Research Thesis Dissertation

World Englishes and Variations in Received Pronunciation
Ohidur Rahman
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.
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.
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, ‍so many foreign words are pouring in the English language like the surrounding rainfall pouring in the pond relatively full of water.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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, you 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.”
(Published in Morning Tea of The Daily Sun on 26/09/14)

"Ripley's, Believe It or Not".
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I can write about many persons. I believe something interesting, though it will remain unbelievable to others.
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Anyway, if those write-ups are verified by those who know the persons written about, I'll hopefully be marked correct.
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On the other hand, even my closest persons can hardly write correctly about me........"Ripley's, Believe It or Not".
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I'm the most unexplored person, though trying to explore me is unnecessary. It becomes worthy only in case of the great people or celebrities.
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Nevertheless, if you're interested, the only option you have is you try to develop some insight in the first hand and then try to explore me, no matter how close and well-known I'm to you. The reason is as simple as the following: I haven't dragged anything good before you that I do.
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The even more interesting thing to me is what my closest friend said to me in 2000, "You're open to me, nothing left to know about you. All the same, I'm secret to you. You hardly know about me".
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Contrarily, to my understanding I know him out and out". And I presume if I write about him, it'll be a PhD research paper.
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[Ohidur]
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[Earlier posted on 18 September 2015]

God-gifted doctors vs human doctors | Lifestyle vs medicines

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A Sustainable Satisfaction
(...Ohidur...)
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Attending a presentation undergoes a dilemma followed by speculations of benefits or outcomes. So was the case with my friend who also turned up eventually.
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The audience turn up either earlier for get-together or late in order to make up a little loss as if what else they may gain other than the speech(es).
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What hardly prevails is the satisfaction, no matter how less or much they acquire. What it indicates is that, if the satisfaction still prevails, the presentation accrues a huge success. And this remains life-long since such a one is utterly rare. And today it was one such.
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Dr Obaid Hamid had a long journey from Australia. Then after his plenary sessions in the 7th BELTA international conference his mental journey overtook his natural visits to his near and dear ones like any other expatriate’s. He collected the most suitable data authentically, organised them properly, precisely and orderly.
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The outstanding part of his talk lies in his neutrality. He was refrain from any personal imposition but with proportionate overtone. He consciously and judiciously dealt with the negative issues without hurting neither the national image nor any policy maker nor the common follies of the countrymen. Still his inner urge for any improvement to the prevalent linguistic destitution was dripping out.
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His painstaking journey of data collection, his reflections over them and his descent pedigree and approach to the presentation curtailed a huge time of ours and of those who intend to work on a similar research.
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(...Ohidur...)
[Posted earlier on 11/02/14]

Socrates
(...Ohidur...)
Statistically speaking 99.99% of the people is not emvolved in any research. As a result, those people are supposed to misinderstand the rest 0.01% researchers, let alone Socrates.

(পরিসংখ্যান দৃষ্টিভঙ্গিতে বলা যায়, জনগণের 99.99% কোনও গবেষণায় জড়িত থাকে না। ফলশ্রুতিতে, ঐ জনগোষ্ঠী বাকি 0.01% গবেষকদের ভুল বোঝে, আর সক্রেটিসের কথা বলাই বাহুল্য।)
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