Ing-Lees

In Mizoram, as is in India, as is in most post-colonial countries, English is a measure of a certain echelon of people. Class, they say. Very often, it is a measure of success and intelligence, however misguided. And so we continue to judge people by the way they speak a foreign language.

It is what it is.

As it stands now, whether or not it is good or bad, it is the language I was educated in. And the language I read the fastest in. It is the language I use for numbers. It is the language I express myself with. It is also the language I watch TV.

I am not alone.

I do not know how good or bad I am in it. What I do know is that I am not that much better expressing myself in my own mother tongue. Not because I don’t know Mizo but more because I am not often the most loquacious.

Loquacious. What a pretty word. All Q words are pretty, I think.

As far as accents go, I think my English is accented by TV, Kerala nuns and North Indians. It depends where I've learnt of specific words and phrases and the way I've mimicked them. Sometimes I do try to enunciate but when I do, it sounds a little weird and forced. And if I repeat myself time and again, words start to sound strange. I mean... say food. Say food out loud. Say food again. Say food ten more times. Just sounds weirder and weirder. Or any word. All words sound strange if you repeat them enough times.

Even a word as pretty as picturesque. Why are all -esque words so pretty? I don't know. Maybe because they have Q in them.

When English isn't your first language, the languages you know bleed into it. English is very accommodating. So all these words start to blend into a strange and exciting new accent.

Like loquacious. I first heard of the word as spoken by Emma Watson in an interview and I loved the sound of it. In my head, loquacious is spoken in a British accent because that's where I heard it first. If I use it in a sentence, I might come across as trying to speak in a British accent. Truth is, I just learnt of it one way and that's how it's stuck in my head. Of course the rest of the sentence would be in Mizo accent so the difference might be jarring.

I think I strive for a neutral accent. Like the kind spoken by the old man who had a bookstore in Connaught Place in Delhi, whose shop we often visited as college girls because we had a crush on him and his neutral English.

And after we visited his shop, we’d go across the street and buy McVitie’s digestive biscuits. It was the only place we knew at the time that sold the snack. And my friend loved it. I forgot what I was talking about.