Comparison of Standard English Spoken in Pakistan and in Britain - Essay Example

Comparison of Standard spoken English in Pakistan and Standard spoken English in Britain     Inserts His/Her   Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Customer inserts Date Introduction English has emerged as the most widely used language today. When we look at the history of this language, we need to take into account three Germanic tribes, namely the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes which attacked Britain in the 5th century AD. The language spoken in Britain at that time was the Celtic. The Angles came from England and their language was called Englisc - from which the words England and English derived (History of the English Language, 1997). “A language may be important as a lingua franca in a country or region whose diverse populations would otherwise be unable to communicate. This is especially true in the former colonies of England and France whose colonial languages have remained indispensable even after independence and often in spite of outright hostility to the political and cultural values that the European languages represent (Baugh&Cable, 1993). England began to set up colonies in Africa and Asia in the 1600s and the British East India Company was established for trading purposes in 1600. “Its main interests were in India—including what is now Bangladesh and Pakistan...” (Gelderen, 2006 P.250). Britain wanted to make smooth the running of their rule and wanted that people should know English if they wanted to take up government jobs. So we may say that English reached Pakistan as a result of the colonization by England which started in the 16th century. After independence, Pakistan still used the English language. Regarding the Standard English used in Pakistan and in Britain, one feels that there is not much data available showing their relation and this fact makes difficult for the researchers to have an authentic view over it. Anyway, different studies have been taken place attempting to find out the similarities between SE and PE (Standard English and Pakistan English). It is common knowledge that the comparison of a language with another involves the comparison of their grammar, lexis, syntax, morphology and other features. Only after analyzing them separately, a researcher can infer whether there are similarities, or spot out the influence of one on the other. As stated earlier, it is evident that English language reached in Pakistan through colonization, and even after colonization, they preached it. Grammar and Syntax An online article entitled, History Pakistani English makes an effective evaluation over the PE and finds several differences that it has with BE. It observes the following disparities. According to this article, “Syntactically, Pakistani English differs from British English both at the sentence level and clausal level... In addition to these, the use of certain tenses is also different.” (Talaat, 2002). One of the notable differences between PE and BE pertains to the use of the progressive tense. PE permits the use of progressive aspect with habitual and the perfective. The speakers of PE generally say, ‘I am doing it all the time.’ Another example is; ‘They were having a horse.’ Unlike the BE, PE permits the use of past time adverbials with present perfect, as in, ‘I have seen him yesterday,’ instead of, ‘I saw him yesterday,’ in Standard English. The article, History Pakistani English finds disparities between PE and BE in the usage of adjective complementation, verb complementation, and in noun complementation as well. PE often violates the word order usually followed in BE. Traditionally the study of grammar is the study of a set of rules that teaches us how language ought to be used. After learning the rules, one has to learn different ‘words’ and their arrangements in different ‘parts of speech.’ Considering the Pakistani users of English, Mubina Talaat (2002), researcher of Pakistani English remarks, “Pakistani users of English have neither learnt English through interaction in the social context of native speakers, nor are they familiar with the new theory or practice of language learning. The use of English is governed by the same traditional concept of second language learning.” Thus it is evident that PE attempts to divide the language into the study of grammar and the study of lexis by totally ignoring its usage in various functional contexts. As a result, it prefers vocabulary items in pre-selected grammatical categories and vice versa. Analyzing this feature of PE, it leads to the fact that PE tends to move away from the traditional/conventional relations of grammar and lexis, propounding divergent lexical choices. The researcher, Talaat also observes, “…in PE the level of lexico-grammar is more important than either the lexical or the grammatical or lexical level.” It will be clear when one goes through the differences between syntactic and lexico-grammatical divergences (Talaat, 2002). If the divergence occurring in the usage of function words in the PE texts does not affect the adjacent content words, or effecting a change of meaning in the sentence, it can also be regarded as syntactic. The divergence of the prepositions and the droppings of the definite article are examples of it. To illustrate it clearly, Talaat (2002) uses the following example in his research paper The Form and Functions of English in Pakistan. Safia Bibi is raped and sent into jail for lack of evidence. (due to). He also uses some other examples to make the divergence more clear; …reduced into ashes (to) …threw stones on the law enforcing agencies (at). From the above examples, the divergence of prepositions can be easily identified. Though there are divergences in the usage of prepositions, one cannot find any change in the meaning of the sentence, as such; these sentences can be brought under syntactic variations. As stated earlier, the same divergence is identifiable in the usage of the definite article as in, ‘…led the Karachi roads’ (Talaat, 2002). Morphology Differences in the use of articles and prepositions and the omission of certain auxiliary verbs are the most commonly cited features of Pakistani English morphology (Talaat, 2002). Omission of auxiliaries like do, does, did and the insertion of articles which are generally excluded in BE, are quite common practices in PE. Example for the omission of auxiliary is, ‘How you got here?’ instead of “How did you get here?” in BE. “The England is a good place” is an example showing how PE uses definite article, where it is absent in BE We may also have to consider that a definite article would be present in British English, while it will not be there in PE, for example, “My father is the lecturer’ Lexis (vocabulary) When observing the lexis of PE it is identifiable that PE has adopted words from Urdu and other local dialects and during the course of time they have been subjected to grammatical adaptations. These words which are brought from the local dialects have often been seen as being used with English morphemes. For example, the plural of chowkidar “watchman” is constructed by adding the English plural suffix –s (Talaat, 2002). The usage of affixes also makes PE different from BE that PE often takes the English-based affixes: d-, -lifter and –ism. We can notice the vivid effects of some new compounds in PE: flying coach meaning ‘fast bus’ and cent percent for ‘100 percent’. We also get some new hybrid compounds in PE, for example, Double roti. For this purpose many urdu words have been used to join with english words. While observing the difference between the BE and the PE, we should take into account the roles ‘proposed phrases and archaism’ play. Wheat bag is used for ‘a bottle of milk’ , and toast piece meaning ‘a piece of toast’. Some of the archaic words, which are no longer in use either in American and British English, are still in use in Pakistani English. Phonology Researchers have identified the phonological differences between PE and BE. One of the notable differences lies in the increasing of the retroflexion, that is, the tongue-tip curled up towards the hard palate, for example [ti:] ‘tea’ , [da:rk] ‘dark’. It is the common feature of the Dravidian languages and Brahui speakers in Pakistan; the fricatives [θ] and [ð] are replaced by plosives [th], [d] or [dh]; no distinction is made between the ‘dark’ and ‘clear’ varieties of l; /f/ is generally pronounced as aspirated /p/ (eg: [phan] for ‘fun’); no distinction is made between the voiceless palato-alveolar [ ʃ ] and its voiced counterpart [ʒ]; /r/ is generally followed by a vowel (Burchfield & Hogg, 1994). Compounding PE often keeps a vivid effect regarding compounds in words like, flying coach (fast bus) and cent percent (100 percent) Conclusion The research leads one to infer that there are significant differences regarding the PE and BE. After evaluating the different linguistic aspects of language, it is understood that PE differs from BE in grammar, syntax, phonology, morphology and in lexis or vocabulary. Considering the grammatical side of language, it is well evident that PE varies from BE in the usage of tense, that is, the progressive aspect with the habitual and the perfective. Another difference lies in the usage of past tense adjectives with the perfect tenses. All these features make clear that PE grammar and BE grammar are different to some extent. Lexio-grammar divergence is another factor that makes PE and BE different. The analysis has proved that there may be divergences in prepositions or in the usage of articles. It is the same seen with morphology when it deduces excludes auxiliaries like do, does and did. In the conclusion of this study, it needs to be stated with emphasis that lexis of PE has mainly evolved from Urdu and some other local languages. It has adopted English-based affixes which have later formed part of PE. Like the dialectical variations, one can find phonological variations also in PE. It resorts to retroflex sounds as in other Dravidian languages. From the above research and analysis, one can infer that PE differs from BE to some extent. But these differences do not affect the right usage of the language and the spreading of English in Pakistan. Works Cited: Baugh, Albert Croll. "A history of the English Language." cable, Thomas. Routledge, 1993. 4. Gelderen, Elly Van. A history of the English language. John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2006. History of the English Language. 1997. 29 Dec 2009 . Hogg, Burchfield. The language Cambridge history of the English. Cambridge university press, 1994. Talaat, Mubina. "The form and functions of English in Pakistan." 2002. 29 Dec 2009 . Read More