Revisiting Indian English

One popular post that I've had here at 'Many Englishes' was on the topic of prejudice against Indian English. That was back in 2007.

Since then, I've had fewer phone exchanges with Indian customer service representatives than I had a four years ago, and we're not getting so many marketing calls at dinner time from non-native English speakers either. Maybe some American companies have learned that it doesn't help their product to outsource the telemarketing to people who are not fluent in American English. Perhaps these organizations have also become more discriminating in their choice of telemarketers, or accent reduction training programs have been very effective.

Indeed, last year I heard a discussion on NPR (National Public Radio) about just this topic. Instead of looking at Indian English from the outside, however, I'm trying to look at it from the Indian perspective (as much as I can from where I sit in San Diego). About three years ago, an article came out in the Washington Post which stated that "English-speaking is a self-confidence issue in India." What that apparently meant was that Indians themselves felt that it was important to speak English well in their own country. The article comments about a commercial where a young man from a well-to-do family feels embarrassed that his maid is listening to and singing along with a song in English which he himself can't understand.

What does it all mean? For a variety of comments and reflections on English in India, I offer some reportage from various online sources, such as Chilli in India, Global Voices, Mortarboard, and Language in India (1, 2). These latter reports and articles are presented to open up my readers (mostly American) to views on English from Indian English speakers.

Is there prejudice against Indian English?

Several years ago I tutored an Indian man who had lived in the United States for more than 20 years. What he wanted to do was to change his accent. Although he was a naturalized American citizen and had clearly mastered English, he was starting his own business in San Diego and wanted to sound more 'American,' especially on the phone. He believed that when people heard his "Indian" accent, they were more likely to dismiss him or his product.

Later, I realized what he was talking about as last year, I had to deal with several customer support people for last minute flight and hotel cancellations. (Unexpectedly, my husband had to be hospitalized.) By the end of my conversations, I was feeling angry and frustrated with the representatives of the airlines and hotel who were obviously not speakers of American English and were likely "outsourced" employees of these companies. They sounded like "Indians," but even more irritating was that their expressions were obviously rehearsed (constant repetition of the same lines) and sometimes inappropriate. I didn't feel that they fully understood my English, and I certainly didn't understand a third of theirs.

Since the many Englishes of the world are a focus of this blog, I'm presenting some of the links I visited recently on the topic of Indian (African, Asian, etc.) English. A recent article in The Times of India concerns the plight of Indian English speakers.

As a result of all this interest in speaking a 'standard' English, however, there are lots of employment opportunities for British and American ESL teachers equipped to instruct accent reduction courses. Here's a link discussing what is meant by "accent neutralization" or reduction. Working on accents is big business now because of all the outsourcing of phone sales agents to other countries. There are many tech-support centers based in India (click here) which are trying to cope with the problem of producing agents that have mild accents and appropriate sociolinguistic skills to handle phone talk.

There has been some backlash to the pressure on Indians to change their accents, and I ran across one blog suggesting that Indian English should be recognized as a major English of the world and that Indians should not have to adjust their accents to suit our ears.

Finally, I offer you an amusing 1.5 minute clip of Peter Sellers imitating various British accents on 'YouTube' and a more serious discussion of the variety of English accents from the British Library's collection. You can spend a lot of time here delving into the library's various links and listen to different accents while reading transcripts.

More on Indian English Accents

I am highlighting a comment that I received recently (February 27, 2008) from a New Zealander. My previous post on the topic of prejudice against Indian English has attracted some attention since last year. I fully expect that, with China and India containing nearly half the world's population, their English accents (should English remain the international lingua franca) will be familiar and unremarkable in the future. Instead of the giggles I sometimes get from European students when they hear Indians speak in a movie (I love 'Spellbound' and 'A Passage to India'), for example, people will begin to admire the accent, thinking it's cool-sounding.

Today many students studying for the Cambridge examinations really don't like the British English accent, saying that American English is 'cooler.' How ironic is that? This is quite the opposite of what I observed in academia a few decades ago, where if you had a British accent - even an acquired or pseudo-British accent, you definitely had an advantage in getting an academic position here. Other Americans love French accents...

So, I definitely agree with maxqnzs. Indians as well as speakers of other Englishes should be proud of their accents. They add color and flavor to daily conversations, and it would be unimaginably dull to live in a world without them.

Arizona Forbids Teachers with Accents to Teach English

Many of you have heard of Arizona's SB1070. It is a new law set to come into effect at the end of the month and can empower authorities to check the identity of people living in Arizona, suspected of being in the USA illegally. But, did you also know that some experienced bilingual English language instructors in Arizona public schools may not be allowed to continue teaching English to their Spanish-speaking students because they have an 'accent'?

I have talked about accents before at this blog, focusing on prejudice against Indian English. Now I am contemplating accents again in another context. As Mr. Codrescu so effectively states in his NPR commentary, 'America was made great by people with accents.'

As an ESL instructor at a private school, I have often been confronted by questioning looks when students realize that this Asian-looking woman is their Cambridge or TOEFL or business or advanced level instructor. Is she a native speaker? Ironically, sometimes the worst prejudice or suspicion comes from Asian students. They came to the United States to learn from a White or Black or even Hispanic person - not from someone who looks 'Asian.' If they're low-level students, they don't understand my explanation that I was born and raised in Los Angeles and that my grandparents came from Japan. My parents were also born in California. They feel incapable of judging whether or not my 'accent' is native, so they just go by my race and facial features. Sometimes they even request a change of class - not because of my race, of course - but because they think I speak 'too slowly' or 'too fast.'

Once I was even queried about my 'nativeness' because I spoke so 'clearly.' Believe it or not, an upper-intermediate level business student asked me at the end of her course if I was originally from Japan (even though I had explained three weeks earlier that I was born and raised in Los Angeles). She was asking because, according to her, my speech was clearer and the rhythm of it easier to understand than the other teachers', so she wondered if I had learned English as a second language.

Now in Arizona, we have another issue which goes beyond 'race' per se. It has to do with how close your accent is to some perceived 'average'. Who speaks with a typical 'American' accent? Is it the TV anchorperson from some Midwest TV station, from the West Coast, from the East Coast, or from the South? Should our Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have had to pass a pronunciation exam before he ran for the important office he now occupies? He still says 'California' differently from how I would say it, and I'm '100% Californian.' Would 'Ahnold' have been as successful as the 'Terminator' if he had spoken with George Clooney's accent?

Clearly, to me, what is important in English language teaching is helping students to build a broad and solid grammatical platform on which to construct flexible and expandable vocabulary houses. From these constructs, fluency in the language can emerge and flourish so that immigrant or foreign students can express themselves well in speech and writing and be able to comprehend all accents and variations of the language in context - while listening to a radio program or watching TV or when reading the newspaper or visiting an internet site. That's what I think my job is about. Any person who is capable of bringing students to this point, regardless of their accent, is an invaluable resource to this country of immigrants.

Spellbound by 'Spellbound'

One of my favorite movies for high-intermediate or advanced level students is 'Spellbound,' an Academy Award-nominated film (for Best Documentary) which presents snapshots of the lives of eight American adolescents who compete in the 1999 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee competition in Washington, D.C.

I've shown this movie numerous times, and 'Spellbound' never fails to captivate and entertain. Of course, we have an in-class spelling bee so that students can identify a little with the kids in the movie. In addition, before the national competition is covered in the movie, we take a vote in class to pick the girl or boy who we think will win the Bee. Students are asked to support their choice with information and observations about the various candidates.

Furthermore, watching and discussing 'Spellbound' is an opportunity for students to think about what an 'American' is. Among the competitors are the daughter of 'illegal' immigrants from Mexico, a child from a privileged background who rides horses in her spare time, a bright young hyperactive boy, the son of an Indian immigrant, a low-income African-American student, and so on - a real cross-section of America.

I highly recommend this movie for teaching English through content. Supplementary reading material can be downloaded from various sites, but I often use this movie review. For the spelling bee, I use the list of words for different grade levels from this site. Finally, if you want to inspire students with follow-up readings, you can go to Angela Arenivar's blog to find out what she's doing now eight years later and also read a 2004 news article about Ashley White, the aspiring African American girl from Washington, D.C..

**STUDENT WRITING ASSIGNMENT**:
Based on your observations and what was said in the movie, 'Spellbound,' how would you describe an 'average' American? In your view, what qualities do all the children in the movie share? Why do you think the National Spelling Bee captures so much public attention in the United States?

Please post ('publish') your writing in the Comment section; use the 'Other' box, and use your first name so I can see that you've done the assignment.