I am rather embarrassed. I just listened to an eye-opening talk given by the writer and filmmaker, Susan Sontag. In it she spoke of the place that English, the language, is taking as the dominant linguistic means for communications around the world today. That in and of itself, is not what has brought the red to my face and mental processes, but it all begins there.
There was a time when Hebrew was the language that connected intellects around the world, giving insight into the past, into the histories and peoples who had not just written the great literary works but had provided a means to exquisitely translate that information so that the past could be ethically and sensitively presented to people who were interested and curious about learning.
Over the years, through some international decisions made for the purpose of uniform communications for the sake of safety in air travel, it was decided that air traffic controllers and pilots would communicate in English. It did not matter that it might be an Italian pilot landing in Rome or an Indian pilot landing in Bangalore, they would all speak the agreed common language of the airways and that was to be English.
This was perhaps the beginning of the end of our love affair with the telephone for what took place on a rather insidious level was the use of a people for the sake of America's bottom line. In order to save its investors, or even better, make its investors, more money, English was taught to people in India with the purpose of filling the ranks of a company's lowest rank and file - a huge and hungry population already accustomed to service to the English.
LIsten up People.
Those telemarketers that drive you crazy with their calls and speak with broad Indian accents, are working in Call Centers in Bangalore, India, because the North American companies are too cheap to hire a home grown employee who would expect a more just earning. And we MUST keep the investors happy, the bottom line ever surging upwards!
And so they work hard at losing their Indian accents, polishing the local idioms and sayings, working at Americanizing their frame of reference so that they can slip into the North American culture at the expense of their own heritage.
I am reminded of the Canadian railroads built on the slight backs of the Chinese because labor was cheaper! More cause for embarrassment.
What a despicable race we become when we consistently put money ahead of heritage, investor's bankrolls ahead of the personal dignity of both our own unemployed and those upon whom we foist our accents and our linguistic standards.
So I wish to apologize. I am sorry for all those times that I lost my patience with telemarketers sitting in their little cubicle in Bangalore, India (even though under threat of losing their job, they lie), having to pretend that they are somewhere stateside or up here in Canada, trying to push down their own amazing cultural heritage for the sake of a key to some office job that goes to the worker with the best language skills, the best English language skills, I should say, the most efficient in this language that has crept like a virus through the cultures of the world.
I love my language. Don't get me wrong. But when it is maniputlated by the greedy for the sake of profit, it turns my stomach, and I will do everything in my power to restore the balance.
Language is an amazing tool, an instrument that should never be taken for granted no matter what its origin, no matter what culture or heritage it represents.
Our poetry, our literature, our songs, our everyday conversations that open the world to us, translations of textbooks and novels and yes even the telemarketers who call between four and six, use this ability to make the world a smaller and more intimate place.
Let's just use if for the right reasons!
It would give new meaning to the word literacy!
LGS.
Susan Sontag: 1933-2004
Writer, filmmaker and political activist.
There was a time when Hebrew was the language that connected intellects around the world, giving insight into the past, into the histories and peoples who had not just written the great literary works but had provided a means to exquisitely translate that information so that the past could be ethically and sensitively presented to people who were interested and curious about learning.
Over the years, through some international decisions made for the purpose of uniform communications for the sake of safety in air travel, it was decided that air traffic controllers and pilots would communicate in English. It did not matter that it might be an Italian pilot landing in Rome or an Indian pilot landing in Bangalore, they would all speak the agreed common language of the airways and that was to be English.
This was perhaps the beginning of the end of our love affair with the telephone for what took place on a rather insidious level was the use of a people for the sake of America's bottom line. In order to save its investors, or even better, make its investors, more money, English was taught to people in India with the purpose of filling the ranks of a company's lowest rank and file - a huge and hungry population already accustomed to service to the English.
LIsten up People.
Those telemarketers that drive you crazy with their calls and speak with broad Indian accents, are working in Call Centers in Bangalore, India, because the North American companies are too cheap to hire a home grown employee who would expect a more just earning. And we MUST keep the investors happy, the bottom line ever surging upwards!
And so they work hard at losing their Indian accents, polishing the local idioms and sayings, working at Americanizing their frame of reference so that they can slip into the North American culture at the expense of their own heritage.
I am reminded of the Canadian railroads built on the slight backs of the Chinese because labor was cheaper! More cause for embarrassment.
What a despicable race we become when we consistently put money ahead of heritage, investor's bankrolls ahead of the personal dignity of both our own unemployed and those upon whom we foist our accents and our linguistic standards.
So I wish to apologize. I am sorry for all those times that I lost my patience with telemarketers sitting in their little cubicle in Bangalore, India (even though under threat of losing their job, they lie), having to pretend that they are somewhere stateside or up here in Canada, trying to push down their own amazing cultural heritage for the sake of a key to some office job that goes to the worker with the best language skills, the best English language skills, I should say, the most efficient in this language that has crept like a virus through the cultures of the world.
I love my language. Don't get me wrong. But when it is maniputlated by the greedy for the sake of profit, it turns my stomach, and I will do everything in my power to restore the balance.
Language is an amazing tool, an instrument that should never be taken for granted no matter what its origin, no matter what culture or heritage it represents.
Our poetry, our literature, our songs, our everyday conversations that open the world to us, translations of textbooks and novels and yes even the telemarketers who call between four and six, use this ability to make the world a smaller and more intimate place.
Let's just use if for the right reasons!
It would give new meaning to the word literacy!
LGS.
Susan Sontag: 1933-2004
Writer, filmmaker and political activist.