Frank Talk: What Accent, Doctor? [Archives:01:2000:lastpage.htm]

Dr. Pramod Kumar
Taiz University

Kafkasqe hallucination? Another bread-earner changed into a cockroach?
Not entirely. However, there was no denying it, I had been metamorphosed.
It was a very good morning and the moment I work up, I knew it has
happened. When it grips you, you had better accept it. With the intention
to leave nothing to imagination, I applied the time-tested methods. I rubbed
myself rigorously. It was still there. I shrugged my shoulders. It could
not be shrugged off. And, with the acid-tests done, I knew, I had arrived.
I had changed into an American and that too, a thoroughbred American.

The genesis, as I think, could be traced to my dream last night. It
did the trick or, may be, it started a bit earlier, during the day. It
so happened that a local scholar, one of the truly enlightened souls, inquired
of me, ‘what accent, Doctor?’, expecting thereby an either/or response,
‘American’ or ‘British’. Simply he was querying whether to follow one or
the other speech model. But to my ears it sounded like a request to explain
the concept of quantum tumble.
I stood puzzled and non-plussed. Nevertheless, I stood my ground. Mentally,
I kept on repeating the question and appealing to God to bail me out of
this tangle, mixing up the question and the appeal in my confusion. This
could hardly have taken more than a split second but, to me, it seemed
like an eternity. Simple got restored to my face as m y answer arrived.
I am sure and confident tone I advised him, ‘Follow the Yemeni accent,
my boy. Be yourself.’

What I told him was my waking mind but my impulse was with America.
And, the impulse took me.
Now that I was cock-sure as to my new identity as an American, I gave
myself a lusty pat on my back, congratulating myself whole-heartedly for
the new avaton. And why not, a life-time dream, at long last, had come
true.
The world appeared a play-ground to me. As I ventured out into the
desolate, choaked streets of what- used-to-be my nativity, I was confounded
by the extent of naivety and rusticity among the local inhabitants. It
was a raw sensation, the thrill of a nestling a wing on its maiden flight.
I felt on top of the world. as I looked down on the multitude, for there
was no other way to look but down, I was appaled by the sight of general
squalor, filth and clumsiness. It made my shoulders droop a little at the
thought of ‘the white man’s burden’. All the time, I thanked my star, I
had escaped from all this into the fraternity of a superior clan.

Alas! It did not last long. My sensational climb up deflated like pin-pricked
balloon. To my utter dismay, I found myself deconstructed in an instant.
What undid me was a nagging doubt growing at my heart: ‘ Is it me?’ This
acted the spoilsport. I had a fleeing I was in a no-man’s-land, caught
between the devil and the deep sea, one I reject and the other rejects
me.
My euphoria melted under the glare of introspection. I could now recognize
my original impulse as an attempt to impersonate and not transform. I was
acting the copy-cat. It had happened before. Going down the memory lane,
in India which underwent extended periods of foreign rule, Arabic and English,
in turn, became the coveted medium of the upward mobile. In England, similar
trend was evident when the Normans were in control. It was clear that imitating
peer group for favour, fashion or exigency is the natural tendency in man.
It is manifest not only in the sphere of language but also in matters of
dress, food, social customs.

So, how could I possibly rationalize my advise to the budding protg
to cultivate his own accenta, a Yemeni one?
I postulated that if we have to use a foreign tongue extensively and
intensively, we must develop vested interest in it and use it on our own
terms. As a safe-guard against transgression, I proposed a measuring rod
having three scales. First, the criterion of legitimacy, i. e, his message
must be clearly and unambiguously communicated in all its subtle nuances;
and finally, the criterion of approximation, i. e, his speech must sound
as close as possible to that of the native speakers.

Selecting a model for approximation depended to a large extent of non-linguistic
considerations. American and British accents were both linguistically equally
tenable and second. It would be a matter of preference. And the way the
Australians and the Canadians were pushing regionally as well as globally,
it might not be long before their accents would be in active contention
for a place under the sun.
as can be seen today, in spite of the dialectical variations, the variant
forms have not drifted apart to an extent as to make comprehension tenuous.
The simple rule for a non-native speaker is to see that his speech do not
put too much strain on the native ear. Devian forms do pose serious problems
when they tend to deface or mutilate language beyond recognition. There
is an amusing anecdote about an Indian political leader on a trip to London
straying into the Hyde Park to make a speech. An English bystander, when
the show was over, wanted to know in which language the speech was delivered.
He was told that the guy was speaking English.

Whatever the hazards, English having acquired the pride of place as
Lingua Franca must be domesticated and naturalized in its regions of domicile.
It is interesting to note that more people in the Indian subcontinent use
English than England, Australia, Canada and New Zeland put together. It
is incumbent that the language develop a distinct regional flavour, a smell
of the soil, entirely its own. It will not-earn legitimacy unless it does
so. Yemen must also grow with its brand of English.
Flattening, slurring, clipping, swallowing the constants, vowels and
diphthongs and tottering over prosodic features such as aspiration stress,
intonation, at times, produce comic effects. But life is ruthless and impatient
in its exploitation of tools at its disposal. It can not wait for language
to put on bridal dress to woo. It has to make do with its business whether
the lip-stick is on or not.

In his charming play, ‘Pygmalian’, popularized as a block-buster Hollywood
movie, ‘My Fair Lady’, Bernard Shaw treats the nation of correctness in
pronunciation as of seminal concern in the sphere of social behavior. In
his inimitable style he exaggerates the issue to the limits of hilarity.
In spite of the mock-seriousness adopted as a posture by the dramatist,
one gets the impression that the subject is essentially cosmetic in nature
and the comedy is the result of this very distortion and disproportionate
emphasis. Prof. Higgins fails as a human being due to his inability to
accept ÉÉDoolittle for what she is, her natural self . He
seems affected and incapable of human emotions. As an expert in linguistics,
he shows signs of blindness in his inability to see the beauty of a language
form rooted in the commerce of life itself. He shows ignorance of the fountainhead
that nourishes and revitalized language through its day-to-day transactions.
But that is how our impeccable Shaw can suppress and express!

What I suggested to my young scholar was Pygmalian in inverse. I heard
him some six months later as he connected on phone. I was amazed by his
effortless articulation. He had taken to American accent as a parrot to
human sounds. He was eager to impress me. I enjoyed his flourish. Before
he hung up, he did not forget to thank me for the advice rendered to him
not so long ago, ‘to be himself’. Evidently, he had taken to the peer accent
as a hungry infant taken to its mother’s breast. I wished him all the best
as I watched his proud shadow gliding down the Pygmalian corridor of possibility.

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