Re: Apple Phone Support Outsourced to 3rd World

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 09:32:29 -0500, Kurt Ullman wrote
(in article
<kurtullman-F10373.09322425112007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

In article <0001HW.C36EED5B007EA692F01846D8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
J.J. O'Shea <try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Again, this is irrelevant.

Demonstrates that Indians speak better English than yahoos.

Demonstrates that ONE 80-year-old Indian speaks better English,
according to one person's standards. Don't know which bromide is best
here. Anecdote is not the singular of data or the standard warning about
the hazards of extrapolating n=1 "studies".

Point. However, he learned his English in the Army. A whole lot of other
Indians his age would have done the same. There was a _reason_ why I
mentioned that the Indian Army 1939-45 was the largest all-volunteer force
the world had ever seen... and still holds that record. Everyone had to speak
English... and the 14th Army was the single most diverse unit of its size
ever seen, with divisions from the North West Africa Frontier Force (Nigeria,
Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, etc), the King's African Rifles (Kenya, Tanganyika,
Uganda, etc), and non-white South African (large white South African units
were not trusted, and were mostly employed in secondary roles. This was
largely due to 2 South Africa's actions, or lack of them, at Tobruk.) units,
plus assorted Burmese, Malay, Afghan, and Persian odds and sods. (Plus, of
course, Nepalis. Ayo Gorkhali!) Knowing proper English in the Army, where
making a mistake will get you _dead_, is rather more important than knowing
English elsewhere, and it was simply not possible to use Urdu, Hindi, or any
other major Indian language as the language of command, there are too many of
them and too many Indians from various parts of the subcontinent speak only
their local language... and English. Which is still true. Which is why any
Indian who has even pretensions to being educated speaks English, to do
otherwise means that he's not going to be able to even talk to someone from a
different part of the country.

You _do_ realize that India is roughly the size of Europe, has a considerably
larger population, and where most European languages (all of 'em, except
Hungarian, Finnish, and Basque) are part of the Indo-European language group,
there are no less than _four_ different language groups,
(Indo-European/Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, and Tibeto-Burman) with
21 different official languages, (no, I'm not going to list them. Look them
up.) and over 1500 dialects, (_hell_ no, I'm not going to list them.) in the
place? English is the language of the Army, and of major business, for the
excellent reason that it's _not_ one of the languages of one of the major
ethnic groups. Even if Hindi _is_, officially, the language of India, it
would be unwise to insist on using it in, oh, Tamil Nadu, and the government
doesn't insist... but it does insist that you if can't hack Hindi, you'd
better be able to hack English. Which is one reason why much of the Indian
civil service runs on English...

So let's see. If you're an Indian who wants to be able to speak to another
Indian from a different part of the country, you speak English. If you're in
the Army, you speak English. If you're in the civil service, you'd better be
able to speak English if you want to get promoted. If you're in big business,
you speak English... Right, so not all Indians will speak English, but rather
more Indians will speak English than the total population of the United
States. (Probably more like the total population of the US, plus Canada, and
Britain.) And a very large chunk of them will speak very good English indeed.
Which has been my experience. Certainly the majority of those I've
encountered speak better English than backwoods yahoos from the hills of
Tennessee. (Or, for that matter, rural Yorkshire, but we'll not go there.) It
the backwoods yahoos (or the Yorkshiremen) can't understand, tough. It's not
the Indians' problem, it's _their_ problem.

--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

.

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