TechECE

Good da... Even your argument sounds valid...

One more to my kitty, I have more points to say when some one asks me why I have such a poor communication skills.

I need to say why I wrote this blog. Here comes the flashback... Last sunday, I was out with a mission - to find a house for rent for my friends to stay. First, some one had to call the owner and ask them if the house they advertised in the paper was still available for rent. Now, came the biggest problem, who should call the owner. Everyone were reluctant to call the owner (coz Kanada was always alien, as English was the best among the worst, we had to speak in English). My school mate Praveen volunteered to blabber in English, which he managed to some extent.

Finally, we reached the owner's house; Now came the surprise, the owner was a cutie in her early 20's. Everyone of us wanted to Peter with her. But, again English pushed us 10 feet back; She had such a fluent accent that none of us (4 guys) felt comfortable opening our mouth. My friend started the conversation stammering here and there.
The girl with her accent, style, vocabulary, stood a class apart.

At the end, wounded kart had to settle with this blog. More terrible things happened when I had been to meet my friend @ IISC last month, which probably deserves a separate blog.

I've got a psychological reasoning. Everyone does good in what gives him a sense of pride within himself and w.r.to his peers. Pradeep, I believe, having similar neural connections as us between the lobes, grew up in a school or in a family or with whoever he compared himself, where English was appreciated. At some point it would have been the scale he measured himself against his peers and pushed himself forward. On the other hand, flks like us who made fun of him feel bad only when our pride is hurt by a 20 year old cutie, inadvertantly. I guess we can apply this logic to guys and girls as well. Girls thought themselves great and felt proud if they spoke good English. That's why as anyone would have observed in a corporate atmosphere, that a guys prefer speaking in native language while girls prefer English, no matter how good the guys are in English. There are girls, even a larger share, who didn't think so and thereby aren't so eloquent. Even this generalization of boys & girls, I guess would vary based on geography. I've got a feeling that guys from North are more interested to be managers than techies. Sometimes I've felt their fluency is better than us but not grammar. So the next question would be, why girls feel proud in talking english while guys don't? Well the answer could be anything. Any butterfly would have triggered this storm. May be even as little as a father telling: "En payyan, kanakkula puli. engineeringla avlo interest. edha kuduthalum nonditte iruppaan" and also "En ponnu sollra pecha keppa, romba sincere. azhaggga dress pannittu school pova."

@prad - i appreciate the way u silently escaped out of the whole debate with ur last line ;) Anyway - once major doubt i have - this theory says that since some thousand years ago man had to keep silent coz of his everyday activities he cannot speak fluently in english today. i wont buy that!!! in today's environment, everyone has huge pressure to compete at every level. So from school (where ofcourse i've seen ppl getting punished for not communicating in english) till college (ofcourse GCT would be an exception) the kid is expected to do well and for this communication is a must. Does science not say that the neurons get trained to what we do everyday - i guess this will have more effect on the neurons of any person, not what someone did so long ago. If that is true - no guy shud be speaking well in english or, generalising, any foreign language.

@kart - why do i get to think that this is a case of extra pressure which u guys brought on urself??? Why am i getting reminded of the hotel scene in "Boys" where every guy tries to impress the girl??? Can u quote any exp of meeting a girl alone, when u r not "competing" for air space ;)

@sunil - the last line was cute. But dont we have instances like this "en payyan (or ponnu) LKGdhaan padikkaran, aana azhaga Mummy Daddy nu koopduvan"!!! i've seen this in many many families i do.

now that i've satisfied myself that i've disproved everyone else (perhaps the after effect of jus coming back from pudupettai, where the "survival of the fittest" is the tag line) lemme put froward myu views too.

i really think we cannot generalise this command-over-lang thingy. In the same school, within the same environment, we can always find 2 ppl who are quite the opposite in this dept. I can say that learning a language is a continuing process - so the more one widens his vision, the more he feels confident abt it. Diff kind of literature (and not only the school books, beyond which most of us wudnt have done anything during school days) will help improve the knowledge of the language of a person. Movies in that language is something else which i can mention. Generalising this stuff, i guess i can say that one needs to be more in touch with the language through all the possible media, so that the thought process as such happens in that language. All lang experts say that "thinking" in the language is the first step to "speaking" fluently in the language. any translation involved, the grip over the language losens.

And this for me is generic. So any guy (prad) or girl (that girl in the 20's) who wud have done this must have grown up "thinking" in english and it naturally shows in their command of the lang. Does that mean pradip has a "girly" brain???

It is more than the pride being hurt and all that. It is abt the upbringing, and in some cases the way we allowed ourselves to be brought up :)

Point 1: Iday aint the big guy anymore. he's lost close to 8KGs (and almost 2 inches of waisline) and is a lot trimmer now :D Why u cant hold his neck is coz u have smaller hands (like that of a girl, and add that to a girly brain - we're having quite some personification going on here ;) )

Point 2: Why is that i am tagged on to the greats like sunil and kart in this "on seeing a cute girl" bizz?? I'm on ur side prado :(

Point no 3: We dont care even if u get angry. We'll keep doing this benchmarking stuff all (y)our life :) I jus pulled my self back from going on to explain why. Dunno how long i can do that ;)

@ Iday: :"In the same school, within the same environment, we can always find 2 ppl who are quite the opposite in this dept." -We cannot take exceptions as examples. If there is a scale to measure english fluency, girls always have a better average higher than guys. Say, how many guys other than Prad have good english fluency ?! Girls... almost all!! Even in cities like Chennai/Bangalore, the logic holds good - the point is guys always are poorer race than girls when it comes to communication skills.

@Karthik: Sorry machi. I disagree with you. An individual's fluency is also contributed by his confidence level and Idaya's statement is not exception. I still decry any generalization based on of sexes. Girls, almost all were fluent? That too in par with Pradeep? :) Come on da. Try to be more realistic. I don't want to elaborate on this and embarass Pradeep. You are right in not taking exceptions as examples. What concrete example do you have about guys from Chennai and Bangalore? :D You remember Theja, Avi and all those other state guys who were fluent as default? Why is that?
@Iday: Machi I'm still trying to figure out where I was disproved by you? I thought you were endorsing my views in your comments.
@Pradeep- Even while expressing your disapproval of being bench marked you can't help using catchy phrases like 'throttle', 'tongue-tied'..:) That's your handicap. You can't help. You have to unlearn few things if you wan to avoid it.