Pakistan and
the Battle for English
The BBC Urdu service's
Masud Alam, back living in Pakistan after 15 years,
reflects on his countrymen's use of English.
There are only a few video clips
of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, in
the archives of state-run television in Pakistan
and they are aired with unfailing regularity on
occasions of national import.
One excerpt is from a speech in which the father
of the nation says a few lines in Urdu, to rapturous
applause from the crowd, followed by the disclaimer
in English "my Urdu is tangawala Urdu".
(For those not familiar with Mr Jinnah, the man
was as Westernised in his lifestyle as any Lincolns
Inn-educated Indian barrister at the start of
20th Century could be.)
Tangawala means coachman, and perhaps in the early
days of Pakistan's independence, they didn't speak
Urdu very well. They still don't.
The same goes for leaders - politicians
and army generals alike - who succeeded Mr. Jinnah.
A good majority of them couldn't speak the country's
national language fluently.
From Jinnah to the current leader, President Pervez
Musharraf, the preferred language of Pakistani
rulers has been English.
The masses, by general inclination keen to follow
the ruling class, have honestly tried to keep
pace.
But after 60 years of excruciating practice, they
have managed only half the linguistic excellence:
they've learnt to speak bad Urdu but constructing
a grammatically correct sentence in English remains
a challenge.
The language of the urban Pakistani is now a hotchpotch
of Urdu, Punjabi and a few words of English spoken
with an accent that can be understood only by
someone who speaks the same way.
My daughter is learning this cocktail language
and having fun with it. The other day she had
a conversation with the man who runs the canteen
at her school, that went something like this:
"Can I have chips?"
(In Urdu) "Finish."
"You must have some left?"
"All finish."
"This is not fair. You want us to bring our
own potatoes to school?"
"And isle."
"Sorry?"
"Isle? Isle... for frying."
When her friends elbowed her into recognizing
that it was "oil" the man was talking
about, they all had a good laugh.
But things can get a little more complicated when
such cryptic talk is done over the phone, with
a complete stranger.
At a friend's place of work I overheard a man
calling up the computer help desk. "I can't
assess the drive," he complained.
"But that's my job, what exactly is your
problem?" is what I assume the person on
the other end must have said.
Our man kept repeating that his inability to "assess
the drive" was the problem.
After a few minutes of totally incoherent exchanges,
the poor helper finally realized the problem was
"access".
The first generation of Pakistani bureaucrats
and military officers had derived their entire
English vocabulary from Rudyard Kipling's The
Jungle Book, the booklets of Standard Operating
Procedures found in military and bureaucratic
circles, and the official correspondence with
lowly functionaries of the British Raj.
On social occasions, this word bank was embellished
with phrases like "jolly good" and "old
chap" to sound authentic - often to the amusement
of the gora sahib (foreign master). But after
1947, in this brand new country of Pakistan, there
was no white-skinned patronizing colonist to frown
or frolic at the sight and sound of a subject
trying too hard to speak like the master. This
emboldened the native no end.
He was now free to choose English over his mother
tongue. And he did so with relish.
However his vocabulary was limited to the world
of officialdom, as it existed in 1940s British
India. To overcome this handicap he took to improvisation,
and in the process, made valuable additions to
the English language.
Gen Musharraf, the army chief, is the epitome
of this creative trend.
He deposed an elected prime minister and installed
himself as the "chief executive" rather
than the old-fashioned "chief martial law
administrator" - the epithet preferred by
three generals and for some time, by a civilian
prime minister, before him.
He is also the proud manufacturer
of the term "enlightened moderation",
the meaning of which is being debated years after
it was coined.
He showed his flair for linguistic innovation
more recently when he suspended the chief justice
of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, by making him
"non-functional".
He is now very disappointed that the flourish
is lost on the country's lawyers who are engaging
in mass protests against the chief justice's "suspension".
Lower down the order, the government functionaries
continue to show the same zest at modernizing
English language in their day-to-day business.
The Capital Development Authority is on a binge
of road-making these days. One such project is
the upgrading of a two-lane road into a dual carriageway.
It is labeled "dualisation" - a word
three online dictionaries I consulted, have yet
to recognize.
To the common man, English is still a wild horse
he'd like to mount every now and then but one
he cannot tame. Year after year English remains
the single most likely subject students at all
levels flunk.
Even those who passed their English exams and
made it to the present parliament - for which
university education was mandatory - are not always
known to have a comfortable relationship with
English.
Punjab province's Chief Minister, Pervez Elahi,
is among those few who seem to correctly guess
Gen Musharraf's profound ideas like enlightened
moderation.
His most recent demonstration of this talent was
seen last month when he lifted a court-imposed
ban on kite flying to celebrate the festival of
Basant. (The kites, with glass shards glued to
the string, are notoriously dangerous.)
It was pure enlightenment. But when the move resulted
in killing several people in Lahore - as the court
had cautioned against – Mr. Elahi refused
to extend the permission to other cities. That
was moderation.
But not all ministers have the same level of perception
when it comes to expressions in English language.
When the law minister, Wasi Zafar, was recently
described as the "long arm of law" by
a local journalist, the minister mistook it for
an expression in his native Punjabi which roughly
translates into "up yours".
His apt response, on national TV, was: "If
anyone gives me the long arm, my long arm to his
whole family." (Courtesy BBC)
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