The Other - Tongue: English Across Cultures

https://doi.org/10.
25159/0256-5986/5336
It is odd that the author, who can be so witty, can also be so

humourless. To me, and probably to many other simple souls on my
intellectual level, 'granny-power' as a headline term for militant
old ladies is harmless and mildly amusing. But not to Mr Spiegl.
Perhaps it is the Teuton in him.
JAMES McCLURG
Braj B. Kachru (ed.) The Other• Tongue: English across Cultures,

Pergamon, 1983. 358pp. Paperback.
In his Introduction, the editor of this collection of essays claims

that 'this is the first attempt to integrate and address
provocative issues relevant to a deeper understanding of the forms
and functions of English.' The statement is questionable. None-
theless, the book is a useful reminder of the language problems we
have been living with in South Africa since the 19th century.
Much of the terminology in these essays is heavily linguistic.

For instance, Jack C. Richards surveys the code-switch of
indigenization in the lect shifting of English in Singapore English.
Nativization results in a continuum of verbal mechanisms that can
be employed for the same communicative/functional effect among
Singaporeans. A morpheme addition sees the introduction of a
final sentence-particle la, which probably is of Hokkien origin,
into constructs such as the following:
That depend on you la, if you want to take off one day, or your
office give you, that up to you la.
(p. 163)
Peter Strevens discusses lectal choice, where such choice is made
between acrolect, mesolect, and basilect, as resulting in a global
fiction of English and pleads for a unitary fiction of the idolect
in order to isolate INTER and INTRA types of IFE usage in a more
localized form. His discussion of discoursal rules would, perhaps,
have been given more immediacy with exempla. Tacit fossilization
is not restricted to the non-English speaker, after all.
In general, the essays can be divided into studies of English as a

second language or as a restructuring element in Eastern and
African countries. The influence of English on Japanese, which is
discussed by James Stanlaw, is food for thought. The intermingling
of the two languages began some 300 years ago and was accelerated
43
through the American occupation of Japan during World War II.
'Bamboo English' was the lingua franc:a leading to the prolifera-
tion of loanword dictionaries with the largest containing over
27,000 entries.
As an example of the spread of loan words, Stanlaw has the

following to say:
The vocabulary of sports borrows from English quite readily,

though often with a slight Japanese twist on the words involved,
e.g. sekando oba (over second), sayonara homu ran (a game,
ending home run). Men's magazines also use numerous English
loanwords, especially when dealing with sexual topics. For
instance, in the weekly magazine Pureboi (a Japanese version of
the American Playboy) one finds such items as 01w .. l;__;,r (boobs),
majikku pal.Ja ( magic power - aphrodisiacs), and datch·i waifu
(Dutch wife - an inflatable bed partner).
(p. 1 71)
Anyone who has visited Japan will bear witness to the eagerness
with which young people there waylay the foreigner and practise
their English on him or her. The figures given 'by Stanlaw show
that there are over 50,000 English teachers in Japan, that 8% of
the total Japanese vocabulary is derived from English, and that
99% of Japanese children begin the study of English in seventh
grade at school. Interestingly enough, because Japanese is such a
courteous language in usage, argumentation is almost impossible.
So all debating societies in Japan have to conduct their contests
in English!
Sinicized English, according to the survey by Chin-Chuan Cheng, is

at present encouraged by the Marxist regime of mainland China and
is overtly political. This is expected to change as China moves
steadily into the fields of science and technology. Although the
main foreign language studied, English is not used as an inter-
language among the fifty-five ethnic groups in China. The
political bias in the English syllabus is illustrated by Chin-
Chuan Cheng:
Typical content from 'social practice' is exemplified in

'classroom practice.' An extreme interpretation of this
requirement said (sic) that, if things depicted in the textbook
all happened in a community unknown to the students, that text
would be devoid of social reality. Hence we found the lessons
in one English textbook (English, Volume 2, Intermediate level;
Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1974) to have titles such
as 'Serve the People,' 'Carry the Struggle to Criticize Lin
Piao and Confucius Through to the End,' 'Tachai Marches On,'
'Recounting the Family's Revolutionary History,' etc., mainly
relating to Chinese society.
(pp. 135-6)
44
Three essays bear specifically on the use of English in Africa;
the areas discussed are West Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and East
Africa. Conspicuously, there is no mention of the use of English
by South African blacks. Eyamba G. Bokama, Assistant Professor of
Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics, University of
Illinois, examines the sociolinguistic influences on Liberian
English and does so with a prescriptive/descriptive approach.
1~1at Bokama terms the lack of distinction between countable and
mass nouns in the African languages of Ghana and Nigeria such as
we have in English probably is responsible for the following
sentences drawn from letters and published novelettes:
1. I lost my furnitures and many valuable properties.

2. There were thunderous noises of laughter and chats.
3. She walked in such paces that combined her college
learnings of how to behave.
(p. 82)
The influx of Puerto Ricans into the United States is a political
and social problem of considerable magnitude. There. is also a
reverse traffic to the island itself, and Rose Nash looks at the
Pringlish spoken by 100,000 non-Puerto Rican Americans there. To
say the least, Pringlish represents what Nash calls a relaxed
standard of correct usage of English. Perhaps it's the heat or
palm wine. Spanish words are inserted in English sentences with
gay abandon. The locals delight in composing limericks that
combine Spanish and English. An example:
There is a young girl from Condado

That at night walks from lado to lado (one end of the street to
another)
Though she's not in a show
She makes pretty good dough
But her work is not quite so !wur',z,io (honourable)
(p. 255)
As mentioned earlier, the editor of this collection of essays
asserts that it is the first time any such combination of cross-
cultural and bilingual studies has been published. A notable
omission, in view of this claim, is any reference to the pidgin
English of the New Guinea and South Pacific islanders. There are
numerous books published on this variety of English across cultural
frontiers. And what about the English spoken by the Pitcairn
islanders? Was that mutiny on the Bounty all for nothing?
The use of English by non-English writers of fiction is full of

entertaining gaffes that Naipaul, in particular, uses to comic
effect. R.K. Narayan, whose The Financial Expe1°t is a joy to read,
is quoted by Ann Lowry Weir to show how skilfully this Indian
novelist exploits the literary and cultural dilemmas of a
transposed language. Margayya, the financier, has some difficulty
45
in grasping the finer points of typography:
But Lal turned up with a new poser for him: 'Shall we use
ordinary ten-point Roman or another series which I use only for
special works? It's also ten-point but on an eleven-point
body, I
Body? Points? Ten and eleven? What was it all about?
Margayya said: 'Ah, that is interesting ... I should like to
see your eleven-point body.' He had a grotesque vision of a
torso being brought in by four men on a stretcher.
(p. 320)
Prospective readers of this collection should not be put off by
the distressing indulgence of some of the essayists in linguistic
gobbledegook. The facts and figures of the world's main language
as she is spoke by people of non-English culture are predominantly
informative and entertaining for anyone with a feel for words.
W.D. Maxwell-Mahon
University of Pretoria
DICTIONARIES: ABB THROUGH TRA
J.G. du P. Pretorius and L.C. Eksteen. Dictionary of

Abbreviations. Johannesburg: Perskor Publishers, 1981.
Hardback R12,50
G.S. Nienaber and P.E. Raper. Hottentot (Khoekhoen) Place Names.

Durban: Butterworth Publishers, 1983. Hardback R14,50
G. Elgie Christ (ed.). The Academica Dictionary of English

Synonyms and Antonyms. Pretoria: Academica, 1982. Hardback
R9,50
Adrian Room. Dictionary of Trade Name Origins. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982. Hardback R23,00
A good dictionary necessarily embodies personal judgement on the

part of its editor (or editors), considers textual probability -
and scholarly and editorial precedent. It must also seek to gauge
the needs and resources of the educated general reader of the late-
twentieth century in an interpretative process that attempts to
determine contemporary and relevant 'tone-values' or 'valuations'.
It should aim, in short, for a rigorous designation of total
46

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https://doi.org/10.

It is odd that the author, who can be so witty, can also be so

Braj B. Kachru (ed.) The Other• Tongue: English across Cultures,

In his Introduction, the editor of this collection of essays claims

Much of the terminology in these essays is heavily linguistic.

In general, the essays can be divided into studies of English as a

As an example of the spread of loan words, Stanlaw has the

The vocabulary of sports borrows from English quite readily,

Sinicized English, according to the survey by Chin-Chuan Cheng, is

Typical content from 'social practice' is exemplified in

1. I lost my furnitures and many valuable properties.

There is a young girl from Condado

The use of English by non-English writers of fiction is full of

DICTIONARIES: ABB THROUGH TRA

J.G. du P. Pretorius and L.C. Eksteen. Dictionary of

G.S. Nienaber and P.E. Raper. Hottentot (Khoekhoen) Place Names.

G. Elgie Christ (ed.). The Academica Dictionary of English

Adrian Room. Dictionary of Trade Name Origins. London:

A good dictionary necessarily embodies personal judgement on the

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