The W-Problem and Others

How difficult is it to learn a language? According to an ancient Chinese proverb – there are ancient Chinese proverbs for everything – learning a second language is like acquiring a new soul. Since the tender age of five, I have devoted my life to acquiring the new soul as I have tried to learn how to read, write, and speak English. After all these years, I can state without any doubt that the wise men of ancient China were really wise. Speaking English is difficult, and it gets more difficult by the day.

Learning English is practical, more so now than it was 40 years ago. In this age of globalization, English is undoubtedly the foremost language of worldwide communication. No wonder that English-medium schools have sprung up all over the world. Even district towns in Bangladesh these days have one or two schools where English is touted as the medium of instruction. Practicalities aside, the Bengalis from either side of the Padma are also rather proud of their English. Wasn’t there a time when ‘he speaks English well’ used to be the ultimate praise for an educated Bengali?

I have lived in the United States since 1996. Prior to that I had lived in England for a year. Coming from a privileged educational background, I had gathered the basics of spoken English in Bangladesh. The year spent in England, I used to believe, had added the necessary polish to my English. Coming to America, I was supremely confident and proud of my mastery of the language. My new friends and my teachers at the university all understood me perfectly. There were no problems. And why should there be a problem? In addition to my educational background, my native language Bangla had prepared me in a unique way for tough-to-pronounce words. The Bangla alphabet in its abbreviated form has 11 vowels and 32 consonants; there are three whole letters in it just to represent S, and three more for the different shades of T. I could pronounce every English word and some more.

Only now I realize that I had mistaken the politeness of my friends, teachers, and the man on the street as a sign of how well I spoke the language. Now I know (hopefully) the extent of my difficulties with spoken English. I just cannot manage it when any of the three vowels – E, I, and U – appears right after the first letter of the word, a consonant, and is followed by R. To me, ‘firm’ and ‘farm’ have the same pronunciations. There are also pairs like ‘age’ and ‘edge’ with surprisingly similar rings to my ears! Also, when to (or not to) elongate the vowel at the end of a syllable? Is it mono~poly or monopoly? The most serious case, however, arises when W is the first letter of a word. To me, ‘Wood’ is OOD. I have tried hard, without much success, to resolve my problems. I even saw a linguist once.

When confronted with the W-problem, as I have come to refer to it, I try my best to pronounce the word correctly the very first time. However, I often fail, and after multiple unsuccessful attempts, I go to my fallback strategy – using examples such as ‘wood as in furniture’. A fellow Bangladeshi who also shares the W-problem has found what I believe is a more direct and effective solution. He used to live on a street with the name like – Pine Woods Boulevard. When giving his address over the phone, he would say Pine, then spell ‘Woods’, and then say Boulevard. Spelling a word with a leading W is a better alternative to trying to speak the word.

Interestingly, despite our difficulties in communicating with the native English speaking population, we never have a problem communicating in English among ourselves. The observation raises the question about how our English appears to the native English speaker. Do we sound like the opposite of the adventurous Englishman who has learned to speak Bangla? My worst nightmare is being the counterpart of the 19th Century Bangla speaking English Sahib (as portrayed in old Bangla movies).

I have often thought about why I had considered my English to be so good 20 years ago and why I find it so very problem-ridden now. I knew very little of the language 20 years ago, and I did not know of my problems. Over time, I have learned a little more English, and that has led to a realization of the problem. It is almost like the case of the village barber who also practiced surgery; without the knowledge of the human body, he was free of any apprehension regarding his role as a doctor.

As we spend more time in an English speaking country, we speak more English. More practice, however, does not necessarily lead to a better brand of English. It is just that we speak more of the language in our unique way. Unfortunately, after using the language at work, at the supermarket, or when haggling over the price of cable-TV on the phone, English also becomes the dominant language at our homes. The presence of children adds a new dimension to the equation. The children learn their own English at school, and unless the parents take an active interest in teaching them Bangla, they grow up with English. As a result, for the lazy parents, the majority of us, it is perhaps easier to communicate with the children in English. However, I am really not convinced that using English gives us any advantage with the children. If you think about it, what are our options? We could use Bangla, the language the children barely understand, or we could use (our) English, the language they barely understand.

As we adopt English as the primary language of communication at work and home, we are led to believing that English, rather than Bangla, comes to us more naturally. Some of us are actually emboldened enough to take our English speaking skills to other territories. Although I fully support the premise that an individual should be allowed to choose the medium and the language of his expression, the said freedom perhaps should not be widened to include public-speaking at social get-togethers. I am sure that there are hundreds of thousands of expatriate Bangladeshis all over the United States of America who have suffered silently through the speeches of the very confident English speaking members of their communities. As a part of the long suffering silent majority, I am, however, sometimes a little conflicted. Should we attribute our sufferings entirely to the English language? Would the speeches be any better in Bangla?

An inflated sense of his command over English of an individual can sometimes create wonderful comic relief for others. At a social get-together of expatriate Bangladeshis somewhere in the United States, the individual with the microphone in hand announced that dinner was ready. He also urged the ladies to go first (to the dinner table). His exact words, however, were – ‘ladies beheaded’. Of course he was not proposing a mass decapitation of the entire female audience. He was only stating, in his very own English, that the ladies should be heading to the dinner table. Just like the surgical knife in the hands of the village barber, the English language at our disposal can have deadly consequences!