Although we tend to talk about English as if it is something monolithic, there are numerous Englishes. Tune into the conversations happening around you in a café or on the Tube, and you’ll make out a mosaic of variants.

So claims an interesting article entitled “Language can’t stay still – just listen to London” in London’s Evening Standard earlier this week. The author Henry Hitchings has just writen a book on “proper English” and relays a story which will sound familiar to many Londoners:

One reason for this is the large number of other languages spoken by Londoners – at least 300. Among the more prominent of these are Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu and Gujarati, as well as Caribbean creole, Cantonese, Polish, Arabic, Tagalog and Greek. On a recent hour-long bus journey, I heard Russian, Portuguese, Turkish and Yoruba. As passengers flitted between native and adopted languages, it was clear these had become intertwined.

As the article points out, English has always adapted and absorbed other languages producing a rich and varied vocabulary. There are perhaps fewer attempts to regulate English useage than, say, French usage. The Oxford English Dictionary might be ultimate arbiter in a game of Scrabble, but it tends to reflect widespread rather than desired or “pure” usage. There is no English language body which attempts to roll back “invaders” once they have become widespread.

English has prospered through assimilating terms from other languages, and engagement – in London and beyond – with speakers of foreign languages has enabled this, while also propagating hybrids such as Hinglish (a blend of Hindi and English).

This is all very well but where does this leave me professionally? My company expends a lot of time and effort trying to get language right: not just “sort of understandable” but absolutely correct. If you like, the “letter of the law” is absolute in our working lives, as we constantly strive for correct grammar and perfect punctuation. Does this run counter to the belief that language develops, is a living entity? Well, not entirely. Hitchings contends:

A descriptive approach to language change does not eclipse the cogent arguments for teaching in schools a standard form of written English. But the spoken language will always be elastic. It is the spoken language that is the great driver of change, and in London scarcely a day goes by without our noticing some addition or adjustment. This can be disconcerting, but English draws strength from being mobile and protean.

Hitching’s book, The Language Wars: A History of Proper English expands on this argument historically. As one reviewer puts it “[Hitchens] gleefully explains, over 28 chapters, organised pretty much chronologically while covering areas such as spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, obscenity and slang, that all attempts to prescribe ‘correct’ usage have always been outrun by ceaseless change in the language itself.”

I like to think of this as accepting that, while we always try to get language right, we also accept that what is “right” can – and must – evolve.

The unofficial national bard of Scotland (and voted the greatest ever Scot in a TV poll), Burns was by far the most important poet to write in the Scots dialect. He took the language of 18th Century Scottish rural workers and fashioned it into a poetry that  has endured. A national newspaper today includes him in a series of the great British poets of the Romantic age.

Burns wrote all sorts of poetry and song from the politically charged  ‘Man Was Made to Mourn’ or ‘For A That’ to tender love songs like ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ or ‘A Red Red Rose’.

Probably his best known song (though he adapted it from an earlier traditional one)  is ‘Auld Lang Syne’ which sees in the new year wherever one or more Scots gather. Some of the words may be strange to an English ear but the message is clear and universal:
 
And there’s a hand my trusty fiere,

And gie’s a hand o thine,

And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne

Many people are familiar with this song from New Years Eve, but how many know what it actually means:

And here’s my hand, my trusty friend, 

And give me your hand too,

And we will take an excellent good-will drink

For the days of long ago. 

With a few friends I had an early stab at celebrating the man and his work with a Burns supper at the weekend. Though we lacked a piper, the traditional meal of haggis, neeps and tatties was duly served washed down with a fine malt whisky. Incidentally the same newspaper has tackled the thorny problem of just what constitutes a neep.

And of course the haggis was welcomed to the table with a rendition (in my somewhat rusty Scottish dialect) of Burns ode (listen here) to that great Scottish culinary treat, the haggis.

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang’s my arm.

Or as I found myself explaining, in English translation:

All hail your honest rounded face,
Great chieftain of the pudding race;
Above them all you take your place,
Beef, tripe, or lamb:
You’re worthy of a grace
As long as my arm.

The Bengali language is the language of Bengal, right? Well, not wrong – but it’s not as simple as that. In the UK there’s quite a lot of confusion about what Bengali is, so I’ll try to clarify that here.

First, let me illustrate the problem. I live in Whitechapel, in East London, which has one of the highest densities of Bengalis in the country. My father, who was born in Dhaka and grew up in Kolkata, is a native Bengali speaker. But when he comes to visit me in Whitechapel, he can’t understand what the local Bengalis are saying. Yet he has no problem reading the shop signs and street names written in Bengali. What’s going on?

Well, spoken Bengali encompasses a range of dialects, and one of them – the one spoken around Kolkata – came to be considered the standard. Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal, an Indian state. But most Bengalis in the UK are from Bangladesh, not India. The language spoken around its capital, Dhaka, is not much very different from Kolkata Bengali; they’re like different accents of the same language. But the language spoken in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh, where most UK Bengalis are from, is quite different – so different that some regard it as a different language altogether. So that’s why my father can’t understand my local Bengali speakers: they use very different dialects.

But he can understand the writing, and not only because it’s the same script that he uses: it’s the same language. Spoken Bengali has very wide regional variations (neither Sylheti speakers nor Kolkata-Bengali speakers would understand Bengali from Chittagong, for example). But written Bengali is pretty much the same. So Bengalis across India and Bangladesh typically speak their regional dialect, and write in standard Bengali. That means they are literate in the same language, even if they can’t understand each other in everyday conversation.

So if you need a Bengali translation, remember:

• Written Bengali is pretty much standard; spoken Bengali varies much more widely.
• Sylheti dialect may be more appropriate in particular cases, for example to communicate specifically with Sylheti speakers, using speech rather than text.

For anyone interested more in Bengali language, here are a few good starting points:

Wikipedia entry on Bengali language
Omniglot on the Bengali alphabet
Indopedia entry on Bengali language

And in another blogpost, I’ll look at some issues we frequently encounter in Bengali typesetting.

Dakha hobe!
[See you again]

As a Scot myself, growing up in Ayrshire, I had become aware that there was lots of common language there that completely bamboozled English friends. But I hadn’t realised there was such a variation of vocabulary within Scotland itself. After all it is a very small nation which has two distinct languages – English and Gaelic. And while I had occasionally found some accents a bit difficult to get, I had never really had any trouble with understanding vocabulary.

Later in life when I got involved in the business of translation I began to see just how much these regional variations could matter. Spanish is spoken is Spain itself but also throughout a large part of South America. But that doesn’t mean that what makes sense in Madrid will be equally understood in Buenos Aires. Likewise with Portuguese. A Brazilian friend, who always thought he spoke perfect Portuguese, found himself struggling to be understood on holiday in the Algarve.

But I digress. Back to my predicament when meeting my landlady in the north east of Scotland. It turns out – as I came to realise during my stay there – that what I should have replied is:

“Nae sae bad quinie, fit like yasel?”

Or in plain English she asked me “How are you sir” and I should have replied “Not bad, how are you madam?”