Off The Cuff: A wry look at life

Since neither of our kids speaks Urdu or Malayalam at home, we put 'English' in the box marked 'mother tongue' on the immigration form, and the funny part was that nobody at the Canadian embassy even blinked.

My wife and I are from different parts of south India and speak different languages, so English is the only language of communication. (India, as everyone knows, is a nation where there are more than hundreds of languages and dialects.)

When I was in Saudi Arabia, the only way I could communicate with our office drivers from Tamil Nadu was in a pidgin form of Arabic, as they didn't know Hindi, and I couldn't understand a word of Tamil.

When we first arrived in Canada I was surprised to hear of 'language police' in Montreal. I imagined them as wearing brown shirts and stuffing people's mouths with pebbles to try and make them pronounce the words properly.

I had heard of 'religious police', but this was something even stranger. But then the French must be paranoid, like all other right-wingers in various countries who worry that their language is being subsumed by English. I presume these guys in French Canada went around ordering shopkeepers to put up signs in the French equivalent of bakery, hooch house, etc.

The Indian language chauvinists tried translating words like lightening rod and tube light into Hindi, but the end result was so hilarious that the words laughed themselves off the dictionaries.

To get into Canada, you have to be proficient in either English or French. But in real life, nobody speaks either language. People in Canada are multi-tongued and multi-ethnic. Travel on any of the subways and you will hear anything ranging from Russian to Singhalese.

The only time you hear English is when the teens get on the subways, but what they speak is also not English in the true sense of the word.

Go to downtown China Town in Toronto and you will meet Chinese who have been in the country for decades and who never found a need to speak English. As soon as they land at Vancouver, from Shanghai, or whatever, they get into this part of town, work, marry, procreate and retire without knowing the difference that what George Bush speaks is not what the Queen speaks.

Italians and Greeks in Toronto don't need to speak English, except maybe to sell the heavenly cheeses on a nice sunny day. At the corner store from where we live, is a store selling goat cheese and warm 'khubs' manned by a Lebanese whose English is more French. But since he smiles a lot, nobody really bothers if they don't understand a word of what he is saying.

Each ethnic group lives in its own corner in Toronto. When you have a country as multi-cultural as Canada, it is natural that you also find combinations like Indo-Filipino, Irish-Chinese, and Croatian-Algerian. Everyone is getting more and more hyphenated and as time goes by, you will have grandchildren who are multi-hyphenated.

After 9/11, there is much debate in Britain that new immigrants, meaning Muslims, have to integrate more in the society, and believe it or not, speak English at home. The poor minister really doesn't know what he is getting into.

I would love to watch British Home Secretary David Blunkett try and make a grandmother from the Ukraine speak English to her grandson at home. Will he have homes bugged? And if people don't speak English, maybe he will have to resort to Punjabi to get the message across.

I am sure he must be knowing this, but many new immigrants to Britain come from the rural parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. Will he be able to understand their accents?
I am sure the Minister will next focus on the Irish. But can't imagine the Irish speaking English at home.