The Story of English Episode One: English and Marriage

So there are lots of fun facts about English. Mostly stuff I had no idea about before, like the fact that for all air travel the official language is English. And that in parts of scotland the first language is Gaelic, not English. Crazy stuff.

However, the most interesting part to me was the one with the Indian school girls and how they all viewed English. The introduction to this section was just English in India in general with an interesting interview with Prof. P. Lal. He said, "more indians speaking better english than ever before, and there are more indians speaking worse english than ever before," which was interesting because the narrator had just been talking about how there is no real perfect way to speak English anymore (1). So maybe Lal was wrong in saying that Indians are speaking worse English than before, maybe it is just a new Indian form of English as more and more people adopt the language.

When the school girls were sharing their thoughts I was amazed that the main topic was how English related to marriage. One of the first comments was that "every guy in today's society wants his wife to know english because he wants to move it out in clubs and go to movies and meet his friends" (1). Another girl said, "today 5% of the guys may not insist on english speaking wives but I think 95% of them do" (1). I was surprised at how that was the first thing they began to talk about, and they are all probably around my age. If someone asks me about the language I speak I don't immediately jump to how it relates to marriage. I guess that just shows how people can have language in common yet completely separate cultures.

Also, just a little ps, I found this video if you ever want to give this assignment in a much more condensed form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rexKqvgPVuA

1. "An English Speaking World." The Story of English. Writ. Robert McCrum and Robert MacNeil. Dir. William Cran, Peter Dale, Vivian Ducat, Howard Reid. BBC MCML XXXVI. YouTube.