The Legacy Left Behind By The British

The legacy left behind by the British:
India Is one among the many colonial countries who have this privilege, if u may say so, to have English as legacy from the British. The urban population was very impressed with this language and put it to usage in a grand manner. Fluency in English is still considered as a status symbol! We loved their punctuality, discipline, their cars and their women. The weakness for the fair color perhaps has its root in our British days.

My grandfather who had a M.A. L.T (that is masters in literature) had a great panache for the language, and his friends were jewelers and doctors, more academic crowd, who met in the evenings to review the present politics. He was the educational superintendent, and used to go for inspection to the various educational institutions. He created a panic among his colleagues, by his command over English language and was able to put across many of his views effectively.

Now coming to the present situation, I am able to see a lot of our friends and relatives, despite a strong educational background, failing miserably when they have to present a project, or to brief their sub ordinates. Even in the educational institutions, many lecturers are unable to contribute well because of their inability to communicate effectively in English, their mother tongue being Kannada, and may be their education was also in the same medium..

A very good convent, as run by Christian Missionaries, gives a lot of encouragement for its students for self-expression and to come out with precise words to speak their minds.
Like for example, the word ‘provoke’ is enough instead of saying he triggered me, or he is always mad at me, and so on. A lot of students who come for an interviews in MNC or IT related companies, have a great problem in getting across their thoughts. They speak English like they would express in Tamil for eg: ‘naan sonna madiri’ becomes ‘like how I said’.. or a Hindi expression like “mai ye kehna chahtha tha ki” as “what I wanted to say was”. They fail miserably in the preliminaries. Once you are inside the organization, the exposure that you get with the correspondence helps you to interact well with the work related mails and your friends.

Now let us see about the ladies, who study in convents from young, and have a better flair for the language, and then get into wonderful colleges who impart better communication skills to them, are more confident in their life. But many fail miserably in communication, like our previous generation of aunts and other ladies, who were shy to talk in English, as they lacked self-confidence and hence they were unable to put across their views. These women have to be skillful enough to find a valid excuse to avoid crowd or parties that their spouse go to or organize. As a mother she needs to be good in English to help her children better in their studies. Mothers without this fall in the child’s image. Children don’t want them to come to school to meet their classmates and teachers to save the embarrassment, that their mother is not aware of the language….

My suggestion to these ladies is a very simple one. Get yourself a wonderful tutor who could teach the conversational English, whereby you can overcome this shortcoming,

My daughter Priya is one such person, who is able to make the ladies speak well within a span of some six months, and her method is something different from the normal one..
She had an assignment with a general manager’s wife, a Punjabi, who was not mixing due to this inferiority complex that she was unable to be among those who were very fluent in the English language. So Priya asked her if she would love English classes and drew blank. Then she asked her what could be her hobby, there was an immediate response that it was the Hindi films. Now Priya started by asking her to relate the story of films one by one in English, and when she faltered she used to correct her with the proper word. This went on for some six months, then one day the Lalitha Tutorial received a call from this lady, appreciating Priya’s contribution. She was so fluent in her talk to Sridhar, the head of the firm, that he was stunned to say the least.

So this is as simple as this, if only people could put their mind to spend a few hours with the tutor and get to master this language. You need not embarrass yourself and your spouse in any way, you can become the PR for him, and help him in finishing his project too…..regards sunkan