WHEN I was a child in primary school, English grammar was the bane of my existence. I hated it with a passion. And because of that, I hated the whole language.
Heck, I couldn’t even spell ‘grammar’.
To begin with, nobody explained why we must learn English. Every day, we were stuck in class, listening to our teachers droning on and on about some English grammar, pointing out or poring over a dull and unimaginative lesson.
Most of us hated speaking English out loud in front of our peers, in the class, in front of our teachers, and worst of all, in front of a native English speaker. Very few English students enjoyed the lessons.
It all came down to fear and lack of confidence, the fear of using the wrong word, getting the grammar wrong or mispronunciation. We just had no confidence in our abilities to speak English.
There were cultural reasons for this too. In our community, the idea of losing face in front of others could be too much to bear.
At various points in the learning process when I began to understand the rules, I was then told about the exceptions to them. Even the teachers could not fully explain the correct use of ‘who’ and ‘whom’.
Then I had to learn more simple grammar exceptions like the dreaded Third Person Singular.
So, we had: I work, you work, we work, and they work. But, he works, she works, it works … What the heck? Why? Because that’s the way it is, I was told.
I wish the word ‘you’ has a plural. The lack of plural is filled with either “you guys” or “y’all”, which can lead to some confusion. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who is being spoken to because of the lack of the plural form.
Do you realise that distinct smells are almost universally described in similes? A simile is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared with something else of a different kind using the words ‘as’ or ‘like’.
Take, for example, aromas. It’s difficult to describe them in English. One day, a neighbour was cooking something and the smell reminded me of stinky football boots. At the time, I could only describe the smell as “like the smell of shoes that have not been washed or dried”.
English is a non-phonetic language. Letters break words down into pieces based on their distinct sounds, but words such as ‘mortgage’, ‘colonel’, or ‘queue’ are not said like how they are spelt. So, what’s the purpose of the letters, then? They make children and non-native speakers confused.
Word dichotomy is also complicated and baffling. Think of a cow. Is the meat also called cow? No, it’s beef. What about a calf? Is the meat calf? No, it’s veal. What is sheep’s meat called? Mutton. A pig? Pork.
Many English words are shortened or contracted, making some of them sound weird. The phrase “Don’t you know what this is?” is correct in conversational English, but when you break down the contraction, it becomes “Do not you know what this is?” This is grammatically incorrect. The correct sentence is “Do you not know what this is?”
We are instructed to use the article ‘a’ for words that begin with consonants, e.g. ‘a dog’, ‘a river’, ‘a ship’, and we’re taught the article ‘an’ goes with words that begin with vowels, ‘an eagle’, ‘an astronaut’. Yet, for words such as ‘historical’, people still say “a historical event” if they don’t pronounce the ‘h’, or ‘an opossum’ when the ‘o’ isn’t pronounced.
Then there are the rules. They govern everything. I cracked my head learning the infuriating exceptions to the rule and understood the differences, but whenever I spoke, I often forgot them. It drove me mad.
As if the rules and exceptions were not enough, there were those boring tests. There were so many of them! It seemed like every week our teachers presented us with a new round of tests.
I disliked the multiple-choice or fill-in-the-gap tests because they were not related to how we use English in real life. When I spoke to a person and was asked a question, I never got a list of three or four possible replies.
Regarding rote learning tests I thought they were mostly a waste of time, so I hated them too. But the people who had power over such things seemed to assume that the tests could help students memorise entire parts of the English language and how to use them. I found that to be untrue. All they did to me and other students was to help us remember things in test situations.
One of my biggest complaints about learning English was the lessons were of little practical use.
You see, I might have entire classes on English grammar and learned about Past Progressive and Past Simple and how to use the tenses. Or I might have a lesson on the use of articles — ‘a’, ‘the’, and ‘an’ — and be tested on them. But these things were of no use to me in the real world.
Even after learning grammar and spelling tests, when it came to simple conversations, I simply did not know what to say. I hated it.
I often asked myself (and also learned from other students) what I hated about my English classes.
It often came down to the way the classes were held. I had to listen to the teacher for a long time in each class. How I wished the Teacher Talking Time and Student Talking Time were varied from time to time. How I wished the teacher would talk less or use a different way to make the lessons more interesting.
A very annoying aspect of learning English in a classroom setting was listening to other students speaking very poor English.
Heck, I didn’t even like the way I spoke English, either.
Bad spoken English was mainly due to lack of practice. But how could I practise when I dared not speak to other students, and our time with the teachers was very limited?
I also complained about the boring textbooks (that were passed down from the senior students to the juniors), and don’t get me started on the dull homework!
After learning what seemed to be irrelevant English grammar rules and lists upon lists of vocabulary, my classmates and I got disheartened and looked for reasons why we should not learn English.
Some students looked for any reason to not study English.
A common excuse was, “I am no good at learning languages.”
Students (me included) usually said this after they tried to get to grips with some grammar point or found that there were a dozen ways to describe something.
I often wished that schools would keep things simple and make practical lessons for students who studied English as a second language (ESL) so that they could learn at a gradual, incremental rate.
But things were made complicated, and no wonder students came up with the excuse that language was not their forte.
Many a student said, “I am too embarrassed to speak English.”
It was a very common excuse. Back then, I didn’t know it was mostly cultural, but looking at it now, it is still only an excuse.
I was too embarrassed to speak out loud and thought it was my fault. Later I learned that the problem had to do with how we were taught. The teachers did not always instil a sense of confidence in us students at all times.
Quite often, I wondered if I was in the wrong class or was learning things that were too theoretical. Too much emphasis on linguistics and no practical use of the language … something like that.
I kid you not; there were times when I thought that I was too stupid to learn English. I heard the BBC London newsreaders on shortwave radio (no FM those days) and thought there was no way that I could ever speak, read and write like them.
Then there was the accent. Oh, my head hurts just thinking about it. What I heard on the radio did not sound at all like when I, or anyone else around me, spoke English.
We all spoke English with funny accents. Today, English is no longer the language that belongs to England, but back when I was in primary school, I thought that if I couldn’t sound like an English person, it was better to shut up.
Further gripes
Name at least 100 scientific papers or books (besides school textbooks) written in a language other than English. Never mind the minor languages. Think of the major ones such as French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, and Indian. Chances are you can’t find that many written works because only English is globally understood.
And it’s not just science. Look at the music industry. Millions of singers sing in English instead of their languages.
Scandinavians do it a lot. Eurovision is just as guilty. They want to progress, you see.
How many non-natives say, “I’m a writer, but I write in English!”, “I’m a composer, and I compose in English!” or “I’m a YouTuber; my videos are in English!”
It’s English, and more English to “go far” or “… to master a foreign language”. Yeah, you can do that for years and still pronounce, “Ayam guing to wok.” (I am going to work), or “Di ada day I wen to da sop wit my mada.” (The other day I went to the shop with my mother.)
Are you aware that many parents in Italy used to teach their children only English because it was “more useful”? It got so pervasive that the government has acted against it.
So now Italians who use English and other foreign words in official communications could face fines of up to €100,000 ($108,705) under new legislation introduced by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.
The legislation is particularly targeted at “Anglomania” or the use of English words, which the draft says “demeans and mortifies” the Italian language.
Yet, despite all that I have written so far, English is the “lingua franca” of our times. Should we be salty that it is not our language? What if our language were the lingua franca instead of English?
English and Bahasa Malaysia don’t mix well. I should know because I mix them a lot and all the time. I wish I can stop, but I do it automatically.
Malaysians have an ugly accent when they speak English; you know it, we know it. And conversely, the English accent in Malay (or Bahasa Indonesia) is even worse.
With that, I rest my case.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the New Sarawak Tribune.
