On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 17:54 +0200, Shakthi Kannan wrote: > Most Indian (students) in India, whom I have met have this notion that > they don't want to speak in English because their grammar is bad, they > are not "confident" of speaking, and that if they speak broken > English, people will laugh at them or not accept what they say. But,
Maybe the case in rest of India but I've not observed that in the metros - well, atleast in Mumbai or Delhi. > Most students tease others in college if you speak English, with > "Peter", "born abroad" jokes etc. But, because they are disconnected > from the real world, and the Industry, they don't realise the facts. There is no need of mentioning such behavior. It just shows the serious lack of maturity. > Put freshers from a college to a group discussion in English, they > will never open their mouth. Hehe. > If you've attended FOSS conferences/user-group meet-ups in India, > (from what I have observed) most speakers don't care about grammar, as > long as they can express themselves. Hmm...touchy subject. But good English and good grammar give a GOOD experience for the audience. They dont need to spend tremendous amount of time to /understand/ what the speaker is saying if he/she can speak decent English. I'm not talking about Queen's English or Yankee talk. Just plain old clear English. > They don't see it as a limitation > in conveying their thoughts, which is important, and that is the > message we want to put across. Well they couldnt be more wrong. Language is THE carrier of knowledge. I guess these same people would be up in arms if I dont make a valid XHTML / HTML 4.01 standards compliant page or write a valid CSS. If you care about broken lingo in the computer world then you better care for the broken lingo in the real world. > We accept that your English is not perfect, but, we don't want you to > think of it as a limitation for you to come forward and openly share > your doubts/questions in mailing lists/IRC/forums/meet-ups. Look, nobody is perfect - granted. But atleast half decent? Come on these people are atleast 15-20 year olds. I'm not a convent educated but I can speak fluent English and get my ideas across effectively! -- Regards, Dinesh A. Joshi -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
