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Dear all GOANS,
Here everyone has a itch for English, do we Goans have the same for KONKANI?
Mog assum di,
Tumcho Khalto,
Sanny de Quepem - Kuwait
====================
FREEDOM FROM MOTHER-TONGUE.
30 Sep 2007, 0319 hrs IST , Ketan Tanna
It is not just the Malayalee who has the problem. Most Indians speak English
with the peculiar sounds of their mother tongues. 'When' often sounds like
'ven' and 'vine' becomes 'wine'. We also tend to speak fast without stretching
the vowel sounds. In Orissa and other parts of eastern India, b is freely used
for w and v, while across the South, prize sounds like price, and rise sounds
like rice. Gujaratis and Rajasthanis make 'wis' out of wish and their 'shirts'
are 'sirts'. And a marriage hall is, poignantly or prophetically, "marriage
hole". Maharashtrians threaten to become 'voilent' and not violent. And those
from MP and UP have a perpetual problem with starting a word with 's' even if
they have been to the 'eskool'. There is, however, a cure. And increasingly,
Indians are seeking this cure.
In the last few years, it is not just BPO employees who have been learning to
speak correctly but also scores of housewives businessmen, senior citizens,
middle level executives and many more who cannot be described. They are taking
the help of voice trainers to get rid of various flaws in how they speak
English.
Forty-eight-year-old Vijaya Sailopal, a Punjabi housewife who lives in Mumbai,
and mother of two, is an affluent upper middle class social worker who
volunteers with a non governmental organization. Her job profile entails
holding various meetings and events where she needs to communicate with a small
audience. Nobody has told her, but very often Sailopal was conscious of her
Punjabi accent.
She enrolled in a voice training class conducted by Anil Mani, who is a
professional voice-over artiste. Her classes lasted seven weeks and came at a
price tag of Rs 7,000. It has been two years since she attended the classes and
she says it's worth it because it gave her confidence a tremendous boost.
Pratap Sharma who is a veteran in this field says that an 86-year-old Parsi
woman, Jeannie Naoroji, landed at his classes. At her age, Naoroji's aim was to
speak to small groups and audiences effectively. All kinds of people are coming
to him these days, he says, to improve the way they speak in English.
There are scores of middle level and even senior corporate chieftains who
attend classes because even though they have achieved a lot in life, their
accents always worked to their disadvantage. Dr Sadhana Nayak, a Dadar-based
voice and phonetics specialist, says that 42-year-old Murli Nair (name
changed), a graduate from IIT and IIM and a regional head in a pharmaceutical
company, came to him to cure his heavy Malayalee accent. "He was ribbed about
it throughout his student days. His 10-year-old daughter studying in an English
school often corrected his pronunciation. He was professionally on the rise and
looking for a high level position in another firm. He felt his accent came in
the way. During the break between jobs he came for accent training."
Then there was the case of Mahesh Iyer, a 49-year-old Dubai- based professional
working with an oil major. "He felt very self-conscious during presentations
and meetings as he was often asked to repeat himself. Also he had developed an
inferiority complex due to his accent. In fact, he said he was better than most
of them at his work but they communicated with greater confidence than him,"
says Dr Nayak. His vacation was spent correcting his pronunciation and his
diction.
With the boom in the economy and the rising aspirations of Indians, there has
been a steep rise in the number of people enrolling in such classes. Each one
has a different purpose for enrolling. Some want to get rid of their accents,
some want to modulate their voices and some want to make a career as voice
artists. Not surprisingly, Mumbai's voice trainers are raking in a lot. "I have
seen a 100% rise since last year in the number of executives coming for accent
neutralisation or modification training and almost a 300% rise in the number of
enquiries I get on my website," says Nayak.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Freedom_from_mother-tongue/articleshow/2415514.cms
Sanny de Quepem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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