The brouhaha over English!

Raju Korti

 

There is this interesting little story about a senior citizen, who true to the dictum "age does not wither them nor customs stale", dashed off a letter to hold your breath Winston Churchill, during the thick of the Second World War. A self-styled authority on the English language, he was not too amused to read one of the British premier's fiery speeches as it was teeming with mistakes. So worked up was he that he "scurried for a pen and paper and prepared an elaborate list of the grammatical errors in the statesman's speech".

This was all to the good, but the well-meaning gentleman had not counted on the tongue-in-cheek leader whose acidic barbs had already become part of British folklore.
So with great zest he shot off the missive that had the stamp of his self-proclaimed mastery with a smug satisfaction that he had humbled the none too gentle cheroot-smoking giant. For a long time, he did not get a reply but he reasoned that the portly leader may not have had the time. Just as he had started wallowing in his "victory", he received a characteristic Churchill oneliner. To call it a stinker would be an understatement. But Churchill wrote back or is it hit back? "English is the language an Englishman speaks."
When an old-timer narrated this anecdote to me, it set the clock in my head ticking away furiously. My ideas about this language and its grammar went topsy turvy and, what's more, far beyond the realms of Wren and Martin, hitherto the Bible on the subject. It started dawning upon me that the vagaries in the language were legion.
There were exceptions galore that, if anything, only proved the rules. Forget about the complicated clauses, even articles and prepositions were studies in contrast. A professor who taught me English in college once told me that half the English battle was won if one knew how to use articles. This valuable tip later helped me glide through many a reporter's copy which consolidated my belief that the profession is nothing but literature in hurry with a liberal tincture of common sense.
After meandering through the ages, the language has undergone innumerable cosmetic and structural changes. The customary greeting ``how are you?'' is now ``how is you?'' while a ``long time no see'' is supposed to be more evocative than its more correct version. But then, isn't language all about communication and pomposity?
Now consider this: The European commission on European unification recently announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spellings had some (!) room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phase-in plan that would be known as EuroEnglish. Some flexibility!
In the first year, ``s'' will replace the soft ``c''. Sertainly this will make the sivil servants happy. The hard ``c'' will be dropped in favour of ``k''. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have less letters. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the second year when the troublesome ``ph'' will be overruled by ``f''. This will make words like ``fotograf'' 20 per cent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more complikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which will have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
The subsequent years will see a fermentation of the language that will be fraught with endless variations.
The question now is who will write the epitaph for Wren and Martin.