I admire the author of “…As she is spoke” (Worm’s Eye View, January 12) for his insistence on the correct pronunciation of English words. It requires great competence and confidence to speak a language like English correctly. This is because in English words are not necessarily spoken the way they are spelt and have a set of rules each with several exceptions — whether it is a simple “do” or “go” or the complex “psychology” or “Czar”. For the uninitiated the problem is aggravated when it comes to proper nouns. How to verbalise “Blanchard” or “Iacocca” or Machiavelli or Freud? Moreover, in a big country like ours, with the dimensions of a continent in linguistic and geographical terms, inflection varies from state to state.
More importantly, if we must follow the rules of English language to speak with correct accent and diction, why do we allow Indian names to be mutilated by English onslaught? We lived long enough with “the Ganges” for “Ganga” and are continuing with “Kerala(a)” for “Keral” and even the very Indian “yoga(a)” for “yog”. Signs of cultural inferiority complex?
Lastly, do the premier institutes really choose on the basis of truly correct pronunciation? Have stammerers, otherwise brilliant, no chance with them? Does communication of substance get relegated? Or is the author overemphasising the pronunciation syndrome?
Y G Chouksey Pune
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