Ever since Albert Einstein introduced his Theory of
Relativity in 1905, and was last validated in 1938, many of us have grown accustomed
to the thinking that everything is relative, although sometimes it is still a
foreign rationale for some who believe in terms such as ‘absolute’, ‘perfect’, ‘never’,
etc.
Some days ago I was at a gathering with some friends and
a delicate subject was brought up: people who live in this country and do not
speak English. There were people of somewhat diverse backgrounds, some of them
multi-lingual, some bilingual and some who only spoke the language they were born
into and grew up with. There were
opinions, some strong ones, about the situation where if you live here, you
must speak English, period. And I could not agree more. And I usually take it a
step further: even if you come here to do business, or to go to school, or to
simply visit, you’re expected to speak English. The discussion ensued – very
animatedly - with several points of view being expressed; some in the form of simple
comments and others more passionately… Some of the most interesting ones were:
a) I
am quoting: “How is it possible that a
person goes to a public establishment,
and either they are expected to speak other languages, or there are no
English-speaking people in the establishment?” (End of quote). This was a
very passionate point for, and commonly experienced situation by, some folks…
b) We
want people to speak English when they come here; however, we generally neglect, is not even in our 'Radar Screen', or sometimes refuse to learn other languages; so, when we go elsewhere, we expect – and often
demand – that people address us in English, even though they speak another
language in that particular country we are visiting… We, at times, seem to be
very comfortable with double standards, and are proud of it!
c) There
are some other countries, developed countries like us, where people proudly speak
more than one language and where they have more than one official
language. In almost every country in Europe, people speak two languages, and
many times more than that; they do
business (officially) in more than one language; even our most esteemed
neighbors (the ones to the North, of course) have two official languages:
English and French Canadian. In some Caribbean Islands that belong to the
Netherlands people must speak, at least, five languages (that is 5!) to work in
anything related to the public. However, we somehow consider it inappropriate - sometimes - for people to ask us if we speak another language… I have witnessed this dialog more than once:
“Do you speak Spanish?” “No, I do not!” and the left-hand
conversation goes like ‘who do you
think I am?’ or 'where do you think you are?' as if they had been offended (or mistaken or misplaced) by the question…
At any rate, in the middle of all these worthy and
enlightening arguments, a friend tried to give an example to the point they were trying to make (their point being that people must learn the language of the country
they live in) and said something to the effect that “English is not John Doe’s first language but they speak it perfectly…” (I will omit the names to protect the innocent and the guilty alike). Another
friend made a gesture of surprise and said under their breath “Oh my God, is he serious?” apparently
taken aback by the 'perfectly' assertion, since John Doe clearly speaks with a distinct accent… Being a natural introvert, I sometimes need my time to process certain
topics properly and I hold back any reaction until I have had time to really ponder
all the variables at play and formulate an answer; of course, by the time I was
ready to participate in the discussion with an adequately thought-out opinion, the
gathering was over and I had nobody to share my answer with; so I decided to
use this as my outlet to offer my opinion… And here it is: as I said before, likely my friend’s 'surprised' reaction to the
original comment was based on the accent John Doe has when speaking English;
they most likely consider that accent a language flaw, in contradiction with the original
comment. Again, John Doe does
have an accent when they speak English but, in all reality, who does not? Who
can cast the first stone? Within the US alone there are over 25 different
dialects and accents of English… (Easy examples: people with a Boston-urban
accent do not pronounce r’s, and people with the Virginia-Piedmont accent add
r’s where there are none!) So, even those who were born and raised here in the
good ole US of A, have an accent when they speak English; everything is relative.
In the wider scope, everybody around the world who speaks English has an accent; some more
pronounced than others, some
worse and some better; everything is relative… Try to listen to a conversation
being carried in ‘English’ between a person from Texarkana (Texas) and one from
the Transvaal (South Africa); let me know after that ‘experience’ if you still
think that people born in English-speaking lands have no strong (and sometimes
hard to understand) accents… Or try one, also in ‘English’, between a Cockney
(London East End) and a Guyanese (South America)… If you think there is no
accent there, or that one is better than the other, or that one accent is more
understandable than the other, think again… Everything is relative.
You see, historically, English is and has been for
millennia a dynamic language; it has been evolving constantly since its
Teutonic origins… The initial British Isles dialects were modified (some may
say bastardized) by the pseudo-Latin the Roman Legions spoke while occupying
the territories for over 300 years… They were further modified radically when
the Saxons (with a more modern German or Teutonic version of their language) conquered
the Isles, and lately refined by all the words adopted from all the colonies
while the British Empire was in place (Hindu, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic – yes
Arabic! – amongst the most influential ones). Even
among themselves, the British Isles still feature four major groupings of regional
dialects and accents of English, such as English itself, Scottish, Irish and Welsh; people with more knowledge than I are able to point out
many other variations within those groupings…
For those who still think they speak perfect English and,
as such, think they have earned the right – by birth, or otherwise
self-adjudicated – to feel somewhat better suited for communications than those
who do not speak like they do, the bubble is about to burst: there is no such a
thing as ‘perfectly spoken [language]’ (still a truism regardless of what
language is inserted between the brackets); what may be perfect for some, is
flawed to others; everything is relative…
Bottom line folks, there are many versions of English and
many ways in which those version are spoken (i.e. accents). The beauty of it
all is the diversity and richness of the language, how it evolves over time,
how it bends according to needs and geographies, how one never ends learning it
(thinking otherwise is folly), and how humbling it could prove to be to even
the most proud, confident and self-proclaimed ‘Perfect English’ speaker…
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