In praise of English

Some indecision strikes me, at the very start itself.  Should this article be titled 'In praise of English'?  Or, would 'In defence of English' be better?  Given the situation English is in, in our parts, one can't but wonder.

Our Goa is itself in a quaint position.

English has not been the language that 'ruled' the region.  At least not directly as in the case of the former British India.  After 1961, an overnight change over was made, from Portuguese to English.  This was partly to cope with the needs of the new bureaucracy, because English dominated much of the rest of India.  It was also convenient for the many Goan expats who had connections with the English speaking world, some of whom returned home around then.

But, things changed fast enough.

Since the 1960s, language politics have been rife here.  Portuguese was given a fairly quick burial.  Marathi came to the fore, for awhile.  (Later, the schools propped up started collapsing.) Romi got some priority for a little while.  Post-1987 and the Official Language Act, Devanagari banished all the other Konkanies.

Yet, there is still an aspiration over English.

After the Medium of Instruction imposed a "regional languages alone" policy (which meant either Devanagari Konkani or Marathi), many parents drifted sharply towards English.  Even those who would have been earlier supporters of Konkani or Marathi were seen taking their children over to English-medium schools.  They did so even if this meant they had to pay steep fees.

But many here -- rightly or otherwise -- see the English language as the route to the good things in life.

As a young college student, I once clattered to help with the school for 'slum children' and kids of construction workers.  We were a bit afraid of what language they would ask to be taught in, simply because some of their choices could be rather hard to implement.  Turned out that, you guessed right, they asked for "English"!

But then a counter-push came in favour of 'regional language' and 'mother tongue' education.  This lead to the sidelining of English education, at least at the primary level.  Ironically, after the fourth standard of schooling, almost the entire of Goa's educational system shifts over to English.  With the NEP (New Education Policy), one needs to see how this issue shapes up.

Unlike in the past, today one hears a lot of conversations in English (with diverse accents) taking place in educational institutions, offices, and so on.

Making a case for English does not mean that the local (or, regional) languages should suffer.  On the contrary.  Our regional languages indeed deserve to grow and be preserved.

Language growth need not be a zero-sum game.  There is a fear that if people switch over to another language, their earlier lingo will get sidelined and derailed.  This is not necessarily true.

We need steps to promote the easy online learning of Konkani, making it available to expat communities and settlers from other States here.  The knowledge-creation process in Konkani language definitely needs some determined steps to take it forward. 

Learning English can bring a series of benefits.  The interesting online video titled 'Learn English with News' points to some of these.  See https://bit.ly/3JLrJ3r

Among the benefits: improved and widened employment prospects; exploring the world with confidence; opening up a world of world of entertainment and the world of culture; helping you with your problem solving skills.

Despite being a 'late starter' in the world of English, Goa has done well in it.  It always struck me that our region could build a useful business model as a centre of language learning.  Given the daizporic skills we have here, that's quite a base to build on itself.  Look at the number of foreign and Indian languages in which people in Goa already have expertise.

Or, even to build a centre for translations in Goa itself, to take advantage of the reality that ours is indeed a very multilingual state.  But, like all low-cost or simple innovative things, there's hardly any lobby to push for such goals. But it doesn't end there.

Goa has already proved its skills in the English language.  Nobody here might have noticed this, but the then Professor of English Linguistics at the Haifa University in Israel, Prof Dennis Kurzon, wrote a full book on the subject.

His book 'Where East Looks West: Success in English in Goa and on the Konkan Coast' (Multilingual Matters, 2004) points out that "for a number of consecutive years (1993-2000), speakers of Konkani...  attained the highest average grades in the world in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)".

(The Test of English as a Foreign Language, TOEFL, is a test to measure a person's English language skills to see if he or she is good enough to take a course at university or graduate school in English-speaking countries.  It is for people whose native language is not English but wish to study in an international university.  It judges a person's skills in listening, reading, speaking and writing needed to perform academic tasks.  It is the most widely recognised English test in the world, as the Wikipedia explains.)

Kurzon discusses what makes Goans "look westwards".  He looks at issues like emigration, Konkani's development, and the language controversies of Goa's past.  He is focused on the issue of finding out "the reasons why Konkani speakers have been so successful in English, especially since Goa, unlike the rest of India, was not part of the British Empire, but was under Portuguese rule for 450 years".

This offers us a lot of food for thought...  But are we hungry for it?