Kindly adjust

Kindly adjust

The old sods had it coming, didn’t they? Serves them jolly well right for pressing the exit button on the European Union (EU). Now, they can’t possibly complain, when they have no control on how the Queen’s English is spoken in Europe. The French were the first to sense an opportunity. They objected to this upstart of a language as a lingua franca of EU. But not everyone was willing to show this most useful link language the door, simply because Old Blighty had walked out on them.

A recent study, carried out in Gavle University, Sweden, reports that “Euro-English” is already evolving as a distinct form of the language — and its use will probably become more widespread in the absence of the British laying down the rules. If the Brits were gutted when the Indians chutnified their English, they better hold on to their beer. In many parts of Europe, “eventual” is now used as a synonym of possible or possibly. The “blue-eyed” boy no longer refers to the class teacher’s favourite but a naive student out of touch with the new world. Much worse is the possibility that Eurospeak will look to the abomination of American spellings to define their system. In 2017, Jeremy Brown, the English teacher of the legendary sitcom Mind Your Language might be out of his job: Or at least out of step with time if he objected to his student, Ranjit Singh, saying: “I am coming from Punjab”. In Euro-English, that’s as good as saying “I come from Punjab”.

Bollocks, did you say? Well, too bad. Languages have never known to prosper if they harden into dogma. In India, we have preponed our visits, reverted to emails, and enquired after the good names of strangers, ever since the British left our shores. That has been the way of embracing the language. To those who nitpicked, we have simply shrugged and asked to “kindly adjust”. To the new Euro-English speakers, we say: “Welcome, we too are like that only.”