services industry has been complaining for a while about employability of college graduates. A lot of it has to do with basic spoken and written English. No body wants Byrons or Shakespeares. But atleast ,pretty please, can we get the spellings right?