Monday, June 04, 2007

God Bless the English

Computers - what would we have done without them - information exchange at the snap of your podgy fingers! Phones - what would computers be without the invention of Phones and telecommunication networks
Then again - what would all this be without Electricity ... or the Edisons, the Newtons & Einsteins ... working together trying to invent the fastest way to make money! You get the drift ... can go all the way to "Main Samay Hoon" - but we wont - in the interest of time.

Traveling to a Portugese country - Angola - where they don't speak any English - does open-up a few doors of comprehension (pun intended)
Sure I am definitely able to communicate to my driver that I want him to pick me up after 1.5 hours but only after a fair amount of acting, emoting, pointing, 'frustrate-ing' :P and the occasional dancing! The perfect ingredients for collaboration I tell you - intelligence, capability, creativity and the inability to do anything together ... quickly and productive that is!

We owe the English quite a bit - with their colonization and looting and pilferage - they (unknowingly ... like the apple) left behind the single largest enabler of collaboration and ergo advances in science and technology - A COMMON LANGUAGE.
Thank God that they went across the world and dropped English along with their other crap wherever they went.

Now you linguists and purists (a lot of them desi) may argue that English is a poor language, a borrowed language, ... yada yada yada ... but despite the magnificence and beauty of Sanskrit or Latin they are not directly responsible for me to be able to type this out today! English is!
But then it is a curse I tell you! If the English had not done whatever it is they did, it would NEVER have been possible for someone to create a "I hate Shiv-Sena" community on Orkut ... ergo forcing some fanatics in a "DEMOCRATIC" country to trash up a random cyber-cafe. The otherwise-peaceful Soldiers-of-Shiv and loyal servants of Child-Master would have been blissfully ignorant and the world would be a happier place but then - I digress.

Then again we may be heading towards the second Tower of Babel ... and the English will be responsible for God's wrath to come ... ... ... er ... for now I think I'm going with being realistic!

I never thought that I would say this - God bless English and the English.

2 comments:

raoul said...

I never imagined you'd say this either.

Venky said...

@raoul - What can I say Dr. J ... doors of perception at play here ...