19 August 2010

Writing under sexist rules

After spending days or even weeks in a foreign land, switching back into your mother tongue does not always happen easily and could leave you thinking differently. You might even find yourself hyper-sensitive to points of language you never noticed before like gender in language and grammar.

Consider the French language. In conversation, a female must remember to add an extra -e to certain adjectives. For example, when using the adjective content to mean happy or pleased, the -e must be added so as to produce the female form of the word.

Similarly, for nouns, the correct article le or la must be used to denote the grammatical gender of the word. In French, grammatical gender usually corresponds to natural gender, so nouns that have female referents use the feminine articles une and la; nouns that have male referents use the masculine articles un and le. Nouns that have referents without gender distinctions have to be learned on a case-by-case basis, e.g. la table, le bureau.

For non-native speakers who are trying to speak as fluently as possible, concentration levels are already high so the extra onus of remembering to distinguish yourself as female can be difficult and cumbersome.

Gender specification through language does not pose problems to learners alone. The French authorities are struggling to find accepted, non-sexist forms of nouns to denote certain professions. Following a plan laid down by the French government to combat sexism in the late 1980s, disagreements have arisen with the body governing the use of the French language, l'Académie française.

For professions such as writers and company bosses, the accepted form is a masculine noun, écrivain and chef respectively. The new initiative proposes that the female forms of these nouns should be écrivaine and chefesse. Here enters rhyming embarrassment. Feminizing the word chef with the suffix -esse has created a word which rhymes with the French word for buttocks, fesses. The added -e on to écrivain has created a word which means vain or empty, vaine.

Feminists are protesting at these proposed changes because they actually reinforce sexism. They say these new words promote connotations of weak, vain women or focus attention on physical attributes of the female body – altogether making a joke out of a proposal which is supposed to make everyone happy and equal.

So, what about the English equivalents? Slowly and subtly we have been doing the opposite of the French, and replacing our gender-specific nouns. For example, television and newspapers seem to have phased out the word actress to replace it with actor regardless of the sex of the person in question.

Indeed, Collins English Dictionary includes the following note:

'Use of the word actress to refer to a female who acts is old-fashioned. The gender-neutral form is actor.'

Whereas France wishes to separate men and women in language as in other areas – arguably keeping the sexism debate alive – English opts to ignore this and puts everyone in the same category.

With the centenary of International Women's Day approaching in March next year, the organization is asking women writers to come forward to contribute towards a special global arts initiative for 2011. The question is, however, will they be able to write in their own languages without sexist language flowing through their pens onto paper?

Rachel Hanretty

www.collinsdictionary.com

2 August 2010

Indian English

With David Cameron's visit to India in the news, our attention at Collins Language is drawn to the linguistic variety of the subcontinent. By a conservative count, India has 415 languages. English is one of them. After the United States, India has more English speakers than any other country – more than 90 million of them – who generally use it as a second or even third language. To them may be added many millions in Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as millions more in other countries. The British were on the subcontinent from the seventeenth century onward as traders, colonizers, missionaries, soldiers, and administrators, culminating in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Imperial Raj (reign). Even after independence in 1947, the use of English did not decline. In fact, it grew with the rise of the internet, satellite communications, and India-based call centres for foreign companies' telemarketing and technical support.

Statistics are always in flux, and generalizations always hazardous, in the second most populous country on earth. Twenty-two Indian languages have more than a million native speakers. That fact alone guarantees that the Indian English spoken by a bilingual or multilingual person will reflect a native language, whether it be Hindi, the official, most widely spoken one or, in order of population, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, and Gujarati. Though spelling usually follows British English, which also may confer social prestige on its users, Indian English differs in many ways. Its syntax, usages, and pronunciations are rich pickings for comedians though Indians also make fun of themselves, helped by the habit of using seemingly pompous formulations such as beginning a business letter with 'Respected Sir' and ending it with 'Please do the needful', or asking, 'What is your good name, sir?'

Word order may appear wrenched to non-Indian ears. Some short words like also, but, and only may be tagged for emphasis at the end of sentences, or repeated: 'We talked about books only only.' Like only, itself can emphasize time and place: 'Can we discuss the topic next week itself?' A question may end, 'yes?' 'no?' or 'isn't it?' To distinguish between male and female, a cousin may be a cousin brother or a cousin sister: 'He is your cousin brother, isn't it?' Compounding words often occurs: a time-pass is time spent purposelessly or unexcitingly: 'That course was a real time-pass.' Likewise, word-shortening: enthusiasm is enthu, fundamentals are fundas. Though Indians are no more profane than other English-speakers, damn is used much more frequently.

The progressive tense is much used, as in 'Chanda is wearing sari' and 'You have seen?' The definite or indefinite article is often dropped: 'She was often guest.' Rhyming phrases abound, as in the title of a famous Anglo-Indian dictionary, whose shortened form was Hobson-Jobson. A person older than oneself may be respectfully addressed as aunty or uncle, or the suffix –ji or the Urdu-derived sahib tacked on to a name or title: 'Swami-ji', 'Begum Sahib'.

Hindi often intervenes, as in wallah, to denote an occupation or activity, as in tiffin-wallah, a person who delivers snacks or lunches. Indians are expert at mixing or switching from one language or social context to another. Since since and for is the same in Hindi, since is often used for the latter: 'I have been ill since two weeks.' Hindi in fact has fused with English to form the hybrid language Hinglish, one common word of which is yaar, a buddy or companion.

Pronunciation varies much from the north to the south but Indians, like most Canadians, generally pronounce the r before consonants or at the end of words. V and w often sound the same. They often pronounce weak vowels as full ones, and stress the syllable rather than longer rhythmic units, lending speech a sing-song quality.

Outside the country, India has loaned many words to standard English. From Hindi: shampoo. From Malayalam: ginger. From Sanskrit: guru, yoga, pariah. From Tamil: curry. So it goes: bamboo, mango, bungalow, chintz, juggernaut, pundit … Culturally, international enthusiasm for Indian food has made terms for breads and snacks (chapatti, samosas, pakoras), spice mixtures (masala), and tandoori chicken familiar to restaurant-goers and home cooks alike. The fame of the Indian movie industry has also grown mightily, as witness Bollywood, which blends Bombay and Hollywood. Bombay has officially been renamed Mumbai, taken from Sanskrit and Marathi words. The new name may take a while to catch on.

Fraser Sutherland

www.collinsdictionary.com