Sunday Posts

Macaulay, a dead English Lord, gets more credit than he deserves in India. Some people, uneasy about the English ideas and education in India, mocks 'Macaulay's Children', the English speaking Indians, and resent the country they have built. They point to the arrogance and corruption that English speaking class has brought upon India, as well as the division and distress this caused. However, they also fail to offer an alternative except going back on time and resurrecting a mythological ancient India which may not have ever existed. The case contra Macaulay, therefore, has to be made. And, it can be made not in revivalist terms, that all truth comes from the Vedas and Indians had nothing to learn from anyone else. The case against Macaulay, and revivalism, stands simply on the premise that education needs to change when the society we live in, changes. English, in India, has so far been the language of privilege. This is the code that the elite uses to connect t...

English is fast becoming the world's language. While some Frenchmen are perturbed, and call the language penetrating even their universities 'American' rather than English, the Tower of Babel seems to be reaching a final solution.  Why does this matter? The apologists of English do not see this as an imperial project but a triumph of pragmatism, a natural corollary of globalisation and rise of an uniform consumer ethics. And, indeed, there is one view that it is the 'democratic' nature of English - the language can be molded and adapted to its host cultures infinitesimally - that makes it so popular. They claim this is not about English or American, but the story of many Englishes. So, you can speak any language as long as it is called English, which means an expansion of what some observers will call an Anglosphere. This is a sphere of influence of a certain kind of rhetoric, enabled by the unity of media and thinking. In one way, this is a function of te...

From Wikipedia : Globish is a subset of the English language formalized by Jean-Paul Nerriere . [ 1 ] It uses a subset of standard English grammar, and a list of 1500 English words. According to Nerriere it is "not a language" in and of itself, [ 2 ] but rather it is the common ground that non-native English speakers adopt in the context of international business. [For more, see HERE ] Now, Globish has its own book : Jean-Paul Nerriere and David Hon has written a book in Globish , on Globish . [This book is not available through Amazon in the UK, my first port of call for such projects, which lists instead Jean-Paul Nerriere's Parlez Globish , in French]. Robert McCrum, of London Observer, has now written a book on Globish , though he chose to write in English, and The Economist has recently reviewed it . So, as they say, Globish has the momentum! The idea is, as stated above, a platform for non-native speakers of English language to adopt and use the language, with...