From disaster management to language thoughts

Instead of learning about disaster management in a symposium I attended a couple of days ago, I observed different linguistic styles of the speakers while they were delivering the prepared speeches. The languages of the conference were both English and Japanese. The speakers were from Japan, US, and countries affected by the earthquake and tsunami last year like India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. Japanese speakers used Japanese while the others used English.

In the span of two hours I heard 6 different varities of English. Their Englishes are strikingly different from one another.

The Indonesian speaker sounded like a Pinoy politician somewhere from the south.

The Thailand speaker sounded like my nanay (she grew up in Pangasinan).

The speaker from Bangladesh reminded me of paeng, speaking English without an American accent but heavily loaded with pinoy accent.

The speaker from Sri Lanka sounded and looked like Sir Edru, an Art Studies professor in UP.

The Japanese speakers sounded and behaved like Japanese. They were reading their jokes.

And the two Indian speakers, well, I felt sleepy while listening to their speeches. Weird. Pataas-pababa ang accent. Hmmm, parang spaghetti.

Anyways, there was a male Caucasian sitting beside me and he was laughing while the Indian was giving his speech. Maybe because the Indian was speaking in a way different from his style (or the rest of the American people). Hay naku! Ang kapalmuks. If he only knows na siya ang talo, in the long run. Almost everybody can speak, or is learning to speak English, his (only?) language. And he is confident that knowing (only) English will be enough. Wala na silang claim sa English, sa totoo lang. Wawa naman.