Re: New pronunciation of Bangalore

Michael Farris wrote:
Aidan Kehoe napisal(a):

lots (inabsolute numbers if not in terms of percentages) of people in India grow up
with as much exposure to English as a Luxemburger has to French, that is,
schooling, media, literature.

It seems to me that by this standard many if not most Dutch and
Scandinavians could be labelled native speakers of English. Would you
agree?

No.

And if not why not?

It's like Frisian in the Nederlands. I gather that many native Frisian
speakers can conduct a conversation exclusively in Frisian only if they
are discussing farming, cooking or household chores and resort to Dutch
to talk about any other subject. Such a situation is quite prevalent in
India; many Indian English speakers use only English for a significant
proportion of the subjects they talk about and in cosmopolitan
gatherings where the best known common language is English, they use
English even for conversations they know how to conduct in an Indian
language.

Part of the problem is that 'native speaker' is a fuzzy category
usually applied to people who grow up, go to school and conduct most of
their life business in the same language.

It has a lot less application in places with histories of
multi-lingualism, extreme diglossia or a non-local imposed prestige
language. All three of those conditions tend to apply in many places of
India where 'native speaker' is not a terribly viable category period.

-michael farris

.

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