Quote:
Originally Posted by banderas  right, to be honest, I never thought there was an Indian dialect of English...
someone told me that when you speak one language incorrectly you have no right to say that you speak a dialect of English. The thing is you speak incorrectly, that's it.
cheers |
That statement comes across as incredibly arrogant and out of touch with the realities of linguistics. Indian English is every bit as valid as US English or UK English. The same can be said for South African English, Australian English, NZ English, Canadian English, etc. The diversity and colour of the many variants of English is a great thing, something to be celebrated and embraced, which is why I have an entire section on my list of links devoted to World English. It is very disappointing to me to see a non-native English speaker swallowing and then regurgitating the prescriptivist propaganda of the sort of pople who would probably think that l'Académie Française is both a great idea and something needed by the English language.
This is not an attack on you personally, banderas, but on the attitude expressed in your post. It is an attitude which I find repugnant, and which simply does not accept the realities of language development. I would strongly recommend the following three books to anyone who thinks that there is one "proper English" and that anybody not speaking that one variant is just plain wrong:
Linguistics and Your Language — Robert A. Hall Jr.
Language Myths — edited by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill.
The Unfolding of Language - Guy Deutscher.
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"A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot"