Fanny Gupta
Fanny Gupta who has done PHD in Sociolinguistics from The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and been trained in Linguistics, Phonetics and the Teaching of English by CIEFL, Hyderabad, points out the arbitrariness of English spelling which is based on 5 vowels and 21 consonants while twenty vowels and 24 consonants are needed for speaking. Does our school syllabus provide for this lacuna?
Twenty vowels of Spoken English to make our speech standard! How on earth could one who grew up in a certain way of speech surrounded by regional languages learn the foreign sounds? When we went as lecturer-students to C.I.E.F.L., Hyderabad, some decades ago, Professor R.K.Bansal, PhD (London) asked us why we had to study phonetics. He not only gave us the answer but he made it a point to ask us this question again at the viva: “There is no one to one correspondence between English spelling and English pronunciation,” he told us again and again. “While there are only 5 vowels in the written alphabet in actual speech there are 20 (Daniel Jones and David Abercrombie) twelve pure ones and 8 mixed ones.” I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that before. Why had no-one in school or college mentioned that to us students during English language classes? We had silently borne these years of freedom with only laughter to alleviate the pronunciation gaffes and no knowledge about the major difference in accent (stress-timed rhythm) between English and our languages, at all.
As a student of literature I enjoyed Bernard Shaw for having so brilliantly pointed out the inconsistency in pronunciation between the various segments of society in London and around it. Here was real food for thought or for laughter? Maybe both. ‘My Fair Lady’ was the movie made on his drama Pygmalion, in the sixties. It was the story of how a flower girl from Covent Garden transformed into a seemingly high ranking lady after a determined Professor of Phonetics trained her to speak classy Standard English. Shaw was aghast at the way the people spoke and he set out to teach his countrymen, through his attack on Liza Doolittle’s atrocious speech, that good pronunciation was both possible and desirable. His movie was a classic with stars like Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. That was a long time ago, but equally relevant now. To me the film is even good enough to be used today by phonetics teachers. Eliza singing the vowels painstakingly hour after hour, day after day, would help our students even better than the English language tapes. Would it?
Besides, what about some quizzes on English spellings and pronunciation on our channels? It is not the Indian alone who finds English pronunciation a dilemma; even the English know it though they keep quiet about it. Spelling exercises are the only way schools have handled the lack of a phonetic alphabet in English. The Americans openly show us Spelling Bees on American TV. Why not! Some of our smart and knowledgeable men and women could work out an intelligent and entertaining quiz on pronunciation of English too! As for spellings, perhaps, one day, in the distant future the culture of SMS mailing will do for English drastically what the British have been unable to do and the Americans have done partially- make the spelling of English, more phonetic like our Indian languages.
Pronunciation in England was an index to social position and income at the time of Shaw. Maybe it still is. I remember reading an article on Dom Moraes, the son of the late famous Frank Moraes of All India Radio fame. Dom was out one night in London. On a lonely street he was accosted by a bobby who pushed him against a wall and asked for his identity. As Dom began to protest, the attitude of the policeman changed “I’m sorry sir” the bobby apologized and let Dom Moraes go on his way. Dom’s pronunciation and accent were of the clear Oxford and Cambridge variety you hear on BBC and in standard British dictionaries. In fact it is the model on which Standard Indian English (See ‘The Intelligibity of Indian English’ by Dr.R.K. Bansal.on Google.) is based. After more than two centuries of stay in India, English has acquired its own standard here and the criteria for it is – the speaker should not have strong regional Indian accents which would hamper communication between educated Indians and non-Indians.
I firmly believe that an exact reproduction of Received Pronunciation of Oxford and Cambridge is not advisable because language is also a socio-psychological reality and we feel uncomfortable and so do our Indian listeners if we sound like Englishmen, Americans, or Australians for that matter. There are famous speakers of English who are Indians. The Nehru’s, Dr. Manmohan Singh, Amitabh Bachan and a host of speakers on our English channels use Standard Indian English which is close to the BBC model. But what about our schools?
It is very well to say that many Indians have succeeded without phonetics. This statement hides the heartache and cultural alienation of thousands, not only Indians, who go to the West to better their economic prospects. The very fact the West is particular
( See TOEFL and IELTS) that immigrants need to pass English exams – both written and spoken, the fact that universities have adopted linguistic and phonetics in their syllabus, that managers in multinational firms are employing phonetically trained teachers to improve spoken English skills of their employees, that entrepreneurs of school education in the Gulf States employ managers who have no strong South Indian or North Indian accents, proves the importance of a neutral pronunciation and accent in addition to correct grammar and vocabulary.
One can reach the top of the economic and political ladder without English, with the help of translators. That will always be true. In this article my concern is with the thousands of young learners who are eager to handle this world language well. For several decades I’ve been training adults from all parts of India and from different parts of Europe, Asia and Africa to handle spoken English with its grammar, pronunciation and rhythm. Some of them, adults though they are, have succeeded; others, without the necessary patience and practice have not. French and Italian do not have stress-timed rhythm like English does, so they have to learn it. When North Indians speak Malayalam they cannot produce all its nasalized consonants and when Malayalee teachers teach Hindi they impose wrong pronunciation too because they are not trained in the use of the phonetics of the language. The same goes for the teaching of other regional languages. When our politicians speak English abroad they use prepared speeches sometimes. The speeches are good, most of the time, but how we wish the speaker had taken some training in stress-timed rhythm and pronunciation! How can we master a foreign language without respect for the language and the help of its dictionary?
I had the experience of being taught Hindi by hard-working Malayalee teachers and only my stay in the North enabled me to correct the pronunciation gaffes. For those who cannot go North, a North Indian, or a South Indian trained in the Cardinal Vowel and Consonant systems should be preferred. For teaching English we have the teachers and we needn’t get the British down to teach us. We only have to compulsorily train our teachers and pay them better. I know this is an old story of socio-political neglect. Phonetics is not a matter of social sensitivity or debate but it is what is needed to remove the lacuna in our system of teaching Regional, English or French or other foreign languages.
Most of all, if we wish to better our English, the dictionary is there. Dust it if has rested too long a time in the cupboard; open it and practice the pronunciation and stress of common words as given in the book. If it is a dictionary that your grandfather used, then you might have to go for an Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English.
English is a foreign language and its teaching must be done by keeping this fact in mind no matter how fluent we are.
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