One of the regular contributors to the Libertarian Alliance Forum posted this salutary tale concerning his local state school.
I felt that it deserved a wider audience.
Yesterday my wife went to register our oldest child at the local ‘gubmint’ school here in the Atlanta ‘burbs. It will be his first year in the public school system.
To prove that we live in the catchment area, she had with her an electricity bill with our address on it. There was a printed notice posted in the registration area. It listed the only forms of identification that would be accepted. At the bottom of the notice was printed “NO ACCEPTIONS!”
My wife found this illiteracy in a supposed place of learning to be very disconcerting, but carried on with the process.
Next, she was handed a slew of forms to complete and sign. One of the forms was a waiver for field trips. This form explained that “our student’s will attend a number of field trips…”
That was it. Glaring spelling mistakes on professionally printed notices, moronic misuse of an apostrophe on a form that must surely have been reviewed by the principal. A sickening feeling came over her and she had to make her excuses and leave, explaining that she would fill in the forms later.
The received wisdom of our day holds that only the state can be relied upon to provide children with a proper education. I wonder how long that canard can hold fast in the face of all the glaring evidence to the contrary?
What, it’s not like private institutions are free from this gap. Once on the way back from snowboarding we stopped at this local resturaunt. In every case where you should use an apostrophe they didn’t, and in every case of a plural they did.
Daaaaaaaaamn. It was elucidating.
I hope that this convinces Mr. Worsnop to homeschool (Or continue homeschooling) his children. To be honest, it surprises me that any libertarian would ever trust the minds of their children to the paid propogandists of the state before those children had time for their brains to mature to a stage where they were capable of questioning everything that a biased teacher might throw at them (Which is to say, college age). Especially given the socialist nature of the National Education Association (The union to which most teachers in the US public schools belong).
I myself was homeschooled through high-school and there is no better way to get your children to act like adults than to socialize them TO adults by educating them yourself.
It also strikes me that the law for homeschooling in Georgia would be even more lax than it is here in “Blue” Illinois.
Bago, clearly from lack of instruction in logic, or perhaps just a slow intelligence, has missed the entire point of David’s post. In addition, he appears to confuse elucidating with illuminating. So not an outstanding advertisement for state schooling.
Interim solution, vouchers. Later, abolition of all state schooling.
The received wisdom of our day holds that only the state can be relied upon to provide children with a proper education.
To be fair, I don’t think any sane person believes this any more. It’s ideology that makes some people oppose private education, not a genuine belief any more that it is worse.
If I had used the construction “It’s not LIKE private institutions are …………….” instead of “It’s not as if…”
when at school I would have received a swift belt round the ear. Rightly so.
There’s nothing wrong with using like as a conjunction.
Throughout the sorry history of Traditional Grammar in English speaking societies, there have been many self-appointed busybodies who enjoy taking some common point of usage and twisting it until it makes no sense or unilaterally declaring it “incorrect”.
Your school was write to warn you away from it in formal writing, but if they based their reasoning on English grammar (as opposed to arbitrary social custom), then they were misguided.
I don’t expect anyone here to agree. I’m a linguist and linguists are never welcome at discussions of “correct” language.
Surely “correct” language is language which conveys the idea or concept clearly and unambiguously. This, after all, is the whole point of language, is it not? I would suggest this idea applies especially to English, which is a flexible and constantly changing language.
If the concept is communicated clearly, then the language is correct, even if it is not like what as how you or I might use and even if it is not “proper” English as she is spoke.
Weak humour aside, the complaint about bago’s English sidesteps the point he makes, namely that poor English is not unique to state organisations.
EG
For descriptive linguists, “correct” means conforming to the majority practice of native speakers. Majority practice refers to realworld usage, that is how native speakers really do speak (and not how some subset of native speakers think they should speak).
There are forms that should be avoided in some circumstances, but this is like using the right fork. It’s a question of social correctness and not language correctness as such.
The examples given in the main entry are bad because they show laxness in attention to detail (of the sort they’re supposed to teach children).
The two examples are perfectly predictable; except and accept are homonyms in some varieties of USEnglish and s and ‘s are used more or less interchangeably by many everyday people (I don’t expect the distinction to last much longer except in very formal usage). But those preparing materials for public consumption should know the social rules. It’s as if a school of etiquette had a receptioncist who greeted people with “Hey! How’s it hangin’?”
The inability of the staff at these schools to identify simple grammatical errors indicates that they are likely to have a similar level of skill in more important subjects.
I don’t think you can reasonably draw that conclusion.
It means simply that the person who wrote the notices is not particularly skilled in the use of “proper” English. The letters I receive from my lawyer are riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, but this does not mean she is not good at law.
EG
Euan Gray: “Weak humour aside, the complaint about bago’s English sidesteps the point he makes, namely that poor English is not unique to state organisations.”
No one suggested it is. What I think everyone could reasonably be expected to object to, is that a place of *learning* should show itself to be so incompetant.
Ultimately; if the state schools show such little concern for the meaning of words, and the correct use of similar words which have different meanings, then one should hardly be surprised that private organisations, which have to deal with the produce of the state schools, will display similar symptoms.
That, to me, is an argument against state sponsored uniformity in education, rather than an excuse for it.
“It’s ideology that makes some people oppose private education…”
Of course.
Lefties believe it would be horrible to allow all kind of people (like parents) to teach children whatever dumb beleifs they hold (like religion, for instance).
We, the annointed liberal elite know best the absolute Truth, therefore, for the good of society, we must FORCE all children into the state educational system, where we will teach them Truth, the one and only Truth, so they will grow up to be ideal citizens (i.e. zombies).
Of course, the notion of state education is rooted in ideology.
“Better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”
The letters I receive from my lawyer are riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, but this does not mean she is not good at law.
I wouldn’t be happy with a lawyer who could not spell or use grammar properly. Understanding law, contracts etc demands a proper knowledge of both. If your lawyer uses sloppy language how can you be sure she understands the law properly, or will represent your interests effectively?
This is a very poor example. I don’t expect my window cleaner to be able to spell properly, because he can do his job without having to. But a lawyer?
EG I refute your assertion most strongly.
If professionals, and especially teachers and lawyers, are sloppy with the written word, they are probably sloppy with everything else. I could even forgive an accountant poor spelling and grammar if his accountancy is accurate but teachers and lawyers? Clear and unambiguous communication, written and verbal, is the very essence of their profession.
By accepting lower standards from these people you tacitly approve their poor efforts and propagate it further. If teachers accept a low standard for themselves what will they accept from their pupls?
As it happens, my lawyer is the head of her department in the partnership in question. That partnership is widely reputed as being one of the best in Scotland in the practice of the particular field of law I am dealing with. She is very capable, competent and knowledgeable in her field – but her use of English leaves something to be desired. The opposition lawyer in my case isn’t much better at English – but also has a pretty fair reputation as a lawyer. In these cases, there seems to be little if any connection between ability in English and ability in law.
You should see the letters and emails I send correcting the errors 🙂 I don’t propagate it at all.
EG
Put very simply if I pay someone well for a service I would expect that person to do the service to the best of their ability, as I trust someone would expect from me. If I receive a company report back from my accountant full of spelling errors I would immediately send it back to him asking if he had never heard of Microsoft Word’s spelling check before.
Since the word “acceptions” does not appear at all in Word’s dictionary does that mean that the principal of that state school decided to include a new word in the dictionary, or not actually bother to check that the word was now underlined in red?
Or possibly that he was a heretic and didn’t use MS Word?
EG
‘For descriptive linguists “correct” means conforming to the majority practice of native speakers.’
So what!
The practise and interpretation of law depends 100% on precision of language. I would be terrified of a lawyer who made grammatical errors because that means if she cannot express herself accurately, the readers of her letters and opinions have to take a wild stab every now and then as to her meaning – and they may be wrong. There is also no assurance that she has understood what she read.
It is a further example of her incompetence that she has lived all her life (I am assuming) speaking and operating her daily life in her native language, yet she still hasn’t managed to pick it up.
No thank you!
Besides not knowing the difference between elucidate and illuminate, Bago hasn’t grasped punctuation, either. “What, it’s not as if …”. Bago, that should have been, “What? It’s not as if …”. I wonder what moved this person to post a comment on grammar.
“The practise and interpretation of law depends 100% on precision of language.”
More precisely, it requires precision in a specialized version of language that is fairly far removed from daily speech and writing.
I can actually imagine a lawyer who has an excellent command of the specialized legal language but whose everyday writing is nothing special.
I can also imagine potential clients being scared away by the everyday language of such a person and they would not be my first choice either (unless I had strong evidence that they did have that excellent command of legal language).
Michael Farris – Yes, obviously, some of it is highly specialised as is the terminology of other professions, but I would have no faith in – in fact, I’d be terrified of – a lawyer who had, in 30 years or so, failed to pick up their native language. I think this argues for a very disorganised, lazy and insensitive mind.
If Euan’s lawyer is a (presumably quite busy) department chief, perhaps the language problems lie with the secretary who types up her memoranda.
I thought that as well, but email from her (as opposed to her secretary, who has a different mail address) betrays much of the same sloppiness. Unless, of course, her secretary also does her email, which I suppose is possible.
EG
By mysterious circumstances, an email written to Euan by his lawyer accidentally came into my possession a few minutes ago. I do not hesitate to post it because it does not concern his personal or business affairs, but is merely social chitchat on Blair’s election win:
YO. CHECK dis. Wassup wiv da main man? He big up “Respec” now hiz boyz beat da Tory crew. D’you dig? That’s bruvvers talk innit? Even hiz boy Prezza av a go. Massive. Wot’s the Big Bruv banging on about?*
* Thanks to Nick Robinson writing in The Times today.
Michael Farris
Like as a ‘conjunction’ Really! You mean Preposition.
Linguist busibodies should not venture into the territory of grammarians.
And ‘ your school was WRITE to ……’
PLEASE
Having reached almost a universal language it now seems to be degenerating into a number of patois. Because of the lack of any rigour whatsoever in the education systems of both the UK and the USA English is now being written largely in what most people think is a phonetic rendering of the way they speak. So you get ‘Innernational’ airports which the speaker thinks is the opposite of an ‘outer’ national airport. Horrors such as ‘I would of’ abound. The past participle is disappearing === I ‘use’ to do this or do that; ‘it work perfect’. Adverbs have virtually disappeared == ‘I done it good’. The structure of the language is being torn apart.
LOL Verity!!
I really *hate* the SMS-style of written communication. You know what I’m talking about – “lo 2 u. how r u & urs? i h8 spelling words out but this is ez. eva thort wot my IQ is? beta go b4 my brain drops out. got2go cya luv shaz n daz”
However, it’s so common these days!
I was tempted to pretend that ‘write’ was done on purpose (as some sort of wry commentary), but it was a mistake. As mistakes go, it certainly isn’t very important (since blog comments don’t qualify in my universe as formal writing). And no matter how bad my spelling gets, it’s still not as bad as that of Matthew Yglesias.
“Linguist busibodies should not venture into the territory of grammarians.”
How can you justify pronouncements on usage without some kind of linguistics? (“because I said so” or “because famous-expert said so” aren’t good arguments).
I have no interest whatsoever in English as a universal language (and think it’s sort of a bad idea).
Finally, the types of usage you decry are partly spelling (would of); partly natural phonetic variation (innernational) and partly natural language evolution. The third person singular -s doesn’t do much for the language in terms of structure, it’s hardly surprising that real world usage seems to be gradually leading to its loss.
John – eh? What kind of knuckle-draggers are you talking to?
I’m with Euan. Can’t abide pedants, and I reckon if I can understand what’s being written, that’s good enough for me. However, if someone flames me about my written communication whilst making spelling/grammatical/syntax errors of their own, then all bets are off. Funnily enough, this scenario is amusingly common.
I love the word “canard”. I love the way it sounds, and I love using it in arguments.
Only problem is, these days, use of the word “canard” is as likely to get you blank stares as it is to be comprehended.
Suffering – *I reckon if I can understand what’s being written, that’s good enough for me.*
But often, when reading communications from illiterates, one cannot be sure that one understands what they’re trying to say. One doesn’t know whether they’ve used a wrong word in error, or they had, in fact, chosen to use that word for some effect which may escape one. There are people who cannot distinguish between the future and the conditional. Mastering a language enables one to communicate in the certain knowledge that the thoughts being conveyed are those intended.
English is a very easy language to master on a basic level, which is why it’s the universal second language. For kids who’ve mastered French or German, it is a total doddle. There is absolutely no excuse for native Anglophones not being able to speak or write it correctly.
I think part of the problem is, the media studies graduates being churned out in their hundreds of thousands do not know how to really read. This is the fault of trendy lefty teaching methods, long discredited and still beloved by the socio-commies running the state school system.
It’s nice to see someone is, sometimes, these days.
FWIW, my view is that if one is talking informally – emails between friends, posts on blogs, etc – then it doesn’t matter as long as one is understood. For formal writing, such as legal documents, contractual or business stuff, etc., I think it is very important to get it right.
And there’s no need for old style abbreviations – this makes sense for SMS or 300 baud dialup links, but other than that it’s just daft.
EG
I notice Michael that you did not pick me up on my mistake of calling those past tenses ‘participles’.
Venturing on to grammarian territory was just a jibe at your getting conjunction and preposition mixed up.
Of course ‘innernational’ is a natural phonetic variation and I certainly do not have the temerity to quarrel with that. But a lot of the users no longer know that they are saying the word INTERnational which means between nations. They think it means INNERnational which is pretty well meaningless and that is due to a educational failure. I didn’t understand your point about the third person singular.’Would of’ is a failure to understand how the language works.
“I notice Michael that you did not pick me up on my mistake of calling those past tenses ‘participles’.”
Polite linguists don’t do that kind of thing, unless someone is being unbearably rude. You aren’t/weren’t.
“Venturing on to grammarian territory was just a jibe at your getting conjunction and preposition mixed up.”
I didn’t mix them up, the word ‘like’ can function as either. Some people don’t accept its use as the former, but that hasn’t stopped most people from using it that way for hundreds of years (quite rightly). I refrain from using it as a conjunction in very formal circumstances, but most of the time I don’t bother. In speech or informal writing, ‘as’ often sounds far worse IMHO.
“But a lot of the users no longer know that they are saying the word INTERnational which means between nations. They think it means INNERnational which is pretty well meaningless and that is due to a educational failure.”
Yes, a survey in Linguist List a few years ago revealed that English speaking countries have really terrible first language education (that is English class for English speaking children). Most of what I remember from English class (I got mostly middling high grades and a few A’s) is total nonsense. It has as much to do with English as astronomy does to astrology.
“I didn’t understand your point about the third person singular.”
The verb ending ‘s’ in words like ‘sings’, ‘knows’ is the linguistic equivalent of the human little toe (or appendix? tonsils?). It doesn’t _do_ anything (except maybe show that the speaker/author knows what the rules of polite society are). It carries no grammatical or semantic information on its own. English has already lost most of its personal verb endings and this is probably the next to go (probably followed by was or were, probably were in American). If I were to live another 50 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if “she sing” and “he don’t know” were the near universal spoken forms.
‘Would of’ is a failure to understand how the language works.”
Well, ‘would of’ sounds just like ‘would’ve’, and traditional instruction of English makes so little sense that I’m not surprised that many don’t understand that ‘of’ is not a contraction of ‘have’. Most English teachers can’t even define “preposition” (“little words like the following list” is not a definition). It’s no wonder they can’t explain what’s wrong with “would of” in a way that anyone can understand or would want to emulate.
I don’t know how it all cratered, except perhaps Britain has become less aspirational. When I was little, a teacher must have taught us a wrong construction or a wrong definition, or whatever. Anyway, I used it at home and the next day, my mother was down at the school talking to the headmistress. And she was taken seriously.
Michael, the example I gave ‘it work perfect’ should have been ‘worked perfect’ ie the past tense not the present (from the context) which is why I didn’t understand the third person =s bit. Pure south sea pidgin in fact. Surely we don’t want to end up all talking and writing like that.
I mostly agree with Euan’s posts but find it a little difficult how one might switch easily from committing all sorts of errors in emails etc but switch back to the proper stuff for more formal communication.
The spell checker is of course a snare and delusion.
My theory is that the problem started with the rise of comprehensive education and has lately been worsened by the “certificates for all” dumbing down of examinations. I was educated at a comprehensive which had only the year before become such – and by my third year English grammar was no longer taught. Apparently it’s difficult and unnecessary, something they only do in “rich” schools.
One of the things that really pisses me off about the use of English here in Edinburgh (where it’s almost a second language) is the recent innovation in the use of the interrogative “eh?” It’s common enough in informal speech amongst the lower and upper (but not middle, oddly) echelons of society to append “eh” to a sentence, but not to prepend – and certain never to prepend it to a statement in order to form a question. Instead of asking, for example, “Today is Wednesday, isn’t it?” the schemie (east Scotland’s answer to the chav) will say “Eh today is Wednesday?”
EG
Euan, yes, schools in Britain used to be aspirational. They tried to raise everybody’s expectations. A child getting good marks was a source of tremendous pride for parents – especially what were then “working class” parents. Pride was even greater, of course, when their child got into a grammar school and was thus assured a chance to step up out of the labouring classes.
The comprehensives – as was always obvious would happen – took the line of least resistance and sank to the lowest level of attainment, thus robbing hundreds of thousands of children of a chance to get a solid, well-rounded education. I read that ‘O’ level classes in Singapore take Britain’s current ‘A’ level exams.
As it happens, my lawyer is the head of her department in the partnership in question. That partnership is widely reputed as being one of the best in Scotland in the practice of the particular field of law I am dealing with. She is very capable, competent and knowledgeable in her field – but her use of English leaves something to be desired.
I’m still not convinced. Even a misplaced comma can change the meaning of a contract. I just would not be happy with a lawyer who could not spell or write grammatically.
By the way, this holds true for accountants too. I used to work for a professional practice, and every letter which went out was proof read for spelling mistakes. It would just have looked bad to clients if we could not spell correctly. Tax law was very complicated back in the days before Gordon Brown made it absurdly complicated, and it was very important to have a clear grasp of language. Really, it is a basic requirement for any profession.
Exactly, John K. If a lawyer or accountant cannot write properly and with surgical precision in their native language, which they have presumably been learning since they were around 18 months old, isn’t this a little bit scary? They can’t grasp their own language in 25 to 35 years … so why would I feel comfortable in assuming that they had mastered law or accountancy, in four/five/six years?
No.
Actually, I would expect the same standard of fluency in their mother tongue from engineers and neurosurgeons. There is absolutely no excuse – except the scary one that the speaker is an incompetent – for adults not to be able to express themselves fluently and articulately in their own language. This goes for owners of the corner shop and astrophysicists.
That’s the thing, Verity. If I can understand what’s being written, and there’s no ambiguity, then that’s fine by me. Even when people use my pet hate when writing to me – the aforementioned “SMS” style – if I can understand, well, fine. Obviously when there is ambiguity, then I require clarification.
Now I *hate* it when, for example, some ass rushes to leave a corrective comment because one of the Samizdatistas has spelled a word with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e’, or made some minor error (possibly typo) which doesn’t affect one’s understanding in the slightest. I loath that kind of irritating pedantry.
I know it can. Then again, I can write contracts myself and have done so, so my lawyer’s dodgy English holds no fear for me. I recently reviewed a draft agreement from the opposition laywer, which contained a few gems – such as stating the First Party when it should have said the Second Party, and showing “remain the sol name of” rather than “remain in the sole name of.” A previous lawyer, when drafting my will, managed to mis-spell both my own name and my wife’s.
Although they know about the law, and can give perfectly sound advice, it seems lawyers have the same difficulty so many others have in expressing this clearly and unambiguously. It doesn’t worry me, because I can correct it, but I do sometimes wonder how often misplaced commas have unnecessarily complicated the lives of others.
Then again, if everything was perfectly clear and unambiguous, we wouldn’t need lawyers so often – so perhaps it’s deliberate job creation??
EG
My sister saved a substantial amount in a cross-border dispute thanks to legal sloppiness when an American hire car company sued her for damages. They specified the amount they required in “dollars” and this figure was settled on. No mention of *what kind* of dollars. When she payed up, she payed in Australian dollars, saving about 25%. There were complaints from the company, but there was nothing in the final settlement stipulating what currency was to be utilised, bar “dollars”. Now that I think about it, she should have paid in HK$. Then she would have really saved a packet!
I was surprised. The hire car company is a big, well known brand and presumably deals with this kind of thing – suing foreigners – all the time. I thought their legal department would know better.
ISFMA,
No doubt your sister thinks she is very clever, you obviously do; but speaking for myself, if what you say is correct, I would be ashamed of her actions, not boasting about them.
Now I *hate* it when, for example, some ass rushes to leave a corrective comment because one of the Samizdatistas has spelled a word with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘e’, or made some minor error (possibly typo) which doesn’t affect one’s understanding in the slightest. I loath that kind of irritating pedantry.
Suffering,
Do you mean you “loathe” that kind of irritating pedantry? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I agree with you, if you or I misspell a word on this blog it does not really matter. If I am paying a professional person £150 an hour for their advice and expertise, I expect them to be able to write correct and grammatical English. If they can’t manage even that, what else are they getting wrong?
As for the elegant scam of paying Aussie $ when the company must have meant US $, but did not specify the fact, maybe they had their contract drawn up by one of these lawyers who cannot spell or write with grammatical precision? Food for thought?
Chris – you don’t know the facts of the case so you really can’t comment.
Regarding a topic raised but not pursued in this thread, I would like to point out that home education law in the United States derives from a 1950 era court decision Levisson v State of Illinois. Levisson was a Seventh Day Adventist and used religious freedom as a defense, but the judge, probably a proto-libertarian, wrote a very broad ruling. School is any place where learning is imparted to the young, and a home school is no different from any other private school.
At the time we were active in the home school movement the Chicago archdiocese, which runs one of the largest non-government school districts in the country, was a strong lobbying partner. As I recall, Georgia was a much less friendly state for home education.
As for “canard”, that is of course an aircraft with control surfaces forward of the lift surfaces.
I’m with John on the misuse of past tense. There is one phrase, possibly above all else, that I truly loathe, “the lad [or lads] done good” most often used by soccer managers.
As far as I’m concerned, the car hire company was guilty of astounding ethnocentrism and ignorance not to realise that the world is full of dollar currencies, and their legal department failed them. Sloppy thinking and ignorance are scary at any time, but in one’s legal advisor, they can be lethal.
John K writes: If they can’t manage even that, what else are they getting wrong?
Exactly. As I said above, if a lawyer who has been exposed to, and has been living his life within, the English language still hasn’t mastered it by his mid-20s, he is not someone I would want preparing any papers for me. Language is the basic tool of the law. If they can’t master that, they are incompetent.
And lawyers are lucky. They have been learning one of the critical tools of their trade since birth: their language. A surgeon or a 747 pilot only begins to learn to manipulate the critical tools of his trade when he’s reached his late 20s. Yet we expect precision from them, don’t we?
Finally, I see in The Telegraph that Tony Blair’s gang that can’t shoot straight has taken British education down a further notch: pupils taking exams in English will no longer have marks deducted for illiterate spelling. They can spell every single word wrong and still get top marks. That should make for some interesting lawyers in the future!
Why? Because someone someone manipulated a weak agreement for their own advantage? People (companies and clients) do this all the time, it’s human nature. Do you expect customers to take the company’s side every time out of some free market nobility?
As a general principle, and not getting into the specifics of the case, it would seem the party at fault is the rental company for having a poorly written contract which enabled such a thing to happen.
I thought it was a duck.
EG
Of course a canard is a duck! For purposes of debate, it has been used for centuries to describe something intended to delude, or a hoax, or a fabrication. Etc. Actually, I agree with the poster above who said he is partial to this word. It is rather a good word and quite a good weapon in an argument. “And then, of course, we have Bill, bringing up the same old canard about [the blah blah blah]” and Bill is immediately on the defensive.
This is the funniest thing posted on Samizdata since I’ve been reading.
We all seem to have been carried away with the minutiae of ‘correct writing’ and no doubt I am as much or more to blame as anyone commenting here.
However the poor ‘skuling’ is really about much more than just wordsmithing. although I think that is important too.
Just to digress a bit, I spent about 17 years in Hong Kong and the later blog on Samizdata about the Far East trip set me thinking about those days. I worked for a substantial UK company. We kept our expatriate staff to a minimum because it cost a fortune to keep them there. All the secretaries were young Chinese girls mostly in their twenties but some older. Now they all came from a background of a totally alien language competely lacking in any inflexions and moreover with a writing which was in ideographs not alphabetical.
Nevertheless they could be relied upon to produce perfect English copy and would certainly correct mistakes made by English staff and executives.
(I’m talking about the 60s and 70s so the problems were not quite so bad as they are now).
The point is that they were brought up in an education culture that insisted on getting it RIGHT every detail RIGHT not some woolly ‘well you have the right idea’. If some detail was wrong then you got NO
marks – nothing. It used to be like that in UK or at least nearly so.
It is not just that they got their English grammar right but they got almost everything they did right.
The Japanese have a similar if not more rigorous system.
Isn’t this why there is no British motor industry apart from mostly Japanese controlled factories and the same thing seems to be happening in Americal.
And now China is taking the place of old Victorian Britain, Germany, and the USA as the workshop of the world.
You have to get it right, dead right, spot on, exact!!
Oh by the way I built with friends a canard aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and flew it for 13 years including a trip to Egypt. It is a very safe configuration making the classic ‘stall spin’ accident almost impossible.
This is just my opinion, but I find it serves me quite well to be accurate and articulate in things even as trivial as a blog. I find that the people whom I respect generally treat me with respect if I am circumspect in my communication skills. I am not flawless, but I find people are more likely to respect my opinions when they are understandable.
Regarding schooling, it will be over my dead body when my daughter is sent to any school, let alone a state funded, public school. I find (in my personal experience in the U.S.) even the higher education programs (for instance, MSU and U of M here in Michigan) are grossly incompetent when it comes to imparting understanding. I tend to think schools can only impart knowledge, which is a far cry short of understanding or wisdom.
Note: I define knowledge as the accumulation of facts. Understanding is the awareness of how those facts interrelate, and wisdom is how understanding and knowledge are accurately and appropriately applied. Schools cannot begin to appropriate understanding or wisdom.
John – perhaps in Hong Kong. In mainland China I found the standard of written and spoken English to be appalling! Anyone who’s spent much time there will come back with a bunch of funny Chinglish warning signs that don’t make much sense. I read one in the Lonely Planet that went :
On the whole, their knowledge of English is probably considerably better than our knowledge of Mandarin, however.
Now India is a country where *perfect* English is never far away. Perhaps the best English in the world is spoken in India.
Suffering – Indians have an awesome command of English, and it is usually their second language. Yet they are brilliant at it. And they don’t just speak “some” English. They seem to have absorbed the entire language through their pores.
I wonder what Blair’s game is. Is it really his intent to make Britain non-competitive against the sluggish economies of Europe? Can anyone imagine a French education minister announcing that from now on, French schoolchildren won’t be required to conjugate devenir? Are … you … kidding?
Admittedly, Blair is barely able to formulate a grammatical sentence himself and has a problem remembering to put a verb in, so perhaps doesn’t understand the difference. I dunno. It’s very, very weird.
I love listening to a well-educated Indian woman speak English. Such beautiful accents!
Verity – I know what you mean about Indians soaking up English. I became friendly with a very intelligent Chinese woman whilst I was wandering around China. She was an English professor, had extensively studied English literature, the works. She’s also a Colonel in the PLA, but that’s an incidental factor. She’s never left China. Her English is obviously good, but it is very unnatural; as though she’d learned it all from a book but had never spoken to an English speaker before. Contrast that with an ordinary English-speaking Indian, who may not have the theoretical knowledge of my friend, but whose English is nevertheless much more natural, understandable and generally so much better!
And the English left, what, over 50 years ago? Another reason why India is a remarkable country and Indians are remarkable people.
Well, Suffering, I have given this a lot of thought because it is so extraordinary. The thing is, they understand all the subtleties, as well. They can do irony. They are witty in English. They can do puns!
I’ve never talked to a linguist about it, but my personal theory (not to take away from them in any sense whatsoever; I’m filled with awe) is that it is because all our Indo-European languages stem from Hindi. I wonder if that gives them a kind of underlay or something? I mean, is the entire template in their heads or something?
What is your theory? I’ll be talking to an Indian professor of physics next week about something, and I think I’ll ask him!
Verity
Not Hindi; Sanskrit, surely? But check with the Physics Professor by all means.
Verity
I was too hasty and read carelessly. Most Northern Indian languages – Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali &c.- stem from Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is one branch of the Indo-European set of languages, including all European (except, Basque, Hungarian, Finnish – any others? Lapps).
Verity, my educated guess as to why so many Indians seem so fluent in English would be that it has to do with an entrenched history of multi-lingualism (and multi-literacy among the educated). Living with two (or more) languages on a daily basis certainly tends to keep the mind sharp.
I would also assume that one of the contributing factors to the dreadful state of English teaching in the US and Britain (and lackluster public schools) is a tradition of heavily institutionalized monolingualism. IINM Britain is unique in Europe in both the paucity of foreign language classes and awful native language writing skills (the normal state of humankind is not monolingual). A rigorously enforced foreign language curriculum would do wonders for British (and American) schools.
As already mentioned, the major languages of north India (Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati etc) are descended from Sanskrit and thus (very distantly) related to European languages. The major languages of southern India (Tamil, Telugu etc) are not, they’re Dravidian. There have been a number of hypotheses concerning possible relations between Dravidian and other languages, but none are generally accepted by linguists.
Yes, Findlay, Hindi was a sort of plateau of Sanskrit, I think … Indo is just another way of saying ‘Hindo’ or Hindi. So yes, Indo-European languages did derive from Sansrkit, but I think Hindi formed a kind of large delta with lots of rivulets running down it … hmmm, that’s not quite right …
I don’t know, but it is fascinating. Indians who can speak German or French speak those languages perfectly, with an absolute grasp of them. Why is it easier (I don’t mean with less effort, just how their minds grasp the structures) for them to learn French, for example, than for Anglophones to learn French? It is one of the mysteries of the world!
I will talk to the physics professor this coming week and report back to interested parties! Not that he will know, as he’s not a linguist, but being an Indian – I’ll bet he has a theory!!
Michael – I don’t think it has anything to do with multilingualism. That is very simplistic – no offence. The Dutch are bi-lingual, as are the Scandinavians, but I do not think most of them have anything like the breadth – as splendid as they are – of expression and understanding of our language that the northern Indians do. And in fact, the Dravidians are also awfully good at having an absolute – almost instinctive, but how could that be? – grasp of English and other languages.
Certainly, I would agree with you that monolingualism is limiting (and now T Blur is saying children don’t even have to learn to spell their one language correctly, meaning precision of meaning is now out the window in Britain) but I think the ability of Indians, especially those with roots in Hindi, to speak other languages with such fluency and breadth of understanding, is an interesting mystery. Or maybe it’s not a mystery. It may have been solved.
Verity – yes, that’s exactly it! An English speaker can communicate more or less as easily with an Indian English speaker as he can with a native Anglophone, even when taking into account the vagaries of English humour, idioms etc. that leave many Europeans, and even many French Canadians, baffled. Perhaps this quality should be one of the conditions of entry to the forthcoming Anglospheric organisation? If such a body were ever constituted, I really hope the Indians would join.
The Indian command of English is one of the main reasons why I believe they will ultimately prevail over China on the world scene.
I’m very keen to hear what your professor has to say…
Cheerio!
Some wild theories about why Indians speak English so well. It has to do with the multitude of languages in the sub continent but not because they all are able to speak and understand them but simply because they don’t understand each other. English has been used by default among the better educated because it was used by the Raj in pretty well all government activities as a lingua franca. There were some excellent schools set up by the Raj and continued after independence where very high standards of English were used as the medium of instruction. Nothing to do with the distant relations of Sanskrit and other root Indo European languages.
On my last visit to India which was about a project for the ministry of defence I was accompanied by an adviser (consultant) who was a retired general from the Indian army. We had to attend quite a number of meetings involving army, airforce and ministry civil servants. I remarked to the general that I was impressed at the ease which they conducted all the meetings in English – for my benefit. “Nonsense” he said. “These bloody fools can’t understand each other so they always use English”. I’ve purposely used the direct speech of my Indian friend here.
There is more than the language though and undoubtedly there is a great deal of ‘culture’ interchanged with the English too.
The Gymkhana Club bar on a Saturday morning in New Delhi to this day is virtually indistinguishable from any British Club that existed in any part of the old Empire (or Commonwealth). There is a natural affinity between the two cultures; not perhaps with the Gandhis but certainly with the Nehrus.
Don’t forget the British were there for hundreds of years not just a few decades as in Africa.
Verity
Wonderful by-way we’re wandering along.
Oh dear! – we need an expert here! Not that the experts are unanimous about Indo-European, let alone Proto-Indo-European, or even the name: one of the latest is Indo-Hittite.
However, what they do seem to agree about is that Sanskrit is just one branch of the family that arrived in India and other branches – Greek, Italic (Latin), Celtic, Germanic and Slavonic – spread out over Europe, while the now extinct Tocharian penetrated Central Asia. Old Persian, so closely related to Sanskrit that inscriptions in it could be deciphered with its help, evolved into Farsi – and Urdu.
While in the past scholars seemed to have leaned to the view that Indo-European spread out from the region of what’s now the Southern Ukraine, carried by chariot-driving warriors, recently Colin Refrew has put forward the less romantic hypothesis that it spread out slowly from Asia Minor (home of the Hittites 2000BC) as agriculture advanced.
Of all living languages, Lithuanian seems closest to the original Indo-European/Hittite.
John Rippengal, Thank you for explaining history we all learned in school. We knew that English was imposed on India because there were around 100 languages and the Brits thought they needed a common one to communicate and unify the country. You forgot to mention that this imposition of English is one of the things Indians thank us for (along with Common Law, the ICS and the railways) when we speak with Indians in India. This was the practical reason English was imposed. It has absolutely nothing to to with their brilliant mastery of the language. They simply slip into it like a silk shift. They wear it lightly and comfortably and don’t notice it.
(God, they must think we’re such dobbins when we try to learn Hindi!) For some reason, they have the ability to completely encompass the language, speak in complicated sentences without losing a single comma, routinely employ words that would not be understood by a large swathe of today’s Brits, be funny and pun like a native Brit in a way which is rare elsewhere in people using a second or third language. For example, Dutch is very close to English and Dutch people speak our language with fluency and sometimes, no accent whatsoever, yet even they don’t have the ability to loll around in the language as comfortably as Indians do.
“IT SHOULD be a cause of the greatest concern to the Scottish Executive that implementing the McCrone deal on teachers’ pay and conditions in full has not led to happy staffrooms buzzing with discussions about pupils’ projects, but to plummeting morale and teachers huddled in corners complaining about falling standards of pupils’ behaviour.”
Yeah, right, Ron. You took the words right out of my mouth.
Verity.
I thought I was being rather neutral concerning the operation of the Raj and tried to avoid words like impose and views on whether the Indians liked it or not I was just trying to describe the facts. If you want my opinion (you probably don’t) I think overall the Raj was a magnificent achievment and although it had its warts – nothing is perfect – it worked in the end for the benefit of both our nations.
But when it comes to assigning some sort of weird mystique to the Indians’ mastery of English – ‘they slip into it as smooth as silk’ – that really is a load of old baloney.
For a start only a small percentage of Indians actually do speak English with any degree of mastery, indeed the vast majority don’t speak it at all. Those that do, do so because they and their ancestors have been exposed to English culture for centuries and have been to good English or English style schools; schools, incidentally that probably have preserved the rigour and discipline that have disappeared from our own.
This is the bit relevant to the blog.
John Rippengal – I don’t think it’s a mystique. I think it has something to do with the structure of Sanskrit – but I don’t know, obviously.
You are correct that most Indians don’t speak English – therefore they would have few opportunities to demonstrate their facility in the language. The ones who *do* speak it are, by and large, very, very facile in it. It’s not baloney. I know Bengalis who have Hindi and English as their second language, and they have an utter facility in both these second languages.
The Raj imposed English as it imposed the ICS – as a unifying factor to make such a vast country easier to govern. Whether it’s politically correct to say so or not, that was why it was done. And it is why the railways were built. To unify the country. I have yet to meet a single Indian who thinks any of the above was a bad thing. They all seem to be quite pleased with them.
Re England’s education system, it is socialist junk designed to keep children ignorant and keep them wards of the state forever. These ones who aren’t even being taught to spell their mother tongue will never stir up trouble about the NHS or anything else imposed on them by the Gramscians. They will be passive and accepting, which is the idea. Articulate people cause all kinds of trouble. Interesting that many W Indians who can afford it are now sending their children “home” to be educated and get them out of Britain’s socialist sewers.
Verity
I haven’t expressed an opinion on here about the ‘imposition’ of the three benefits so I’m a bit puzzled about why you are being so insistent about them. I do agree that objectively it would be difficult to not approve of the legacy of an impeccable civil service, a lingua franca and the railways. In the matter of colonisation however not all involved are always objective.
I wouldn’t mind betting though that trade came into the picture as much or more than politics when planning the railways.
We shall have to agree to differ over Sanskrit although it is a million miles further away from English in structure and vocabulary than is Dutch which a point that I think has already occurred to you.
John Rippengal – Yes, of course, I agree that the railways were put in for trade – not with some lofty notion of unifying India. That idea was, though, seen as a beneficial side effect. Same reason we got rid of the maharajas. We didn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of princelings.
My point is, Dutch, English, German and all the other Indo-European languages came from Sanskrit. I just think it’s an important point – but it’s conjecture. I don’t speak from any linguistic knowledge.
Verity
Just to make it clear: all other Indo-European languages – Dutch, English, German &c – did NOT, repeat, NOT come from Sanskrit.
Sanskrit was just one branch of the Indo-European (or Indo-Hittite) stock that arrived in India. Other branches, just as venerable, spread out over Europe and one, now extinct, into Central Asia.
Lithuanian has just as much grammatical complexity as Sanskrit, is a living language, and has as good a claim as Sanskrit to be the “original” Indo-European language – but of course it isn’t either.
There is a good deal of evidence that Sanskrit itself was a sort of “resurrected” language, being reconstructed as the original Vedic hymns became incomprehensible. The classic Indian epics – the Mahabharata and Ramayana – are in Sanskrit, but since the women and lower caste characters in them speak the later descendant language Prakrit, they must have been composed (rather than written) when Sanskrit was no longer the vulgar tongue.
Sanskrit is still a ritual language today, rather as Latin was in the Catholic Church till after Vatican II.
To get to the point of English as our legacy to India: in his famous (or infamous, to people who’ve not read it) Minute, Macaulay states that whereas the authorities had to pay Indians to learn Sanskrit, Indians would pay to learn English. Market forces, I suppose.
What did your Physics Professor say?
Verity,
The practise and interpretation of law depends 100% on precision of language.
That’s not really true.
The practice of law depends on how persuasive your argument is or how well you can negotiate and most of that has very little to do with brief writing, drawing up contracts, etc.
Also, most contracts between parties are never haggled over by attorneys. Indeed most contracts are merely forms (like a purchase order) sent between the parties that an attorney never sees unless a problem arises. This why is Article 2 of the UCC has so many “gap-filling” provisions.
Folks have some strange ideas as to what lawyers do in real life.
Conquering India came with costs and benefits to Indians.
As to the railroads, because they were constructed to by-pass the old trading routes of India, they disrupted much of the flow of food and aided in the massive famines that India experienced in the late 19th century.
Gary Gunnels – Thanks for your tips straight from the secret cabal that practises the black art of law – but many of us here are lawyers, have lawyers in the family or have been married or emotionally involved with lawyers. There are probably very few of us who haven’t retained a few lawyers during our lives, so I think we’re talking from an informed point of view.
You are talking about two kind of lawyers – solicitors and barristers. A barrister who couldn’t speak precise and persuasive English would be as comical in court as Groucho in A Night at The Opera. Hilarious chaos.
As for solicitors who can’t formulate contracts and nail them down with the finest of tacks, they run into the problem that car rental company ran into with Suffering’s sister.
How about medicine? How about a doctor who couldn’t spell the name of drugs he was writing on prescriptions? How about a pharmacist with incomplete reading comprehension?
Language is the foundation on which we built the entire edifice of civilisation. And hundreds of thousands of jokes created around mis-hearing or mis-writing a word.
“Lithuanian has just as much grammatical complexity as Sanskrit, is a living language, and has as good a claim as Sanskrit to be the “original” Indo-European language – but of course it isn’t either.”
The idea that Lithuanian is very archaic doesn’t fit the facts. It’s a typical Central/East European language that has a few phonological qualities that were previously hypothesized for some stage of Indo-European but not attested in other modern languages (I forget just exactly what these were).
Anyway, the discovery of a modern language with these qualities was seen to vindicate the work of Indo-European historical linguists. That the language was spoken not so far from the hypothesized homeland of the original Indo-Europeans is probably what got the hype machine rolling and the next thing you know people are claiming it’s identical to Sanskrit and other strange things.
Michael Farris &al.
Let me slip in my irrelevance before this all goes off the blog.
I don’t think one can dismiss the discovery of the “archaic” elements in Lithuanian by Schleicher, who produced a Lithuanian grammar in 1856, as just some sort of “homeland” hypothesis by German nationalist philologists. Merritt Ruhlen “A Guide to the World’s Languages” (1987) accepts his thesis.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that Sanskrit is no more the “original” Indo-European/Hittite language than Lithuanian.
I see (from Ruhlen) that Schleicher was the bloke who introduced the convention of putting the asterisk in front of hypothetical (“reconstructed”) Indo-European words – e.g. *akvas for horse.
Fascinating what random reading can turn up – if one likes that sort of thing!