|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Monday, 08 November 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
English: from rags to riches by L. V. Cabral English language belongs to Indo-European family of languages. In the old English, words from several sources like Germanic, Norse, Romanic were distinguishable. Evidently, in the days gone by English was a dialect, a form of speech used by the peasants in England until the king Alfred (871-99) dethroned Latin and enthroned English. Even in the time of William Shakespeare it is apparent English was not a renowned world class langauge. In 1582 scholar Thomas Mulcaster commented that "English tongue is of small account stretching no further than this island of ours nay not there overall." Thomas More published Utopia in Latin not in English. In the past, French, German, Spanish and Italian had more fluent speakers and writers than English. Bill Bryson says in Mother tongue "It is an irony that a dialect used by the peasants should one day the most successful language in the world". Saint Augustine 597 A.D. introduced Christianity to England and the Christianized Anglo-Saxons embraced the new faith and put up churches and monasteries and practised their new, religion. All religious observances and rituals were conducted in Latin. Thus English was enriched by Latin religious words like angel, disciple martyr, shrine and the like. In the course of time when Christianity flourished more and more Latin religious words were absorbed successfully by the English linguists. When English was only a dialect, French, Italian, Spanish were the predominant languages in the west. Apparently, the members of the royal family and aristocrats in England has used French in their speech and writing with each others. Traditionally, the members of the royalty and aristocrats in the West had gone to Paris to drink deep at the fount of Sorbonne University, the nucleus of French civilization. After learning French langauge, literature, history, culture and refinement the members of royalties and aristocrats had returned to their countries where they were accorded right royal welcome by the people who thought they were fully-fledged personalities fit for ruling them. It is apparent Catherine, the Empress of Russia had absorbed French culture in Paris. On returning to Russia, she was honoured with the cognomen, the epithet Great. Thereafter she was called Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. Almost all the languages as a rule borrow words from other languages but British especially have been very liberal and broad-minded in borrowing words and enriching their mother tongue and evolving her from a few thousand words to over millions of words. From the humble beginning English has evolved to be the lingua franca of arts, science, diplomacy, literature, business, trade and travel. It has been revealed that English has been the spoken langauge of ten percent of the world's population, official langauge of eighty seven territories, half of all the books and magazines in the world are published in English, about seventy percent of international mail and telexes written and addressed in English, eighty percent of all computer text is stored in English and eighty two percent of all home pages are cast in English. Further, eighty three percent of students in the European Union are studying English. Since 1989, the Pasteur society has published three of its most important scientific journals in English, at the head quarter of Airbus, a consortium of French Spanish companies in Toulouse, France, the working langauge is English. In our country, international schools, private institutes, tutories, tuition classes have cropped up all over with the sole objective of imparting a good knowledge of English. Further more, the universities have commenced intensive courses for the under graduates to obtain a good command of English for their higher studies, the Government too has taken steps in the right direction to promote the teaching of English in the national schools and train teachers to impart lessons in proper English. After obtaining freedom, (swaraj) from the British, Rajagopalchri, a freedom fighter with Mahatma Gandhi, declared in his speech at the convocation at the university of Madras "English is a gift granted to the Indians by the goddess Saraswati. So it is the obligation of the Indians to safeguard, taken advantage of and uphold it." A dialect of the peasants of England to develop into the global language is truly a success story. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
