ib extended essay - english b

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Tra My NguyenIB World School 1531Candidate number: 001531-036 Extended Essay 1st draft __________________________ ____________________

IB WORLD SCHOOL 1531

EXTENDED ESSAY 2011

Word Count: 3530 words.

Interpretation of usage of Indian English in Bollywood movies.

Candidate name: Tra My Nguyen

Candidate session number: 001531-036

Supervisor: Ms. Monika Koblak

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Contents Page

Contents Acknowledgement 3Abstract 4

Introduction 5About the two movies 6Indian English and Standard English 8

Vowels and Consonants 8Morphology 10

Influence of English on Indian native languages 10English of the main actors 12Why is it “Indian English” or “English in India”? 14Bollywood speaks to new audience in English 15Conclusion 16Bibliography 18

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Abstract

This essay discusses the use of Indian English in Bollywood movies. It attempts to answer the question “How is the Indian English represented in Bollywood movies?”. By approaching different sources of information, the following essay gives out a decent analysis of what influences the usage of Indian English and how it is used. The basis for interpretations are the dialogues taken directly from two Bollywood movies “Kal Ho Naa Ho” (2003) directed by Nikhil Advani and “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) directed by Danny Boyle. Based on these two movies, the essay provides a comparison of Indian English and Standard English mainly focusing on the phonology of vowels and consonants. The comparison is supported with personal experience and attitude towards Indian English of the author.This subject is worth of studying because of the greater and greater influence of Indian English on Indian native languages. The reasonable evaluation and interesting virtual interviews of main actors from two movies have shown the idea of the interdependence of different generations on the language, especially those related to the Indian culture. The essay is structured into seven main parts. Starting with introduction, there are five different approaches of examining and analyzing the thesis which are finally ended by a conclusion. The conclusion reaches to an expression of distinct variety of the English language in order to state the importance of Indian English in today’s world. It is claimed that the combination of comparison, analysis, instances and interpretations have formed an idea of the usage of Indian English in Bollywood movies and also in today’s developing world.

Word Count: 261 words.

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Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Ms. Monika Koblak, for her support and assistance in writing this essay.

I would also like to thank the Warsaw University Library for making many valuable sources available for my research.

And finally, I want to thank all my friends from previous years of IB who gave me a lot of advice on writing this essay.

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Introduction

I have been interested in Bollywood movies for a long time, mainly those where actors speak

in English, such as “Godmother”, “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham”,

“Devdas”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, etc. For me, when Bollywood movies are concerned, not

only are their stories attractive because they truly represent many aspects of real life in India,

but the language they use and their way of pronouncing also fascinate me a lot. Actually, I

have never been to India and I don’t have so much of real experiences with the Indian English.

Nevertheless, India interests me very much, not only the language itself, but also its culture, its

customs, traditions, history and so on. Everything about India seems to be so unique and vivid.

I would really like to visit India and “see” the things that now I just “know”. Currently, what I

know about India mainly comes from the stories that I hear from friends, the Bollywood

movies that I watch, and the books that I read.

Among so many Bollywood movies I have watched, the two that left the greatest impression

on me are “Kal Ho Naa Ho” (Tomorrow May Never Come) released in 2003 by Nikhil Advani

and “Slumdog Millionaire” released in 2008 by Danny Boyle. The content they expressed was

so true, so moving and so meaningful that no matter how many times I watch them, I am still

impressed. However, what makes the content of the Bollywood movies for me far better than

other kinds of movies is actually the language they use. I really like their accent and the way

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they pronounce the words, especially the vowels. I will come to concretes about the difference

between the Indian English accent and the standard English accent later because firstly, I

would like to share some of the very interesting matters about Indian English that I gained

from Jason Baldridge’s book called “Linguistic and Social Characteristics of Indian English”1.

It is about how important the English language is for the Indians, and how they use it. He

states that although only three percent of India’s population speaks English, it puts India

among the top four countries in the world with the highest number of English speakers.

Primarily, English is their second language but it is English in which the greatest number of

India’s interactions in economic, industrial, professional, political and social life is carried out.

The author’s personal background experience with Indian English helped him notice that

Indian English as it is spoken between Indians is different from Indian English as it is spoken

with presence of a native English speaker, with fewer Indian terms and slang words.

About the two movies

As I mentioned above, Bollywood movies are not only great at the content they produce but

also at the language they use. Of course, this is only what I think personally because many

people only like Bollywood because of its romanticism but for me, in Bollywood, the Indian

English is something more than just a kind of language, I think that its accent can speak to me.

1 Jason Baldrige, Linguistic and Social Characteristics of Indian English.

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Now let’s turn back to the difference between the Indian English accent and the Standard

English accent using dialogues from the two movies. First of all, I will briefly introduce what

the two movies were about, then I will come to details about the language. The story of “Kal

Ho Naa Ho” is about a young-angry-girl who doesn’t believe in love and happiness - Naina.

One day, she met a man who could make her smile - Aman, and she fell in love with him.

However, they couldn’t be together because of his heart disease. The entire story was about

Aman trying to make Naina fall in love with another man, not knowing about his heart

disease, in order to avoid her suffering. This is a Hindi movie, which took place in New York

City, where Indian population is getting bigger and bigger. Therefore, the language used in the

movie was mainly English, specifically, Indian English. Throughout the movie, I could see

that actually, they spoke English but only half of what they said was understandable for me, as

the Indian English differs a lot from the British or American English, which I am learning.

However, when I watched “Slumdog Millionaire”, I was quite surprised at first, because the

actors were all Indians but they were speaking entirely in pure English. The story is about

Jamal Malik who grew up in the slums in India but won the best prize in the programme “Who

Wants to Be a Millionaire”. He didn’t expect to win the highest amount of money, the reason

why he started to this programme was only the hope that Latika – his lost girlfriend from

childhood - would watch him. He was arrested under suspicion of cheating in the programme

because of the fact that he comes from a slum but got too many right answers, and while being

interrogated, events from his life appeared to explain why he knew the answers. This is a

British movie, set in India and based on Indian real life. All of the actors were Indians, and

although the main actors were speaking entirely in British English, their accent is still the

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feature that interests me very much. However, here it is not about their Indian accent because

they don’t have it, it is probably about how their native Indian accent could change into so

pure British accent.

Indian English and Standard English

Vowels and Consonants

Before doing the research for this essay, I only knew that the Indian English pronunciation is

different from what I am speaking at school, but after the research, I got to know more details

about this. Now according to Wikipedia - one of the very reliable sources of knowledge, there

is a very detailed distinction between the pronunciation of Indian English and Standard

English, and the main difference seems to be put on both vowels and consonants. Now if we

turn back to the first movie, “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, we can take examples of how this difference

works.

In the very first scene, when Naina got home from the Central Park, she was talking with her

mom meanwhile checking the mailbox, and during the conversation she said “No Mom”. The

first difference can be noticed from such a simple word. Normally, in British English, we

pronounce the word “no” as /nəʊ/ and here it was pronounced like /nuo/. Actually, I don’t

have access to a dictionary with exact pronunciation of Indian English words, so I wrote the

pronunciation as I could hear the word. So many words which include the vowel “o”, was

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pronounced differently from the Standard English. The “o” was always changed into

(something close to) “uo”, such as: “game show”, “I’m joking with you”, etc.

According to the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, “South Indians tend to curl the tongue

(retroflex accentuation) more for /l/ and /n/”2. And this is true here, for example, coming back

to the dialogue from the movie “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, Naina pronounced the word “bills” with a

very strong “l”. It was the same with /l/ in “tell me”, “I love Aman”, “smile”, “Priya said

transplant is possible”, etc. Personally, beginning with pure interest, I have tried to pronounce

these words with this “strong /l/”, or “weird “o”, but I never succeeded. According to my

research, there are many more significant differences in the two types of pronunciation, which

are nearly all identified in this movie. The very common word, “of”, is usually pronounced as

“əv”. However, in Indian English it is “əf”. This is not such a great difference at first sight but

when recognized in a context, quite clear difference shows up within the phonology.

Nextly, one very distinctive difference between Indian English and standard English

pronunciation is that majority of Indians do not distinguish between /v/ and /w/. That is

because the standard Hindi does not differentiate these two vowels. Therefore, people whose

native language is Hindi also do not differentiate them, which results in different spelling

pronunciation when they speak English. This feature is shown in the movie quite frequently.

However, especially on this aspect, I would like to give my personal experience as an

example. I used to have lessons with a Srilankan girl, and her accent, I should say, for me, was

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English. (used 8-11-2010)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English

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beautiful. Her English was extremely fluent, correct and coherent although she was traveling a

lot and she knew six languages at a very high level. One of the most significant features in her

pronunciation was that she pronounced “which” with /v/, and “volunteer” with /w/, which at

first confused me a lot. But when I asked her about this, she said that this is how people in

Srilanka speak English, it is merely the influence of the Srilankan native language. Actually,

she has been living and teaching English in Poland for quite a long time, but this feature in her

language never changed.

Morphology

When morphology is taken into consideration, it can be easily realized that Indian English is

very creative and has a large number of new and unique terms and plenty of ways of using

them. Indian English sometimes pluralize words that usually don’t have plural forms and do

not pluralize words which do have plural forms. For example, when Naina mentioned about

her family, she said “my relative” instead of “my relatives”. The word “relative” here refers to

many members of her family, not only one. On the other hand, instead of saying

“enthusiastic”, Aman only said “enthu” and it had the same meaning as “enthusiastic”. What’s

more, “enthu” could be used as both adjective and noun while in standard English

“enthusiastic” can only function as an adjective, and “enthusiasm” as a noun.

Influence of English on Indian native languages

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When I was doing the research on this topic, there was always one question wondering me.

Apart from investigations about the two movies, I was always asking myself, “What would

happen to the Indian native languages in the very near future as English speakers in India are

ranking at the third place in the world, just after USA and UK3, as mentioned in the book

“English in India – Loyalty and Attitudes”? Why does this question wonder me? I think the

Indian culture is very strict. It does not allow any influence from different cultures, and if any

occurs, there will be certain punishments. I suppose it is similar when it comes to the language

itself. Now, the Indians are still using Hindi. But let’s think about 20 years to the future. As it

is clearly shown everywhere, children are more and more encouraged by parents to learn and

get used to speak in English. The first effect we can see is that the virtual language has almost

completely turned into English. More and more administrative managements are officially in

English. Even educational systems are now changing into English-focused, and usually, the

best ranked schools are teaching entirely in English. And what I am worried about is that in

the next twenty years, there won’t be what we call Hinglish – mixture of Hindi and English,

anymore because all will be replaced by Standard English.

What we can see from these two movies is that the younger the generation and the more they

are in contact with standard English, the more they are influenced considering the intonation

and stress. The actors in “Slumdog Millionaire” are a lot younger than those in “Kal Ho Naa

Ho” and they are in different circumstances than those in “Kal Ho Naa Ho”. The most

significant difference is that the “Slumdog Millionaire” director is a British man – Danny

3 Annika Hohenthal, English in India – Loyalty and Attitudes, chapter 5.

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Boyle. They represent a very potential future generation of India which can communicate

entirely in English so that they can develop much more than the previous generation. They

speak fluently in standard English with pure British accent. Freida Pinto - one of the main

actors was born and raised and educated in Mumbai. However, several years that she spent in

England and the people that she was with have had great influences on her accent.

English of the main actors

I have watched one interview4 of Freida Pinto and Dev Patel - the two main characters in

“Slumdog Millionaire” - about how they feel about their movie. The reason I mention about

this interview is not to share what they have said about the movie, but to compare the accent

of these two people. One of them, Dev Patel, was born and raised in Britain while Freida Pinto

was not. And that is shown right from how they speak. Probably, this feature seems to be

obvious to most people but I never met anyone who pay a deep attention to it. No one was

likely to analyse the language from an interview, most people would analyse what was said in

the interview. However, as I mentioned above, the language feature fascinates me a lot, and

this is what I usually pay attention to when I listen to someone or something. So from this

interview, I could see that her and accent and his accent differs but not a lot. She was greatly

influenced by British English and probably her previous studies in English, while he is

actually a native speaker. As he said in the second minute of the interview, he had never been

in Mumbai before making this movie. Nevertheless, the Indian English accent still existed in

their speeches.

4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BN1Twr0pDM. (used 6-11-2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BN1Twr0pDM

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Then I was curious about how the actors of “Kal Ho Naa Ho” speak entirely in English,

whether it is also pure like Freida and Dev or there is a bigger difference. And I watched the

interview5 of Shahrukh Khan – the main actor - and Kajol6. I chose this interview because it

was likely that Shahrukh Khan and Preity Zinta did not speak together in any interview, or just

I couldn’t find one. Anyway, their accent is the one that I love. It was similar to the accent of

my Srilankan teacher. My first impression when I heard them talking was that their words are

just like flowing along with their passion. Probably, what I perceived was too much of

“obsession” and “imagination”. Actually, they were talking with a very strong Indian tone,

their stresses were not placed at the proper syllables, but they were talking in the way they

speak in Hindi. For me, their voices were going up and down depending on their attitude to

what they say, or perhaps their habits. Then, I searched for any video with quite a long speech

of Preity Zinta7. And I found one which was her receiving the Honorary Doctorate at the

University of East London, which also surprised me a lot because this video was uploaded on

29 of October 2010 and I didn’t know that apart from her acting career, she was still following

an educational system to receive a Doctorate. And in the video, she made a great speech,

which gave me a lot of thoughts. She said “When I was a little girl, my father always told me

that an Indian woman, when she is young she’s dependent on her father, when she’s married

she is dependent on her husband and when she’s old she is dependent on her son. And I don’t

want you to be like that. I want you to have independence, I want you to be the master of your

5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2FNfQOoGE&feature=related. (used 6-11-2010)6 Kajol - She was not the main actress in this movie but she had a role of guest appearance; she is very close with Shahrukh Khan and they made a lot of movies together with two main roles, e.g: “My name is Khan”.7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNJhKLia_2w. (used 6-11-2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNJhKLia_2w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2FNfQOoGE&feature=related

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destiny. And the only way you can to that is if you’re educated and you can stand on your own

two feet.”8 Besides, the reason why I used this video to study the language is that Preity Zinta

was speaking in English totally differently from Shahrukh Khan and Kajol. She did have an

Indian accent, but she was used to English (this can be drawn from the fact that she got a

Doctorate at UEL) and she could manage her ups and downs in her voice tone.

Why is it “Indian English” or “English in India”?

At this point, we might be wondering why people usually say “Indian English” and “English

in India”. What is the difference? Honestly saying, there is no difference. According to an

article “Indian English or English in India” by Dr.Roopa Nishi Viswanathan that I have read

some time ago, some people might feel that the term “Indian English” suggests the

incorrectness of Indians speaking English. Dr.Roopa wrote that “I am against the term “Indian

English”. Makes it sound as if all Indians speak incorrect English. Henceforth, in this article I

will be replacing that derogatory term with “English in India”. Same thing? Never mind.

Makes me feel better.”9 We can see such strong emotions about a single word of an Indian

Doctor. Most possibly, this is the reason why there two different terms used for the same

meaning: English spoken by Indians. Personally, I don’t have such tough feeling about the

word, believably because I am not an Indian. At first, I always thought that Indian English is

the one that Indians speak and mix with Indian idioms, and English in India is simply English

8 Speech given by Preity Zinta when receiving the Honorary Doctorate at the University of East London. Source: www.youtube.com (used 6-11-2010)9 Extract from an article “Indian English or English in India” written by Dr.Roopa Nishi Viswanathan in 2010

http://www.youtube.com/

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spoken by anyone in India. But after the research, I got to know that it is not true, that actually,

Indian English and English in India is the same thing. The difference lays only in the feeling

of individuals.

Bollywood speaks to new audience in English

Now, if we look a little bit out of the two movies, we will see that the introduction of English

into Bollywood movies has brought about great benefits for Bollywood and for us – the

viewers. On one hand, English increases the number of viewers because the more modern life

we have, the more likely we are to look for movies with English origin audio. This is just the

nature of development. It is the same as the fact that almost every teenager nowadays can

speak English. On the other hand, English in Bollywood pushes up the quality and ranking of

the Bollywood movies. English is undoubtedly the language of globalization, of uniting people

together. As we know, movies and songs are very effective means of spreading worldwide

ideas. Probably, one of the most convincing evidence for this would be the fact that British

and American music has been always standing at the top of almost every music ranking.

Correspondingly, American and British movies have been also at the very top of world’s best

movies. Why does English language push up the quality of Bollywood? It seems to me that

people from all over the world will get to watch Bollywood because it would be

understandable for everyone by watching the original version, not just reading the subtitles.

Apparently, I am not mentioning the content of the movies because the the ideas of Bollywood

has always been wonderful, it’s just that not everyone could see that due to the language

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differences. When more people watch the movies, the producers and directors will be more

likely to develop and expand the quality of the movies. So that, even more people would be

willing to watch Bollywood. Besides, it is also important to mention the fact that when

English is used Indian movies, it means that more English will be used in India generally. This

is an advantage because, considering the fact that there are twenty two official languages in

India, English is the best way to connect more than one billion Indians and enable them to

communicate with each other today and there is nothing wrong with that. Moreover, Indian

English will become a “globally accepted form”10 of English and Indians will no more be

afraid of being laughed at because of incorrect English.

Conclusion

Indian English or English in India as it is used in Bollywood movies represents a variety of

ways of usage and diversity of its interpretation methods. Indian English can be recognized as

one of many dialects of the Standard English. The reason is that its grammar and phonology

differ from the Standard English to some degree. However, the number of world population

which is communicating in Indian English, and the influence of Indian English into current

World have made it a distinct variety of the English language11. If we consider only one fact

that the Bollywood movie industry is going to make most of its movies entirely in English, we

can notice how great influence the English language has left on the Indian culture. As my

experiences about Indian English come mainly from Bollywood movies, this is the feature that

10 Extracted from an article „English is recast in Indian films”11 Jason Baldridge, Linguistic and Social Characteristics of Indian English, chapter 3.

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attracts me very much among many other features included in the movies, such as

romanticism and other art elements. All of the comparison, analysis, instances and

interpretations above combined together has given the idea of how the Indian English is used.

This indicates the usage of Indian English in Bollywood movies – that is because most of

Bollywood movies represent real life stories with some artistic emphasis inside. Personally, I

am convinced that the language represented in the two movies “Kal Ho Naa Ho” and

“Slumdog Millionaire” as investigated above can partly express the habit of using Indian

English in India.

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Bibliography

1. The movie “Kal Ho Naa Ho”.

2. The movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.

3. Jason Baldridge, Linguistic and Social Characteristics of Indian English.

4. Indian Englishhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English .

5. Annika Hohenthal, English in India – Loyalty and Attitudes, Chapter 5.

6. The interview of Freida Pinto and Dev Patel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BN1Twr0pDM .

7. The interview of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2FNfQOoGE&feature=related .

8. The speech of Preity Zinta http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNJhKLia_2w .

9. The article: Dr.Roopa Nishi Viswanathan, Indian English or English in Indiahttp://www.chillibreeze.com/articles/IsitIndianEnglishorEnglishinIndia.asp .

10. Article, English in recast in Indian filmshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/17/bollywood-english .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/17/bollywood-english

http://www.chillibreeze.com/articles/IsitIndianEnglishorEnglishinIndia.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNJhKLia_2w





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English

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