Group 5 South Asia South East Asia The languages of South Asia South Asia is home to hundreds of different languages Many features of the Indo Aryan language are similar to those of European langua.
Group South Asia South-East Asia The languages of South Asia South Asia is home to hundreds of different languages Many features of the Indo-Aryan language are similar to those of European languages, such as noun gender and various declensions of nouns inflected for subject and no subject cases Tense, case, and prepositions are all indicated by affixes in Dravidian languages History As it gradually assumed responsibility for civil government and education, the company government was divided into 'orientalists' who favored education in local languages like Persian, Sanskrit, and 'westernisers' who favored English language education By the time of Macaulay's Minute English had become necessary for career success, and so education in English was taken up quite widely, English has become the common language of the elite At the end of nineteenth century, due to the development of IT and data processing expertise gave a boost to English in India The current situation For other South Asians, proficiency in English varies widely and the education system is the main source of input Finally, a proportion of South Asians use spoken English in daily life, people use English to show off as a mark their age or position Salient features Shortlist of particularly salient features of South Asian English: Retroflex stops for /d/ and /t/: these are the stereotype feature of the variety Syllable-timing, and relatively lightly marked word stress Intonation characterized by rather short intonation units (so that the placement of sentence stress may seem uninformative) Phonology The phonology of South Asian English depends on the substratum and on the degree of accommodation to RP (or nowadays GA): speakers of different South Asian languages will have different accents, and consequently, as in Britain and the USA, many speakers have strongly regional accents which are hard for outsiders to understand South Asian English has a number of characteristic prosodic features, but these are not very well described Grammar As with other outer-circle varieties, published written usage shows relatively more syntactic differences from British and American standard than they have from each other This means that we can find written varieties which are very close grammatically to British usage, some that differ noticeably, and some that differ so much that they are nonstandard Many of the characteristic lexical items of South Asian English are borrowed BONFIRE NIGHT words referring to local phenomena Others use English elements Most tautonyms (ROBIN words, that is, words that have different meanings in two varieties) are English words adapted with a different meaning There is also a heteronymic compounding element – the borrowed form wallah (3.2.4.1) which forms nouns meaning 'person associated with' and so is equivalent to suffixes like -ite and -ian in other varieties Style and pragmatics The stylistic values attached to words and expressions are often different in Indian English from those in British or American usage, or perhaps stylistic distinctions are neutralized The pragmatics of English in the subcontinent derive, of course, from the subcontinental cultures, and so pragmatic behavior may be very different from British The outer circle 151 or American Even where two cultures create the same niche for an utterance, they may use different verbalization in it Singapore, with a population speaking a variety of Chinese ‘dialects’, Indian languages and local Malay, emphasized English as the main official language It has subsequently moved towards a policy which aims at the Chinese community dropping the ‘dialects’ and becoming bilingual in Mandarin Chinese (the official language of mainland China and Taiwan) and English, Indians in an Indian language and English, and Malays in Bahasa Malaysia and English In Singapore an increasing proportion of speakers have English as a mother tongue – but the local variety rather than Standard English Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 Today, English is very widely used in the education and legal systems and to deal with international business, and is becoming ‘localised’, and used to some extent for everyday interaction among locals who all speak Cantonese The vowel inventory is quite reduced, CLOTH, THOUGHT, CURE, and NORTH / FORCE and START/PALM/BATH are all merged FACE and GOAT are monophthongs, as in many other varieties, and Detering notes that a diphthongal pronunciation of the FACE vowel sounds 'affected' to Singaporeans He also observes that lexical distribution is not always as expected In particular egg and bed have the FACE vowel, not that of DRESS, so that they not rhyme with peg and fed Dental fricatives are often realized as stops A number of words have local stress patterns, some of which, like purchase, look like regularisation based on the spelling Basipetal and mesolectal Singapore-Malaysian English differs rather dramatically from the standard in terms of syntax Subjects and objects can be omitted where they are clear from the context, as in Chinese and MalayFor example as an answer to the question Do you get overtime pay, or can you take time off in lieu? Richards (1977:79) recorded You want to overtime also can, take off, also can ‘If you want (to take) overtime, you can, but if you want to take time off, you can that too’ Correspondingly, as in Chinese, Malay, and many creoles, be as copula (and auxiliary) can be omitted Richards asked It’s pretty quiet running this car park at night, isn’t it? And received the answer This one Ø near the shopping centre, night club, there the good business Ø, that Ø why the government operate the parking here ‘No, it is near the shopping centre and night clubs, there’s good business there, that’s why the government has a parking lot here.’ Gupta (1994) says that the syntax of questions in Singapore Colloquial English – what we are calling the basilect and mesolect – is simpler than that in Standard English and also than that in Malay and Chinese Question words other than why and how are not usually fronted, and inversion(đảo ngữ) is only usual when the verb has the BE or CAN auxiliaries, so that the following question forms are normal: Why you take so many? Go where? She eat what? In Chinese and South-East Asian languages questions often include the equivalent of or (not)? as a question word, and correspondingly local English often has questions like Want or not? You want tea or what? Can or not? Pain or not? The various lects of Singapore/Malaysia English include a great deal of local vocabulary Singlish has a rich supply of local lexicalisations (CRORE words) derived from Chinese dialects Eg: chim/cheem ‘excessively complex/difficult/serious’.: ‘Usually when confronted with something that appears to be more complex, tthe S’porean would exclaim, “Why so CHIM one?” even before s/he begins to read or think about the “something” chope ‘reserve a chair, etc by putting a bag or garment on it’ -> Must chope seat when you go everywhere Foreignisms formed from English lexical material include: heaty, cooling, ‘foods regarded in Chinese tradition as yang (male light positive) and yin (female dark negative) respectively’ Among tautonyms (ROBIN words) one could mention send with the meaning of ‘take’ as in send him to the airport, peon ‘office boy, office porter’ _Although Hong Kong English is generally regarded as an outer-circle variety, it has progressed less far down the Schneider stages (cf 3.3) →It is mainly used in education and interactions with ‘outsiders’ and seems to be more susceptible to outside influence – less endonormative – than the Malaysian/Singapore variety _Hong Kong English shows more influence both from US varieties and from recent innovations in British English than the Singapore variety →More and more young people in Hong Kong are English-educated and have friends and relations in Canada, the USA, and Britain, English is more and more a natural means of expression (Bolton 2000) _The phonology of this variety of English (or more precisely of one type of fairly ‘high’ mesolect) is shown by Deterding et al (2008) to be similar to but not identical with other South East Asian Englishes =>Example: + It is striking that although length/tenseness distinctions like RP/GA /i/ /i:/ are not present, the set of diphthongs is quite large, and FACE and GOAT not appear as monophthongs as they in so many other varieties + Voiced TH often appears as [d] as in many other varieties but the unvoiced equivalent is [f] (or [θ]) but rarely [t], as in Estuary English (4.1.4) +Under the influence of Cantonese, initial /l/ and /n/ may be merged _The syntax of Hong Kong English includes many typical ‘new English’ simplifications, particularly in the noun phrase: systems of countability and singular, definiteness, and so on =>Example: +Local Westerners may use borrowings from Chinese: dim sum (snacks served in local restaurants) and gwailo (‘Westerner’) and from South Asian languages: chit (for ‘bill’ or ‘receipt’), nullah (an open drain or ‘water course’) +The MOB word chop has two homonymous local: ‘stabbed/slashed’ and (borrowed from Chinese and frequent throughout South East Asia) ‘stamped/certified’ A shortlist of particularly salient features of Philippine English _Philippine English derives from US English, normally uses US spelling conventions and vocabulary variants, and is rhotic _There is a range of typical Philippine vocabulary: + borrowings from Spanish (merienda ‘afternoon tea’) +Tagalog/Filipino (kundiman ‘love song’) + loan translations from local languages (since before yet ‘for a long time’) + local coinages (batchmate ‘person who studied, did military service, etc with the speaker’) PHONOLOGY _Philippine English is largely syllable-timed, unstressed vowels are often given their full spelling pronunciation and indeed vowel reduction is a mark of formal speech and careful acrolectal style rather than the other way round +Dental fricatives may be realized as stops, as may /f v/ +Voicing distinctions are often lost between /s/ and /z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ _Under influence from the indigenous languages, Philippine English often: + has unaspirated voiceless stops at the beginnings of words and unreleased stops at the end of words + has dental /t d n l/ Consonant clusters are often simplified _As with other ‘New English’ varieties, word-stress patterns may differ from American norms +US usage has stress on the first syllable but Philippine, even acrolectal, on the second: colleague, govern, pedestal, hazardous _Written Standard Philippine English does not vary syntactically from other standard versions _Typical features of informal writing and speech include: +omission of ‘redundant’ subjects + optional marking of verb agreement and plurality => It is characteristic that these features coexist with sophisticated journalistic constructions – despite not being standard _There are also individual constructions typical of South-East Asian English in general: Almost of the Tagalog speaking population (= ‘almost all of ’) _Philippine English tends to be so full of code-switching and mixing that it is hard to tell what is simply Tagalog and what is borrowed into English + Local lexicalizations (CRORE words), either coined in English: bedspacer-‘person who is sharing a flat’, barkada ‘circle of friends’ + Foreignisms borrowed from Tagalog (BONFIRE NIGHT words) are barong (shirt) 'traditional smart shirt made from embroidered cloth’, lechon ‘roast pig dish’ + From Spanish: maja blanca ‘coconut pudding’ +English lexical material: jeepney ‘taxi on a jeep chassis’ +Heteronyms (THUMB TACK words): ‘yaya ‘nanny, nursemaid’, lumpia ‘spring roll’ and sari-sari ‘corner shop/neighbourhood store’ _Functional phrases differ between varieties, and in the Philippines, one can say for a while when answering the telephone, where other varieties might use just a moment – a sort of pragmatic tautonym _Code-mixing English and Tagalog is, as noted above, a characteristic way for educated people to vary their style +Ex: Number 10 ko, camping camping dito akala ko, OK Roughing it out daw Tapos, when my gf and I got to the camp, naka-RV ang mga hinayupak na Kano; may barbecue grill pa sa pick-up trucks nila! _Nonverbal communication (paralanguage) is of course different in different cultures Filipinos asked directions may simply point with their eyes and lips rather than either pointing with a hand or giving verbal directions ... the Chinese community dropping the ‘dialects’ and becoming bilingual in Mandarin Chinese (the official language of mainland China and Taiwan) and English, Indians in an Indian language and English, ... to English in India The current situation For other South Asians, proficiency in English varies widely and the education system is the main source of input Finally, a proportion of South Asians... world financial and business center with a high standard of living Malaysia is a rapidly developing ‘Asian tiger’ economy The Philippines are poorer, but better off in terms of average income