I spent last Fall living in Melbourne, Australia. During my time there, I had to adjust to a lot of things: driving on the left, paying almost $8 for a Happy Meal and eating Vegemite with my toast in the morning.
But the biggest adjustments for me came in the form of dealing with language, which was surprising since I wasn’t studying abroad in Spain or China. After all, Australians supposedly speak English. It took me long enough to understand the Australian accent. I also had to learn to accept that Australians say “different to” instead of “different from” or “different than,” that they mispronounce “pronunciation” as “pronounciation,” and that they mysteriously add Rs between words, even when they drop Rs in most other places.
That’s all fine, of course. But, dear Australia, I could only take so much.
The word is spelled S-C-O-N-E. “Scone”— a rhyme of “tone” and “phone.” And yet you insist on rhyming it with “on.” The word is not “scon.” OK—the British invented the scone, and your nation inherited the Queen’s English, so you have some claim to the name. But it’s just so inconceivably inconsistent to pronounce it “scon.”
Because English is, um, so consistent otherwise.
I asked my coworker Olivia, a native English-speaker from New Zealand, what she considered “standard English.” She responded that she considered New Zealand English standard. Another coworker, Pam, a native English-speaker from Singapore, said that British English is considered the standard in her country. She didn’t believe that there was a standard, though.
Is there? When English became the world’s lingua franca, did it relinquish the ability to be standardized? When other people appropriate English—the Americans, for example—then their own form of the language usually becomes the standard. Geographic, ethnic and socioeconomic divisions strengthen distinctions between varieties.
But if we drew on sheer numbers alone, then American English would be the standard. With native speakers numbering in the hundreds of millions, American English is the most populous form. Hundreds of millions of other people across the world watch American television and movies, so American English is the most heard dialect, too.
English isn’t controlled by the English anymore. Still, Received Pronunciation, the standard media accent in England, is often considered the most prestigious English accent. The General American accent, our media standard, is up there, too. Some varieties, like African-American Vernacular English (“Ebonics”) might be considered less prestigious, but are no less dear to their speakers.
How many Englishes do you hear at Duke? Your professor from South Africa, your adviser from Pakistan and your classmate from Malaysia all grew up with a very different English from yours. Even Americans from different regions might speak different English varieties. And as English-speakers, we don’t belong to just one community. Which English do you speak with your parents and which do you speak with your friends? Do you ever feign a new accent? Conceal your own?
Because every English society has a prestige form, every English comes packaged with a set of stereotypes about its speakers. Consciously or not, we often draw upon these stereotypes when we hear an English different from our own or when we choose which English to speak.
But a language is a language if it serves its purpose: to communicate. The strength of English lies in its proven adaptability and utility, wherever it might appear. To evaluate another based on his English—instead of the content of his speech—would be doing a disservice not only to that person but also to the dynamism of English itself. And to criticize another variety of English would be denying the creative power of the world’s only global language.
Maybe it’s just enough to enjoy the small differences, trade some jibes and appreciate the fact that English is never the same wherever you go.
This, at least, is what my coworkers and I decided. I didn’t end up winning our argument. That’s OK with me: Sticks and “stons” may break my “bons,” but different Englishes can’t hurt me.
Sandeep is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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