But for the rest of the jobs, rest of the work, environment, society, please, for heaven's sake, especially those people in position of authority, power, hiring positions, do not ridicule people who don't speak grammatically correct English. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts. If you've come across or if you're one of them, how do you feel? What do you do?
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 4:13
And I think that has a lot to do with how the language has been structured and all of that but the function of language ultimately is to communicate agarab communicate only thing that matters is communication or conversation who is in this conversation is the only thing that matters everything else is figure out right? So mocking people for their language skills is really abhorrent rejecting people just because they don't have the language skills you require as part of the job I think that is understandable I mean
Right. And the very first time I met him in person, I got a bit surprised because when you spoke in English, it was not aspirin like I was used to all these American professors all around me who obviously have native English speaking skills and that was kind of my expectation. So when I first talked to him, it was almost jarring because I expected him to be affluent in English as everybody else I was seeing around me. And when he was not
And because we're doing it on the fly, then inevitably we get verb tenses wrong or the wrong word, or we didn't mean that, but yet we can understand each other. So it's baffling to me when people judge another person for an accent or a word choice or a wrong verb tense or whatever it might be. It sort of reminds me of childhood arguments or bullying or that kind of thing. When did you understand what was being communicated? And if not ask clarifying questions
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 3:13
We are a country that was built on immigrants, and yet for some reason, over the past hundreds of years, we've become this monolithic tone of English is the master language. And if you don't know what, you must not be intelligent. And it's tragic. It leaves people completely empty because they don't get to fill up with those delicious conversations that can be had when you're patient and when you're deeply listening and you're making someone feel welcome
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:27
And so I felt like I was in this weird gray space, and I honestly, honestly didn't gain confidence with how I structure my sentences when I'm speaking, how I deliver information until I achieved my doctorate degree in 2018. Once I got that, honey, baby, let me tell you, I'll make up a word in a minute, and as soon as someone scrunch up their nose, I'm like, Honey, I have my doctorate degree
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 2:18
Oxymorons that exist all the time that speaking English that isn't perfect grammar doesn't make you less of a communicator. I wholehearted and I think more people should learn other languages to get an idea of not just how hard it is to learn a language or to master a language. Like, I certainly haven't mastered any of the languages I've learned, but also to get another feeling of a culture
Aditi Kapoor
@MyCuratedTales · 3:05
That if you are grammatically wrong. Any sentence or even your communication skill in that way gets hampered as the world to today is moving in a very rapid pace and English being the global language. It is somewhere definitely a pressure to use the language in a proper manner but I definitely do not agree with the fact that people who mock and ridicule others and they feel superior see if you are good in English. Like for me. English is my favorite subject I like reading books
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 1:37
One last edition. I would like to see the English language change. For example, the spelling and the pronunciation drives me wild. Why is there a P in pneumonia? Just because it's from the Latin. Just get rid of that P. It's not punnedonia. And tsunami. Why is there a T in tsunami? It's not needed. And Knuckles, why is there a K at the beginning of Knuckles? I'm loving what's going on in social media at the moment with English
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 2:26
And most of my education was in convent schools, right, where there is this sort of focus on mastery of the language. And there is a lot of judgment around that as well. Even recently, a friend of mine from school when we connected was telling me we connected. I think my fascination with you was your grip over the language. And that kind of did shock me because I think it's later that you realize when you look back that people actually connected with you on this basis
Georgie Dee
@GeorgieDee · 2:36
But it's a good point that you raised that it does actually affect relationships, as in your case, where people made friends with you because your mastery, the language was so sophisticated. But, yeah, it's the judgment that I would know. I didn't judge those students that I couldn't understand. I just thought, yeah, I'm not going to be able to socialize with you and relax at the same time. Good point. Region, actually, in opposite
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Ishita Joshi
@weirdo_ishi · 0:44
Hi, and thanks for bringing up this topic. I do face many a time the challenge of communicating things in the English language language. But by hearing this spell cast, it really helped me. And as you said that yeah, it's about the thought clarity in the communication and not the language. Thank you for sharing your views on this, and I'd like to hear such a swell cast in future too. Thank you. Bye
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 0:28
Hey, everyone. Thanks for all the swells. I've just got back from my earning my daily bread, and now, after refreshing, I'll probably get into swells and try and answer as many as possible. In the meanwhile, listen to this link. It's hilarious. I'm sure you must have already heard it, but this kind of epitomizes the irony of English as we know it today. So enjoy
Or was it the sheer confidence and the authoritative voice of the native speakers that I interacted with that kind of made me uneasy? I do not know. But I think it is a very Indian thing to feel both intimidated and also to intimidate others on the basis of how someone articulates in English. In India, when we are taught English, we are expected to try and reach a certain level, usually the level of the native speaker. Right
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 2:43
And clearly when we go out there in public and interact with people we don't know, that's where it tests your listening skills the best. So I oftentimes slow down, I rephrase questions saying that just to make sure I understood you correctly, is this what you're trying to say? And there will be odd bloke here and there who would repeat it in the same colloquial accident and you would still not get it. It happened to be in some of the other regions in Southeast Asia as well
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 1:26
Thanks so much for tuning in. Yes, absolutely. Thought clarity in your own mind is, I think, the starting point of being able to communicate effectively. I think we need not use complex words and difficult words. Sometimes it's just simple or simplifying. It use easy, simple language. And if that's something that helps bring out the thought clarity in you, that's the language we use. We don't need to sound more or net than we actually are
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 2:30
Though I've found them to be highly professional, exceedingly polite, and they have a great attention to detail and so they raise the bar of getting the job done the right way. And in my interactions with them I have learnt a lot. I have tried to incorporate some of the best practices and both at work in philosophy and in general, multiple facets of life. But I do also understand and recognize the fact that there could be different experiences, there could be different outcomes of those experiences
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 4:53
If you are in a customer facing role which has a customer base which largely understands proper English, then it becomes untenable. The fact that you can't get through proper English communication. That those kind of situations. People will look for an English proficiency of say, level 200 or more, but for 70 80% of other roles, level 100 proficiency would be good enough. I think there is a grammatical part of it. There is the mother tongue influence part of it
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 1:28
What I mean by that is let me qualify that. If you think of the words used to express excellence are usually strong negative words. Go kill it. Have a blast. Think of that connotation extreme workshop, mean machine. I guess you get the drift. And so everything that has a negative literal meaning is now a representation of of excellence. Does that not fascinate you? When did this transition happen? And why is wicked the new code? Is the question, I think
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 3:29
There will be people who will not understand you. And that's fine. I think so. It's just not the ability to speak English. There's a lot of sociocultural, philosophical, psychological aspects in play. And if I can sum this up for you if Charles Darwin said it's the survival of the fittest I think in this day and age it's the survival of the most adaptable
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 4:30
Disrespecting somebody's culture or background is where the problem is. I suspect the stereotypical impression of how media represents many other cultures does play a role. Let's put it this way for example in the Middle East, the kind of complexity of the region, there are good people, there are bad people, as is the case everywhere in the world
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 4:27
It's about an English professor or teacher trying to teach English to a bunch of immigrants, people coming from different countries and it leads to some hilarious situations and stuff like that. While I think at the heart of it probably it's supposed to be a funny show, but it also AIDS to the stereotyping of a culture, the stereotyping of people and how they dress and how they look and all that
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 4:51
And so this is me, I will share it the way I like it and the saga continues and the legacy continues because it passes on to generation to generation before, you know, the standard definition of properly constructed structured sentence is way off than what it ought to be and should be. So as a society on one hand we are saying well let's just accept it, right?
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 3:00
And so got to learn to live with what is available, adapt to some and correct some and not get defensive about some and then that's the mix of it and that's why there isn't one. Language fits all. I wish Dothraki was one of them. It sounded amazing the way it was delivered and I totally subscribed to it if that was made the mandate as a standard language. World War
Aayan Banerjee
@BasTalk · 4:35
And I mentioned this in The Swell if you are surrounded by a set of people who don't speak good English and you are the one who is the only one speaking good English, that too puts you into trouble, gets you into trouble, that do puts you in an awkward position, is it not? And so there isn't a solution that I see other than the fact that we have an external mechanism which intervenes and eliminates the barriers of communication between either ends of the spectrum
But it's all a matter of perspective and where we're standing and what we're looking at in order to decide which facet to address and how to, quote, unquote, improve upon it. Anyway, communication always a wonder to me. All of that said, I think that even if we're talking just language itself, I mean, there's the semantics we could get into of a particular definition for a particular word
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 5:00
But the way they do this, it is a chef's case, perfection, like a master class in passive aggression. And only if you immerse into the culture, you will not even catch the way in which they insult you without actually insulting you. So one key instance, a very gentle example of that could be how they say bye, right? They rarely say it because that is like goodbye forever type situation