A few weeks
back, I started reading “The White Tiger”.
It is a novel written by Aravind Adiga, an Indian author and journalist. In
2008, “The White Tiger” won the “Man
Booker Prize”, which is literary prize awarded for the best original
full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the
Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe.
I have now read the first three chapters of the
novel, and I have to say I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. The books that
the teachers choose for us is in my experience
not that fun to read, but this time I actually enjoyed the book. I have read
117 pages, which is approximately 1/3 of the book, and I have finally started
to understand the story and who the different characters are. At first it was a
bit confusing with all the different names and places, but it is more understandable
further into the novel. The main character is Balram
Halawi, the white tiger. He was called a white
tiger by a school inspector because he was a rare kind in his village Laxmangarh.
Laxmangarh is a village in a part of India known as “the Darkness”, where the
people are poor, and your destiny is determined by your caste.
Balram
Halawi narrates his life in a letter to the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao,
who is visiting India shortly. He wants to tell the Prime Minister the true
story about India, and to tell the story of how he went from just being the son
of a rickshaw-puller to, according to himself, a successful entrepreneur. Through
several letters, Balram tells how he got successful through his own efforts. He
even revels that he had to kill his beloved master Mr. Ashok on his way to
become an entrepreneur.
In my
opinion, the story was a bit slow in the beginning, but it is getting more and
more exiting. He has not told why he killed Mr. Ashok, and the reveal of this
is what I look forward to the most.
English is one of fore official languages in Singapore, and Singapore English is divided into two different sub-forms, Standard Singapore English (SSE) and Singapore Colloquial English. Singapore was a British Colony from 1819-1965, and like in many of the other nations that were British colonies in the past, English has maintained a firm ground. English was the administrative language of the British colonial government, and the Singaporean government chose to keep English as their main language, when they gained self-government in 1959 and independence in 1965. This decision to keep English was made in order to maximize the economical prosperity of Singapore, as well as being a lingua franca for the various different ethnicities and cultures of Singapore.
Standard Singapore English resembles British English in its’ grammar and way of writing, but the pronunciation. Unlike SSE, Singapore Colloquial English (Singlish) includes linguistic features from Malay, Mandarin and Hokkien. Singlish is not commonly used in formal speech or writing, due to it´s reputation of being a low-prestige form of English. Wikipedia states, on based on various sources, that 71% of Singapore´s population in 2010 spoke English as their native or second language. These are quite a few Singaporeans!
This video displays some Singlish charateristics.
South Africa (by Jørgen F.)
In South-Africa there was apartheid for 46 years, from 1948 to 1994. The white European descendants controlled South Africa, and used apartheid to suppress the natives/ black people. Because of this, the South-African English today is very affected by the British English. English is only one of the eleven official languages in South-Africa. That also means that The South-African English not only is affected by the British, but also by the ten other languages in the country.
What characterizes the South-African English depends on the form. In South-Africa there are three different forms of English, often referred to as “The Great Trichotomy”, or just three groupings. The three different forms have are much affected by the social varieties. The most formal and "finest" of the three forms is the Cultivated. This type of English is often associated with the upper class. The second type is called General, and is a social indicator of the middle class. The third type of English is called Broad, this form of speaking is mostly associated with the working class. It is also in many ways similar to the other official language Afrikaans. In other words, the more formal the setting, the more British English they talk in South-Africa, and the more informal the occasions are, the more influenced by the other official languages in the English is.
A scene taken from the film Invictus, South African accent.
India (by Sindre G.)
The British first arrived in India in the early 1600s and they established trading posts in a number of cities under the control of The East India Company. Over the next hundred years, the British influence grew to a much greater extent, and English became the administrative language. The British did not force their language on the Indian population, but it was slowly accepted as the language of the government, the national press and the social elite. India became a British colony in 1858, and it stayed so until 1947. The intentions of the Indian government after they gained their independence, was that English gradually would be phased out as the administrative language. The government had problems finding a language to replace English, due to the fact that there are many different languages, so choosing one as the national language became almost impossible. Even Gandhi, who was a proponent of a native variety as a national language, expressed that his message was most widely understood when he used English. Therefore, English stayed as a strong language in India, wieldy used in the media, the government and higher education. Recent studies shows that nearly 4% of the Indian population speak English as their main language. This equals to approximately 35 million speakers. India is the largest English speaking country in the world, apart from America and the UK.
English is mostly taught as a second language. Many Indians are therefore strongly influenced by the linguistic habits of their first language. Because there are large diversities in the Indian language and culture, there are also different accents depending on where in India, and the social background of the speaker. Some Indians speak English with an accent very close to a Standard British accent, while others lean towards a more vernacular accent. The diversity is so large that some words can even have different meanings in different parts of India. The grammar, such as the accents, is influenced by the native language of the speaker. Indians tend to often use idioms literal translated from their own native language, although this is less common amongst the proficient speakers, who also tend to use grammar closer to standard British. Down below is a video showing many of the different accents.
A sampling of different Indian English Accents.
Comparison
All of the countries above were British colonies, and bear linguistic traits from the colonial times. Local languages and others have influenced the further development of the English, differentiating the varieties today. They serve to some degree as a lingua franca in the Singapore, South Africa and India, but aren´t necessarily the mother tong of the majority of the population. By looking at some characteristics for these English varieties they can be recognized.
This post was written as collaboration post with two of my fellow students. Links to their blogs:
Watching
the movie “The Great Debaters” really
opened my eyes for the horrifying history of lynching. The term lynching
apparently originates from a man named Charles Lynch, who headed an irregular
court in Virginia that used unorthodox methods to punish loyalist supporters of
the British during the American Revolutionary War. Lynching is defined as murder by mob.
During the
time period 1882, the first year with reliable sources, to 1968, the year when
the classic form of lynching had disappeared, a total of 4,743 lynches took
place in the United States. Even though this is a terrible high number, but it
is know that not all of the lynches were recorded. The majority of the people
who were lynched were black, but there were also many white victims. 3,446 of
the killed were black men and women, and 1297 were white. Many of the white victims
were lynched for helping the black or being against lynching.
Most of the
lynching took place in the south, and the state with the highest lynching was Mississippi,
with 539 black victims and 42 white. Mississippi was followed by Georgia with 492
black victims and 39 white, Texas with 352 and 141, Louisiana with 335 and 56,
and Alabama with 299 and 48. Even though lynching took place in most states in
the US, there are also some states without any records of lynching from 1882 to
1968. These few states are Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Alaska, Connecticut,
and Massachusetts. There are also some states did not lynch any black to
record, Arizona, South Dakota, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Vermont, and Nevada.
From 1882 to 1901, the annual number of lynches nationally usually exceeded 100.
The record holder is 1892, with 230 recorded deaths, 161 black and 69 white. The
amount of lynches declined somewhat in the twentieth century, there were still
97 in 1908, 89 black and 8 white, 83 in the 1919 76 black and 7 white, 30 in
1926 23 and 7, and 28 in 1933 24and 4. The numbers continued to decline until
the classic form of lynching had disappeared in 1968.
This is a gruesome
and horrifying part of the American history, and it is terrifying to think that
this was something that happened just 50 years ago.
I have now read the first three chapters of the
novel, and I have to say I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. The books that
the teachers choose for us is in my experience
not that fun to read, but this time I actually enjoyed the book. I have read
117 pages, which is approximately 1/3 of the book, and I have finally started
to understand the story and who the different characters are. At first it was a
bit confusing with all the different names and places, but it is more understandable
further into the novel. The main character is Balram
Halawi, the white tiger. He was called a white
tiger by a school inspector because he was a rare kind in his village Laxmangarh.
Laxmangarh is a village in a part of India known as “the Darkness”, where the
people are poor, and your destiny is determined by your caste. 
