World Englishes - Linguistics ELT

A bag, water and some food were discovered in the landing gear compartment once the place touched down at Heathrow, the police said.

Stowaway falls from Kenya airways plane into a South London garden A man is believed to have dropped to his death from a plane flying over London, after his body was discovered in a residential garden on Sunday. The man appe...

Amar Sonar Bangla আমার সোনার বাংলা Lyric & Translation This is the National Anthem of Bangladesh. It is written and composed by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. It has been added with Bangla lyric and its English Translation. ... The lyric is as follows: আমার সোনার বাংলা My Bangla Land, the Gold

Learning English: Comedy with Subtitle ... English is international and as such is most widely used officially and in daily life. There are many other reasons that make the language harder for any...

World Englishes and Variations in Received Pronunciation
Ohidur Rahman
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Think about the main difference between English and many other languages in the world. English is an international language and is widely used all over the world. The more a language is used, the more it is used by different kinds of people. The more it is used by people from different countries and distances, the more it is used officially and in daily affairs. The more it is used by learned people, the more the language will turn vast and versatile. In other words, such a language will rapidly be expanding particularly its vocabulary and behave variably and dimensionally. And these all are only applicable in the language English, the one and only. Thus, it is obviously clear that English is supposed to be more difficult and complex many times.
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Imagine, there are two ponds which are same in height, area, length and width. But one thing is not the same—the water that one pond is holding is not going to be the same compared to that of the other pond. Suppose, one is almost full but the other one is almost empty even when they are having same amount of rainfall. But why? It is mainly because one which is almost empty is getting the rainfall and the other one is getting the same amount of rainfall and at the same time the surrounding rainfall is also coming down to the pond because it has lower banks or sides. So it is clear English is like the pond which is almost full and a language like Bangla is almost empty.
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Since English is widely used by the people from all over the world, it borrows a lot of words from different languages every year, the total number of words is getting bigger. Actually a lot of foreign words are pouring in English language like the surrounding rainfall pouring in the pond relatively full of water.
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If we look at vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, structures, formal and informal English, they vary to a large extent in British, American, Australian, and even in different continents particularly in Indian and African Englishes.
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If we compare English in terms of listening skill with Bangla and probably most of the languages what we can realise is that listening skill in English is much more difficult and complex than the others. Imagine, an English speaking person who is practicing Bangla and has already developed somewhat listening skill, can equally understand someone’s speech as a part of dialogue, news presentation, music/songs, deliberation of a lecture, talks about a religion, sports, diseases, expression of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, failure or success. It is so mostly because the pronunciation of every Bangla word in these different situations is almost the same and the speed is also relatively the same. At the same time, there are no forms of contractions and no substantial differences between formal Bangla and informal Bangla. Be it a song, news presentation, dialogue in a drama, quarrelling among people and so on.
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On the other hand, look at the same situation in which listening in any of the situations the English pronunciation, its speed and especially the informal English usually vary from situation to situation. An English learner finds pronunciation much easier in news presentation but the sentence structures and the choices of words make him/her fail to understand the news. He will find difficulty in understanding a dialogue in a drama or conversation because the pronunciation will be very condensed and contracted and at the same time, the speed will be too fast. If he watches a film on television, he will find the pronunciation too tricky and contracted (I’ll, I’m, I can’t, I won’t, I’ve, I’d) and the dialogues so fast. And above all, consider English music, be it rock and roll, hard or soft, pronunciation will be too tricky due to the muttering in pronunciation mixed with music and the use of contraction and informal language structure mixed with the colloquial or the use of slangs. No matter how much he is proficient in listening to news, watching dramas or films, he will be unable to understand most of the English music. He will also face such troubles because of the differences between British, American and Australian English languages in terms of pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and structures.
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Correct pronunciation is a skill which can be acquired if practiced constantly, intensively and extensively. Some of the examples are cited below:
‘c’ is very tricky as regards pronunciation and spelling. Sometimes, it is pronounced like in Bangla ‘চ’, ’ছ/স’, ’শ’ and ‘ক’. Look at the following words: Assoc(শ)iate Professor, assoc(স/শ)iation, C(চ)hauc(শ)er, c(শ)hauffeur, c(শ)harlatan, Americ(ক)a, etc.
Bangla is syllable-timed but English is stress-timed. It makes English more difficult and complex. For example: ‘Saddam’ in Bangla is pronounced ‘Sad-dam’ but in English ‘Sadam’.
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Similarly, discussion in the light of pronunciation may follow. Where ‘r’ is almost not pronounced in British English, it is extremely pronounced in American English. When ‘আ (আকার)’ is pronounced in BrE, ‘অ্যা (য-ফলা আকার)’ is mostly pronounced in AmE such as dance, bastard, Chancellor, etc. When ‘অ’ is pronounced in BrE, ‘আ (আকার)’ is mostly pronounced in AmE such as not, college, etc. Besides, in the word ‘laboratory’ the last ‘o’ is silent in BrE but the first ‘o’ is silent in AmE. In AmE ‘t’ is sometimes pronounced like ‘d’ and ‘r’ in words like ‘beautiful’, ‘later’ ‘letter’ etc. What is even more extreme is that in the word ‘want’ the alphabet ‘t’ is silent in AmE.
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A personal story may be worth-mentionable. An English man who just finished teaching English in Japan was visiting Rajshahi and happened to meet me. We became friends and spent some days together. Once we were talking about fruits and at one point I asked him whether lichi (pronounced lici/লিচি) is available in England or not. He tried to recognize it but failed. I tried my best to explain like—it is almost round and a little bigger than a grape; it is green but gets reddish when it is ripe; you can peel off and have the juicy and tasty kernel (interestingly, colonel and kernel are pronounced the same and are homophones) and then you will see a seed either smaller or bigger, the smaller the tastier. Still he could not trace it. As we were walking we came across the depot (‘t’ is also silent in the words ‘debut’ and ‘Godot’) of different fruits including lichis. He saw lichis and shouted with exclamation, “Hey Chad, your are talking about lichi (laichi/লাইচি)! Lichis are available in England in abundance and they are absolutely tasty. Oh, I’m sorry Chad, I couldn’t get you.”
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(Published in Morning Tea of The Daily Sun on 26/09/14)
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