--- On Wed, 19/5/10, sankarshan <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: sankarshan <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [silk] Population problem? What population problem? > To: [email protected] > Date: Wednesday, 19 May, 2010, 10:17 > On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 10:05 AM, > Indrajit Gupta <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Imagine what a Bong accent could do with the name and > a splash of soda. > > Now I have always wondered - what is a Bong accent ? I have > been > variously pointed out to Pranab Mukherjee, Arnab Goswami > and so forth. > But what is the true accent ? > > > -- > sankarshan mukhopadhyay > <http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/> Ah, only a Bong....etc., etc. The fact is that there is no one Bong accent. This, curiously seems to have nothing to do with regional accents or dialects in Bengali. What 'the other' don't know is that Dhakai dialect and Borishali dialect are almost incomprehensible to West Bengal Bongs, just as these two wouldn't have a foggy if they were speaking to a Sylheti or a Chatgaiyan. Having said that, when these exotics take to English, English exercises its own sovereign rules on them, depending on their individual background. It seems to go by schooling, but not always. The first kind is straight RP but without the 'spat-out' emphasis of a native RP speaker. This is the kind that our types who were educated in Britain generally speak, although some, including dear friends and members of the medical profession who reign over Silk, have fought it off quite successfully. So did certain 'classes'; if you have heard Pataudi, you will know what I mean. Also Gayatri Devi. There you are, I've given it all away. There are a few Calcuttans, Bengalis if you insist, though it really doesn't settle into a specifically regional classification, who speak this way. It is quite unpredictable; class and economic background are not good markers. This has a range, from the almost-English to the almost-Indian; Prannoy Roy marks one boundary, while Saif Ali Khan marks the other, and you should be able to figure out which is which. We could describe this as 'Standard Indian Upper-class English'. Le Tharoor affects it these days; it was emphatically not the way he spoke forty years ago. More to the point is the second kind. A well-educated Bong of earlier generations spoke a kind of standard 'Indian English', more fully, 'Standard Indian Middle-Class English'. The best I can do, not having access to serious research into these things, is to refer people to any record of the actor Dilip Kumar; I heard him interviewed on the radio, and it was perfect. This cannot be mistaken for an Englishman, or any variety of Briton; yet, diction and pronunciation are absolutely standardised within the boundaries which are set. Remember that he was a Peshawar boy; yet his speech resembles my father's very, very closely, a speech in turn of a Dhaka middle-class man, a professor's son, educated in a for-profit school founded by an astute Armenian who wanted to cash in on the Bengali hunger for upward mobility through education. This accent is very wide-spread in Calcutta, and most educated people who have more than a certain minimal standard of income seem to speak it. It is cleaner and easier to mould to British and close-to-British accents than other standard accents. It is not Bong, particularly, as was not the first one described, and is to be found all over the country; I nearly fell off my chair when a gentleman dressed in traditional Chennai attire sat down in my office in Chennai twenty years ago, and addressed me in the best expressed English, in this accent, not just diction and pronunciation but elegant and simple vocabulary included, that I have heard in my whole life from an Indian. Next we have peculiarities like the Loreto accent, which merges into Brahmo; indescribable, but once heard never (mirthfully) forgotten. Think Suchitra Sen in an affected mood imagined to be speaking English, although in reality, her basic English accent was a match for her gyati, Gayatri Devi's (but not similar to that). Since we mentioned Pataudi, the Begum speaks this variant. If we step down, we get the sub-stratum Arnab Goswami; if the second described 'Standard Indian English' is Prannoy Roy, Arnab is this fourth variety (Loreto from a Brahmo family was the third). Consider a subtle thickening and expansion of vowels, an undue and disastrous emphasis on the second syllable, totally destructive of the concentration of any sensitive listener, and great force in delibhari, so mach so that the maiKROpphone haj to be placet saam distaans away. A pox on it, for having made us a joke with Punjabis and Ghatis and Tamilians ('Digas have their own variation on the Tamil theme which is a wonder in itself). The lowest, most degraded variation, one which is no longer funny but is painful and embarrassing, occurs at the highest echelons of Bengali politics, typically awarded with Cabinet rank in the Union Government (that is the Indian Union, just to reassure alarmists on Silk List). The less said about it the better, except to add the obvious that the less said in it, the better. So, Sankarshan Babu, five variations, two of a generally Indian distribution, one confined to Middleton Row and certain pockets in North and South Calcutta, and two more of a very local character, regrettably spread by the spread of their carrying vectors engaged in rather recognisably Bengali professions, the electronic media and politics. A point worth adding has to do with the spirit with which people from different parts of the country approach an encounter with a foreign language. This has nothing to do with pronunciation per se. While standing in queue for a pre-paid cab at Delhi airport, all of us in the queue watched in awed fascination as a well-dressed gentleman drew up to the adjoining Jet customer service counter, asked who was in charge and then exploded about his status as a business class passenger who was almost last in receiving his baggage. I stepped out of line and did a quick visual check; every single person in the queue was struggling, some with reasonable success, with their mirth. I asked the person behind me, an obvious North Indian with a broad grin plastered across his delighted face, 'A Bengali, do you think?' and got the vehement reply,'Hunerd per cent!' Yeah, right. Sickos. Stereotypists. That's why Bangladesh broke away, and forget all that tosh about Bhutto and Yahya and Pakistani politics. I hope this helps, Mohashoy.
