QUEEN'S ENGLISH -- SIMPLICITY IS THE KEY!

I never had a head for languages. Born a Malayalee, I studied in English medium schools with Hindi as my second language. Since I grew up in the Dravidianised Tamilnadu, though I learnt to speak Tamil well, I never had to learn Tamil as a language of study. So I never formally learnt to read or write Tamil (so much for the benefits of the two-language formula that is assiduously pursued by the Dravidian parties in the state). And since one does not have to speak even a word of Hindi in Tamilnadu, the spoken Hindi never developed. The result, the only language I can claim to know fairly well is English. Or so I thought...

Queen’s English of the bombastic variety particularly impressed me in my youth. My father it was who introduced me to this genre – the Johnsonian English named after Dr Samuel Johnson, who compiled the first comprehensive dictionary of English words, way back in 1755. I vividly remember a particular passage about  a famous public speaker, who was asked by a group of female students the secret of his success as an orator. He said :

“When promulgating you esoteric cogitations and articulating superficial, sentimental and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your extemporaneous decantations and unpremeditated expectations have intelligibility and veracious veracity without rodomontade or trashonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pusillanimous vacuity, pestiferous profanity and similar transgressions.

“In short”, he smilingly explained to his open mouthed admirers, “talk simply, naturally and above all do not use big words”.

I was so impressed with the first part of his monologue that I mugged it up, totally losing sight of the second.  I worked hard to build up a vocabulary comparable to the great orator, but in vain.

Another writer who greatly impressed me was the inimitable P G Wodehouse. Here was a genius who played with words to weave a magical world of elitist British humour. The humorous way in which he describes how a British adventurer to Africa is mauled to death by a lion is subtly brought out in "Ring for Jeeves" (1953):

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A B Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t...

Or the inimitable manner in which, the suave, slick man of leisure, Smith, who spells his name with a P, introduces himself to a stranger in “Leave it to Psmith” :

. . . The name is Psmith.  P-smith.’

‘Peasmith, sir?’

‘No, no.  P-s-m-i-t-h.  I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith.  But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced.  Smythe ,I look on as a cowardly evasion. Nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen.  So I decided to adopt the Psmith.  The P, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.  You follow me?’

Having waded through all this, I prided myself over the quality of my own English. Until I joined the ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA.

During my very first month of training, I was once asked to do a one pager on environmental pollution. I spent a whole evening in a library researching. I sat through the night typing out the story. Those were the days when the humble type-writer ruled and computers had not yet entered our lives. I typed and re-typed the report three times before I was satisfied. The next morning, with a song in my heart and expectations high of my first report in the publication, I handed over my work to my Editor, Pritish Nandy. His face clouded as he read the report. Half way through he virtually exploded. “What *@#%%^* nonsense have you written?” he asked, throwing the papers at my face. I just stood and stuttered, not knowing what hit me. Could there have been some misreporting or distortion of facts? Or could I have made some stupid grammatical mistake? But then, I had read and re-read the report several times over. And to my knowledge there was nothing wrong. Frankly, I just did not know what had upset Nandy.

“How far have you studied”, he asked me, still fuming. “I have done my post graduation”, I stammered. “No wonder you write bilge like this...” he said. He grabbed the report from my hands and read out one sentence. “Tell me,” he challenged, “how many people would understand that sentence? Do you think all the readers of the WEEKLY are post graduates like you? KP, learn to write for the common man. Write in a language he understands. That is the only way we can make this magazine sell... I want the WEEKLY to carry stuff relevant to its readers. I don’t want it to be a forum for its writers to exhibit their superior knowledge of the English language...”

He really had me there. How true it was. Language was essentially meant for communication. What I have to say has to be understood by the other man. Otherwise, it is as good as not saying it. This was when I suddenly realised the import of the second part of the Johnsonian passage I had quoted earlier. I had to communicate simply, naturally and above all, without using big words.

From that day, I went about dumbing down my language. Compound and complex sentences were out. So also were the pompous, big-sounding words. Very soon, the subbing desk at the WEEKLY had developed a “Weekly Style”, especially for our catchy intros. A typical intro to an investigative report on the assassination of Indira Gandhi would, for example, read thus :

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dead. Murdered in cold blood by her own body guards. Where did it happen? When How? Why? Who is behind it? The Illustrated Weekly investigates...

Short, crisp, staccato sentences... Absolutely no frills. Yet juicy enough to whet one’s appetite for the details.

Times keep changing. From simplifying, we have moved on to over-symplifying. Samuel Johnson is unknown to today’s generation. Wodehouse belongs to another planet. The world does not even have time for the staccato “Weekly style” of the language, as we have stepped into the short messaging service (sms) era. Sometimes I am flummoxed by some messages I get. “Wen r u cumin?” asks one. “Got 2 c tha dr”, says another...

All this reminds me of a joke that was forwarded to me some months ago :

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded the German demand that English spelling had some room for improvement. She accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".  Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it shud go away.

By the 4th yer pepl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evri vun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united Urop vil finali kum tru.

If all this looks like German, then obviously, by conceding for a European English, the Germans have managed to bring in German as the official language of the whole of Europe!

Long live the Queen’s English... Where simplicity is the key.