Your internal speech plays a major role in the new language acquisition. Which is a process in itself?
Your internal speech is governed by your faith in the scripting style and sound probability patterns you follow.
It is much more complex than it seems. First you listen–analyze–differentiate–interpret–memorize–Then you try to make it the base on which you build your internal speech.
You listen to words—Try to memorize them by making image files—store them as a retrieval tool to get the actual sound file, the word-sound.
Before you start to speak any second language you are taking lessons on, you try to practice to avoid slip-ons and you take help of the internal speech before you finally decide to utter according to your ease and comfort.
The power of internal speech cannot be over-looked when it comes to the expression of thoughts in any language you want to try your hands on; the same goes with language anxiety related to a second Language.
A written word form is not just a written word; it is a recovery tool to get the actual word sound. Reading is a lot easier if the script is written in specific format and if we follow that basic layout of letter arrangement.
We just have to remember as to what sound a particular set of letters would give if arranged in a specific format.
The idea is to make the spelling speak for itself. The spelling should itself indicate that I represent such sound.
It has been observed that your internal speech is often mutilated by your blind faith in the scripting style and sound pattern you follow.
And the fact is that no body taught you with precision, it’s your own creation. Your own imagination!
It’s a matter of concern worldwide since there had been no governing body to lay out some rules on this.
Your internal speech mediates your ability to differentiate between sound patterns/sound probabilities and the final utterance. And if your internal Speech is affected by a subscripting style or if you apply the same understanding of script to every other language, you’ll never get the sounds right. No matter how hard you try, you’ll always sound like an alien.
There are broadly two approaches followed worldwide help disciples learn a language: script centric and sound centric.
Script Centric approach
Script centric approach is often observed in regions where English is taught as a second language. Focus is on the appearance of words in script form and very less importance is given to the actual word sounds, to actual pronunciation. The emphasis is on to teach them just read, write, and memorize literature, not the live language.
You are shown a script and asked to memorize the structures as such. You are also advised of the pronunciation, but is most of the times not correct. The knowledge of the frame work/arrangement of letters is so distant and vague, that no matter how many literatures you read, or even if you do masters in the language, you still speak what is not easily understood across the world.
You listen and see words with time. You try to form script images; try to memorize script forms and corresponding sound forms.
You always needed reliable assuring system, as you can’t go to somebody for help every other time. You try to make some perception of the way letters behave in a group.
You also try to memorize some sound files. For words, you haven’t seen the script form, you try to apply your speech perceptions. More often, you write wrong spellings. Your spelling wouldn’t necessarily be phonetically wrong, but when you try to double check, you may find that you were wrong. From this, you learn something new to add to your script perception prowess.
English language acquisition in those regions is based on the script only. Phonetics and phonological studies are not recognized.
Even if you try to teach them the pronunciation of every other word, either they will not remember it for long or they’ll go back to their old comfortable way of saying those many words. It is actually very hard for people from a particular region to alter pronunciation of a set of words so as to use correct pronunciation, because it has never been pronounced right there, and they are quite comfortable with that, as everybody speaks that way.
The reflection of respective regional languages is very prominent in your speech.
Sound centric approach
Sound centric approach is observed in regions having English as a native language. You get to learn the language much before you go to school or even if you don’t go to
school. In school, you learn the corresponding letters of basic sounds you already know. As native speakers are already easy with the sounds, would only need to learn the relationship between sounds and script.
Though it is an effective way to learn the live language, is also not backed with solid reasoning, as to why we find a corrupt alphabetic system; why few word forms aren’t suggestive of the speech sound and why we have to memorize them as they are.
Native speakers also stumble when they are encountered with unpredictably chaotic spellings to get the speech sound.
Neither the literary approach, where the emphasis is on memorizing words as they appear, nor the sound centric approach where you are taught of the pronunciation first and then to learn to relate to the orthography, is productive enough for learners.
The sound approach can be really helpful if we top it up with reformed orthography and rules to decipher word sounds.
With the introduction of uniform rules to capture word sound, we can make learning and communication a lot easier.
If the script is not good enough, you try to memorize the word sounds. However, your sound perceptions are hardwired in your brain & which in-turn helps you memorize words; as you are familiar with the letters already, you try to apply it whenever you hear a new sound.
You see a new word; you do not know of the actual sound; you simply apply you script perception; make a corresponding sound file & try to memorize the sound form & script form simultaneously.
You hear a new word; you do not know of the script form; you apply sound perception to get the corresponding sound, & try to memorize them accordingly.
Script and sound go hand in hand. Because of the different prevalent script perceptions, holding on to a uniform scripting style and sound probability patterns is lot easier than to remember script and sound separately. It is actually very difficult to retrieve every other word if we leave it to the memorizing & retrieving prowess of our brain. It is actually too much.
Scripting style is a help to memorize and ascertain word sound, to decipher the actual word sound.
How does it work?
Let us take it through reading.
What is reading? To reading right is to pronounce every word with precision.
When you read a script, you try to match the visuals (script) with the image files stored in your brain, & try to pull the corresponding sound file.
You see a word and search for the sound file. If you are familiar with the word, you match it up with the visual image stored in your brain & pull the corresponding sound file. Moreover, if the sound file stored was created in ignorance of sound probabilities and frequency, & under the influence of a sub-scripting style; you will utter what is not the actual sound, but your own creation.
Many a times when you happened to see a word after a long time and you know that you know but somehow find yourself struggling to get the exact meaning or the pronunciation. You immediately start to apply your morph-phonological understanding, & most of the times you miss it and utter wrong. Such ad hoc decisions of utterance are solely based on the impact of a sub-scripting style.
A learner from a non-English speaking region would have difficulties with reading, writing, and speaking. Where as a native speaker would have difficulties related
to reading and writing. It cries for a very good memory, but good memory is just not enough for a non-native speaker.
It is a lot easier to remember word sound with the script form. You have a reference, and it is a lot easier to remember and pull words out of the store, if we had a reference file.
Now a question could arise, how do native speakers who do not know how to read, remember words?
They use a small set of words in their daily speech, whereas a non-native English speaker uses words from two or three languages. A native speaker who does know how to write would even have a smaller vocabulary, than the one who is literate; a fairly small set of words for a specific life style.
She would solely rely on her memory to remember words. Moreover, if her memory is low, so are the chances of becoming a good speller.
The idea is to mend the knowledge and conceptual disconnect. Build a system of learning to help learners read, write, and speak right.
It is observed that the whole process of recollecting the stored information to spell a new word or of recollecting sound patterns for enunciation is not so trustworthy. If we could put some logic to it, to avoid errors entailed to conjectures; with a systematic simplification of sound probabilities and pattern of letters, we can regularize language if we bring some solid logical reasoning.
Identification of sound patterns would come easy if we all follow a universal system
Friday, October 17, 2008
Jalapeno and a spanish tilde.
Actual pronunciation: Accentuated Hal sound--schwa---Accentuated Pain sound---yo.
The word Jalapeno has a diacritic mark over 'n' called tilde (wave).
English version: Hal--schwa---pen--yo.
Indian version: Jal or Jul--schwa---Pee or pei-----no.
The change from ‘painyo’ to ‘Pen-yo’ or ‘peeno’ or ‘payno’ is not good for a word.
Thanks to pizza makers in India who lend me a chance to savor this Mexican pepper.
I had been to Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad; everywhere I found people confused over the pronunciation of this word.
I heard them say Jal--schwa--Pei--no, or Jull sound--aa sound---accentuated Pee---no, and what not.
I would go in a cafe; order some stuff, and try to pretend as if I m struggling to read ‘Jalapeno’. I’ll make a stupid face which comes so naturally to me, and ask, “How do we read Jal-a-pa?”
It's a real fun. I savor such situations.
They would read it the weirdest of weirdest ways out of their imagination. They’ll have a look----apply their script understanding and just say it.
It's rather amusing for me to see people being so stern without having any distant clue. “No it's not as you say it"; "It's peno".
If some word is introduced to non-English region, most likely the written form is the one that is fanned out first. News papers, billboards, magazines, etc. People see it; apply their script understanding to read it and try to make it a part of their vocabulary. Their belief in their version of sound is strengthened when they happened to hear it from 3-4 ilks, which somehow had the same blend of mind.
They try to read as it’s written and as they understand it.
A new word, which appears in print first, is susceptible to much more damage than if had been introduced in spoken form.
It's like a bull let loose in an arena, and everybody is like a matador.
They try get to grips with a new word but end up distorting it beyond recognition.
Or write in particular way which clearly indicates their understanding of English alphabetic arrangement. The arrangement of letters is so distinctively unique; it's anything but English or even Hindi.
Even if we give the exact sound with written form, there is no guarantee that everybody would remember it after a month or two. People rely on spellings and their phonological understanding too much. They try to remember the sound, its lexical application, but after a few months, they will only remember the spelling and go back to their peculiar way of seeing words. Every language has a peculiar set of sounds and their communication revolves around these many sounds. We try to over-look close variants and prefer to stick to what we are familiar with.
Whenever somebody sees or hears a new word or after a long time they apply their phonological skills. Phonological skills are relative, whereas lexical skills are memory based. It's very difficult to remember every other sound form and visual form simultaneously.
Moreover, when it comes to the lexical application they might say or write something, which they never intended under the influence of much easy resort, relative phonological skills.
Therefore, they rely on a comparatively easy tool by referring to the words already part of their vocabulary. It is much easy to be lexically strong if we know the phonological arrangement of letters and stick to a standard form.
Visit www.ordanywhere.com, you'll have a slight idea of what is this all about.
What can we do to avoid this?
We can’t expect every other speaker to do his share of research separately before deciding to use a word. The fact is that nobody has even time for this.
It's true; and if we try to educate by other means, either they'll not remember it or stick to it with the prevalent ignorance.
Incorporation of a universal accepted logically consistent spelling system and the awareness of the same is the answer. It reminds me of an article in TOI by Arun Bhatia, “Angrezi Boli’. With which the author tried to bring to notice that how he learned of different variants of English words both in script and in sound form.
He tried to tell how people see ‘Reddy’ in written form ‘radiator’.
If we have a universal spelling system for English and we’ll all know how to arrange letter to get the right sound value, easily understandable by everybody, it would be a lot more easy to ascertain sound to script relationship; to ascertain sound value attached to a specific order of arrangement of letter.
The word Jalapeno has a diacritic mark over 'n' called tilde (wave).
English version: Hal--schwa---pen--yo.
Indian version: Jal or Jul--schwa---Pee or pei-----no.
The change from ‘painyo’ to ‘Pen-yo’ or ‘peeno’ or ‘payno’ is not good for a word.
Thanks to pizza makers in India who lend me a chance to savor this Mexican pepper.
I had been to Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad; everywhere I found people confused over the pronunciation of this word.
I heard them say Jal--schwa--Pei--no, or Jull sound--aa sound---accentuated Pee---no, and what not.
I would go in a cafe; order some stuff, and try to pretend as if I m struggling to read ‘Jalapeno’. I’ll make a stupid face which comes so naturally to me, and ask, “How do we read Jal-a-pa?”
It's a real fun. I savor such situations.
They would read it the weirdest of weirdest ways out of their imagination. They’ll have a look----apply their script understanding and just say it.
It's rather amusing for me to see people being so stern without having any distant clue. “No it's not as you say it"; "It's peno".
If some word is introduced to non-English region, most likely the written form is the one that is fanned out first. News papers, billboards, magazines, etc. People see it; apply their script understanding to read it and try to make it a part of their vocabulary. Their belief in their version of sound is strengthened when they happened to hear it from 3-4 ilks, which somehow had the same blend of mind.
They try to read as it’s written and as they understand it.
A new word, which appears in print first, is susceptible to much more damage than if had been introduced in spoken form.
It's like a bull let loose in an arena, and everybody is like a matador.
They try get to grips with a new word but end up distorting it beyond recognition.
Or write in particular way which clearly indicates their understanding of English alphabetic arrangement. The arrangement of letters is so distinctively unique; it's anything but English or even Hindi.
Even if we give the exact sound with written form, there is no guarantee that everybody would remember it after a month or two. People rely on spellings and their phonological understanding too much. They try to remember the sound, its lexical application, but after a few months, they will only remember the spelling and go back to their peculiar way of seeing words. Every language has a peculiar set of sounds and their communication revolves around these many sounds. We try to over-look close variants and prefer to stick to what we are familiar with.
Whenever somebody sees or hears a new word or after a long time they apply their phonological skills. Phonological skills are relative, whereas lexical skills are memory based. It's very difficult to remember every other sound form and visual form simultaneously.
Moreover, when it comes to the lexical application they might say or write something, which they never intended under the influence of much easy resort, relative phonological skills.
Therefore, they rely on a comparatively easy tool by referring to the words already part of their vocabulary. It is much easy to be lexically strong if we know the phonological arrangement of letters and stick to a standard form.
Visit www.ordanywhere.com, you'll have a slight idea of what is this all about.
What can we do to avoid this?
We can’t expect every other speaker to do his share of research separately before deciding to use a word. The fact is that nobody has even time for this.
It's true; and if we try to educate by other means, either they'll not remember it or stick to it with the prevalent ignorance.
Incorporation of a universal accepted logically consistent spelling system and the awareness of the same is the answer. It reminds me of an article in TOI by Arun Bhatia, “Angrezi Boli’. With which the author tried to bring to notice that how he learned of different variants of English words both in script and in sound form.
He tried to tell how people see ‘Reddy’ in written form ‘radiator’.
If we have a universal spelling system for English and we’ll all know how to arrange letter to get the right sound value, easily understandable by everybody, it would be a lot more easy to ascertain sound to script relationship; to ascertain sound value attached to a specific order of arrangement of letter.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Language acquisition is no puberty.
Chomsky introduced the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky’s model primarily center around the existence of innate knowledge of specifically native speakers. This innate knowledge of complex grammar rules enables a native speaker to generate all possible grammatical sentences; and performance is the way in which she uses the language in reality. Per Chomsky, performance is the trasformation of competence in to every day speech. A distinction was used to describe what a native speaker knows and what she exhibits of her innate knowledge.Chomsky’s a priori presumptions:Heridity gives you the competence and predisposes a native speaker to know language rules much before she start to learn the language. Native speakers naturally encode native language; it’s in their genes. Speakers would know the application of grammar without been taught. The knowledge of so called universal grammar is innate. Speech organs develop differently as different languages.So this implies that we are gentically programed for a particular language and different regions are programed to speak in a particular way. There are different ways English is spoken worldwide. Are we all separately adapted to a particular way before birth? Quoted that if a child is grown up in Tokyo would be talking perfect Japanese ’cause she is genetically identical to kids that grow up in Tokyo. You tell me, what genetics has to do when we are born already. Growing up in a different environment or to adapt encompasses cognitive learnings and development. It has nothing to do with genetic science.Chomsky’s claims are based on assumptions. It’s true that we have genetically adapted ourselves; but not for a particular language. We have adapted to communicate, to speak. Heridity does not play any role in the learning of a particular language, is limited to the development of speech organs and speech processing areas in our mind. Development of mind and speech organ has got nothing to do with the learnings of a specific language. To speak a particular language is not a natural process, to produce sounds is; and even the production of sounds is performance based (learn as we go). A child beginning to speak would try to immitate sounds heard; she may not be able to produce the right sound intially, she eventually learns it with practice. Chomsky attempted to separate language acquisition from psychology. There is much more to language than just generative grammar; grammar is very small area of a much bigger phenomenon. However, psychologists and neurologists argue of any evidence of innate linguistic knowledge at early age. If children were born with innate knowledge of grammar, then why do they take 1-2 years to begin to speak? Two years is good enough time for anyone who know grammar to learn a language. Chomsky’s structural postulates can be completely ruled out as a child does not even know what constitute the structure at early stage of learning. Children have ideas, feelings, needs, etc, and they only need a medium to convey. At early age they do not know of so called universal grammar; they slowly manage to learn words and the meaning attached. Try to ask a 6 months old to give you her favorite toy without making any gestures. There is every possibility that she might not give it to you. There is every chance that she may misconstrue you as saying ‘play as long as you wish’. For the first 6-7 months a kid wouldn’t have much control over sound production; smile when happy and cry if sad, not more than that. Slowly she learns to alter the cries depending upon the intensity of need and start to use voice to show happiness. She wants to imitate but can’t as she doesn’t have control over her cords and also can’t differentiate much between what she hear. She realizes the importance of communication right in time. Beginning with a few content words she slowly attach as much information as she can; the way we do it, joy, etc., and try to remember those words.The idea of learning phases is also fallacious. If you ask Chomsky, he would take no time to relate it to puberty or binocular vision. Learning mainly depends on factors like need, interests, etc. There is no age to learning; individual performance may vary though. Halliday’s functional linguistics could be considered to be on the lines of purpose/need approach. A child would screech on seeing an object. She may not know what to do with it, mere curiosity to observe induces her to cry for it, giving us indications. And thats the only reason for the higher learning abilities of children. She is attracted to so many things, almost everything. Whereas an adult looses interest in those things with time. Language acquisition depends on the exposure and the very purpose of knowing a language. There are many adults settled in different regions from their native language region to a second language regions. Out of which a major percentage claims to know the spoken or written second language, claims to understand the spoken language in particular. But when they speak, the so called universal grammer is absent. This could look like a supportive statement to Chomsky’s theory; but the obverse of which indicates at a more meaningful description of the learning needs of those second language speakers. Their second language prowess is restricted to target words, mostly content words. There is a school of thoughts who believe that adult learner’s biological timetable stymies her second language acquisition. Whereas linguists like Catherine Snow and Marian Hoefnagel-Hohle contradicts such claims, except on pronunciation abilities. If adult learners are considered to have better developed abilities to achieve an analytical understanding of a new language, then why can’t they learn pronunciation as well? Adult learner can learn pronunciation as well, if we exactly know how to teach. I don’t see anything except phsycological variables like anxiety, motivation and self-confidence that can inhibit the second language acquisition, if we have the right training methodology.
Monday, June 16, 2008
No more honeymoons.
The BPO industry needs to reassess their ookt, awkt, owkts.
Ouch…….
Hitherto the industry has managed to cater to its needs by picking somewhat easily available smatterings, instead of developing a more suited high-end training design, but fell short every time. Successors know only what the daddy taught them, but the industry need some smart prodigies who can outshine daddies. The focus is on training the trainers on what they themselves got to know from their progenitors. They pick some one from the production floor, and simply train on somehow borrowed modules. No value addition, and a very little practical implication. The value addition, high-end knowledge based techniques, custom made training designs, which are more suited to the industry needs are so distant, as the industry is seen struggling to find reliable shoulders to share the burden with.
Instead of developing a new solution, which is in jibe with the present needs, the Training department of most of the BPO’s has developed expertise in different stupendous ways to kill time.
Successors imbibe the inheritance with a misbegotten faith in the accuracy and applicability of the inherited knowledge, which has no practical implications. As people come and go, and most of the times restrict themselves in boundaries defined by influences. Limit themselves to ooze admiration only, and most of the times they defer to old philosophies, & seriously do not focus on something they thought they would, to bring change. They simply flow with it. The present state of affairs predisposes us to be submissive and not to think beyond. Somehow, had made us believe what we would have never otherwise.
We easily fall for it, which somehow seems to be politically correct, and we simply see it as a step to get where we strongly want to be, which is surely not what our present job demands. I wanted to share a recent observation; it’s more of an eye opener. But that would make this “no more honeymoons” too long to be read in one fell swoop. I’ll share it next weak.
And if we dwell on the same old technique which seemed promising then, we are highly delusioned, as it will never going to work that way. We got to find break through techniques, got to find the best suited solutions, as things are changing rapidly.
I changed a lot many companies put all the ages together, and I believe innovations do not come with a group working together. As most of the times, groups only hang around, and kill time and resources. Adding very less than what they initially agreed on while joining the group. The idea is to encourage the innovative community as opposed to the innovative pyramid. The participation, not the hierarchy. Making it easy for quite genius innovators to surface ideas. Taking innovative ideas to custom-made applications.
Try to beat the big No (hierarchy), which somehow implicit that if you don’t belong to a certain level of the pyramid you can’t surface the ideas. This is what eventually stops you from envision, from being innovative, and to build state of art business models.
Same role should not excite you for long, and if does, there got to be something seriously wrong with either you or the job.
The final output of training is somewhere close to zero; and we are left we the big question: Was the training of any help?
The answer is: big big no. And these days they say: “You can never change the character of a Scorpio”, “They’ll speak the way they’ve been speaking”, neutral accent is good. Seems true at times. But doesn’t that suggest we’ve been spending money just like that? Seven eight years in the business and we never thought of something that could work. Too bad.
The average expenditure on training a batch of 25 new recruits is minimum twenty five thousand across industry, and this does not include any facility other than training that an employee would enjoy (pick-drops, meals, etc.)
It’s a trend across the industry that a certain %age would somehow fail to clear training program and is asked to leave. This trend is not quite apparent in sizable originations, may be because they can somehow employ that %age elsewhere because of their business diversification. But the fact is that %age is not employed to do the work they were initially hired for. The idea is that every player in the industry gives up.
We’ve got two options: learn the ropes like the way every one does and feel good about it, or try to get to see follies to find something that would click. Either do regular business or redefine business.
Money waste is still o.k., as we had the pretext of being new in the industry. But for how long! And did we learn anything from it? Or we are accepting it as a reality of life. It’ll be like the way it is, or may change with its own snail pace. Give me a break.
All this is so hard-wired in our brains, which stop us from what we should be doing instead. We got to act, if not before time, at least when the time itself is crying for a change.
The fact is we need to reassess the training modules and the pyramid.
The growth of the industry is contingent on how well we transition with credible domain expertise. And the big shots say that we don’t have training support which can help the growing needs of BPO, training institutes are no better than the industry’s in-house training program, the out-source outsource to facilitators for that purpose only.
We need to widen the horizon of knowledge delivery, need to get it in line with high-end quality needs.
A noticeable %age of the handpicked resource fails to meet expectations to clear training every time. And out of those who somehow clear, fail to put to use whatever they are expected to after the so called training.
If we need something strongly enough we should do something about it, not just wait for things to change. The language training institute know not more than the core industry, have only economies of space and resource. The resources, which somehow most of the times at a later stage in their career, end up with BPO. The shift again is of no help to the business. It has been proven with time that the backing module is not worth the paper it’s written on.
Across the industry, the training didn’t help much as did the self-learning and an inclination to learn. Most of staff still speaks the way they were used to, irrespective of the umpteen numbers of training sessions they’ve been through. 70-80 modifications is too less. As the policy to cherry-pick didn’t help, we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
We’ve got to dump the Dumb charades, Pink pajamas, How is yours, Chinese whispers, et. al. All these suggest me of a perfect way to kill time, as you don’t have much to share (knowledge). The Jones is also falling short of being a real help, then why not play game. We got to learn to respond to immediate exigencies, and not start to vote for Pink pajamas, Fussy ducks.
The reason why I m so peculiar about the strengthening of the knowledge of training is, that I’ve been in the industry for long, and know of major players and their strategies and escapes. The education system will take its own time to realize the need for industry based training or something that has some practical applications. Since we never had a system to monitor sounds, and we simply borrowed a system having little practical use in a total different state of affairs, may be because of economies of ease and pain in developing something new. How easily we give up to our own creations is what that amaze me. As we simply ponce around being correct spelling-wise as opposed to being sound-wise. To change the system to sound centric from spelling-centric need some initiates. Hither to we’ve followed a weak model which has regulated sounds, instead of just the opposite, what we should have. To quote an example: I recently joined a firm and I find people struggling hard to digest the new spelling of my name. And I see 4-5 immediate alternate spellings. One for every department: Facility, finance, production, training. I’ll be the happiest person on the face of the earth, the day I see all men realize the importance of sound, speech, words in its true sense. Which is not possible if we don’t tell everybody of the easy way to relate to what they dread of, the sound.
It is very evident that we always needed a paradigm in one form or the other, to refer to. Something that could standardize the usage, worldwide. Picking spellings as a paradigm to determine sounds was an easy escape. Sounds should be universal and if something has to vary, let it be the rhythm only (refer to page_______)
Our unprecedented love for spellings killed our sounds. The most popular theory in linguistics suggest that peripheral organs are responsible for the way we speak. Not quite true (refer to page no.___ for the insight). Most of the countries which did not speak English initially simply borrowed the model which the native speakers used. The borrowed supportive model which didn’t have anything to support the sounds seems to regulate sounds, which is not at all good for words. The main focus had been on the correctness of the spellings, to remember them as they had always been. The main focus of the Educational system in most of the south-east Asian countries had always had been on educating people of the benefit of being Spelling-wise as opposed to being Sound-wise.
As the students have always escaped out of the torture of learning sounds as they only had to write to pass examinations. But they always had difficulties with pronunciations in the real world.
It has been observed in south-east countries that the people know the spellings of a lot many words than the sounds (which are not right most of the times), which is inversely so in a country with native English speaking population.
I have heard a lot many libertarians from south-east Asian countries, especially India crying that it really does not matter if you pronounce a word differently than a native speaker, “if it’s a proper noun, you can say which ever way you like”. Oh my god, please kill me: if they are so liberals, then why do they worship the text (spellings), and why do they mispronounce their native language words? Why did they anglicize their native language words? (Refer to page______). The proclivity to put script ahead of speech is damaging to languages world-wide.
Ouch…….
Hitherto the industry has managed to cater to its needs by picking somewhat easily available smatterings, instead of developing a more suited high-end training design, but fell short every time. Successors know only what the daddy taught them, but the industry need some smart prodigies who can outshine daddies. The focus is on training the trainers on what they themselves got to know from their progenitors. They pick some one from the production floor, and simply train on somehow borrowed modules. No value addition, and a very little practical implication. The value addition, high-end knowledge based techniques, custom made training designs, which are more suited to the industry needs are so distant, as the industry is seen struggling to find reliable shoulders to share the burden with.
Instead of developing a new solution, which is in jibe with the present needs, the Training department of most of the BPO’s has developed expertise in different stupendous ways to kill time.
Successors imbibe the inheritance with a misbegotten faith in the accuracy and applicability of the inherited knowledge, which has no practical implications. As people come and go, and most of the times restrict themselves in boundaries defined by influences. Limit themselves to ooze admiration only, and most of the times they defer to old philosophies, & seriously do not focus on something they thought they would, to bring change. They simply flow with it. The present state of affairs predisposes us to be submissive and not to think beyond. Somehow, had made us believe what we would have never otherwise.
We easily fall for it, which somehow seems to be politically correct, and we simply see it as a step to get where we strongly want to be, which is surely not what our present job demands. I wanted to share a recent observation; it’s more of an eye opener. But that would make this “no more honeymoons” too long to be read in one fell swoop. I’ll share it next weak.
And if we dwell on the same old technique which seemed promising then, we are highly delusioned, as it will never going to work that way. We got to find break through techniques, got to find the best suited solutions, as things are changing rapidly.
I changed a lot many companies put all the ages together, and I believe innovations do not come with a group working together. As most of the times, groups only hang around, and kill time and resources. Adding very less than what they initially agreed on while joining the group. The idea is to encourage the innovative community as opposed to the innovative pyramid. The participation, not the hierarchy. Making it easy for quite genius innovators to surface ideas. Taking innovative ideas to custom-made applications.
Try to beat the big No (hierarchy), which somehow implicit that if you don’t belong to a certain level of the pyramid you can’t surface the ideas. This is what eventually stops you from envision, from being innovative, and to build state of art business models.
Same role should not excite you for long, and if does, there got to be something seriously wrong with either you or the job.
The final output of training is somewhere close to zero; and we are left we the big question: Was the training of any help?
The answer is: big big no. And these days they say: “You can never change the character of a Scorpio”, “They’ll speak the way they’ve been speaking”, neutral accent is good. Seems true at times. But doesn’t that suggest we’ve been spending money just like that? Seven eight years in the business and we never thought of something that could work. Too bad.
The average expenditure on training a batch of 25 new recruits is minimum twenty five thousand across industry, and this does not include any facility other than training that an employee would enjoy (pick-drops, meals, etc.)
It’s a trend across the industry that a certain %age would somehow fail to clear training program and is asked to leave. This trend is not quite apparent in sizable originations, may be because they can somehow employ that %age elsewhere because of their business diversification. But the fact is that %age is not employed to do the work they were initially hired for. The idea is that every player in the industry gives up.
We’ve got two options: learn the ropes like the way every one does and feel good about it, or try to get to see follies to find something that would click. Either do regular business or redefine business.
Money waste is still o.k., as we had the pretext of being new in the industry. But for how long! And did we learn anything from it? Or we are accepting it as a reality of life. It’ll be like the way it is, or may change with its own snail pace. Give me a break.
All this is so hard-wired in our brains, which stop us from what we should be doing instead. We got to act, if not before time, at least when the time itself is crying for a change.
The fact is we need to reassess the training modules and the pyramid.
The growth of the industry is contingent on how well we transition with credible domain expertise. And the big shots say that we don’t have training support which can help the growing needs of BPO, training institutes are no better than the industry’s in-house training program, the out-source outsource to facilitators for that purpose only.
We need to widen the horizon of knowledge delivery, need to get it in line with high-end quality needs.
A noticeable %age of the handpicked resource fails to meet expectations to clear training every time. And out of those who somehow clear, fail to put to use whatever they are expected to after the so called training.
If we need something strongly enough we should do something about it, not just wait for things to change. The language training institute know not more than the core industry, have only economies of space and resource. The resources, which somehow most of the times at a later stage in their career, end up with BPO. The shift again is of no help to the business. It has been proven with time that the backing module is not worth the paper it’s written on.
Across the industry, the training didn’t help much as did the self-learning and an inclination to learn. Most of staff still speaks the way they were used to, irrespective of the umpteen numbers of training sessions they’ve been through. 70-80 modifications is too less. As the policy to cherry-pick didn’t help, we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
We’ve got to dump the Dumb charades, Pink pajamas, How is yours, Chinese whispers, et. al. All these suggest me of a perfect way to kill time, as you don’t have much to share (knowledge). The Jones is also falling short of being a real help, then why not play game. We got to learn to respond to immediate exigencies, and not start to vote for Pink pajamas, Fussy ducks.
The reason why I m so peculiar about the strengthening of the knowledge of training is, that I’ve been in the industry for long, and know of major players and their strategies and escapes. The education system will take its own time to realize the need for industry based training or something that has some practical applications. Since we never had a system to monitor sounds, and we simply borrowed a system having little practical use in a total different state of affairs, may be because of economies of ease and pain in developing something new. How easily we give up to our own creations is what that amaze me. As we simply ponce around being correct spelling-wise as opposed to being sound-wise. To change the system to sound centric from spelling-centric need some initiates. Hither to we’ve followed a weak model which has regulated sounds, instead of just the opposite, what we should have. To quote an example: I recently joined a firm and I find people struggling hard to digest the new spelling of my name. And I see 4-5 immediate alternate spellings. One for every department: Facility, finance, production, training. I’ll be the happiest person on the face of the earth, the day I see all men realize the importance of sound, speech, words in its true sense. Which is not possible if we don’t tell everybody of the easy way to relate to what they dread of, the sound.
It is very evident that we always needed a paradigm in one form or the other, to refer to. Something that could standardize the usage, worldwide. Picking spellings as a paradigm to determine sounds was an easy escape. Sounds should be universal and if something has to vary, let it be the rhythm only (refer to page_______)
Our unprecedented love for spellings killed our sounds. The most popular theory in linguistics suggest that peripheral organs are responsible for the way we speak. Not quite true (refer to page no.___ for the insight). Most of the countries which did not speak English initially simply borrowed the model which the native speakers used. The borrowed supportive model which didn’t have anything to support the sounds seems to regulate sounds, which is not at all good for words. The main focus had been on the correctness of the spellings, to remember them as they had always been. The main focus of the Educational system in most of the south-east Asian countries had always had been on educating people of the benefit of being Spelling-wise as opposed to being Sound-wise.
As the students have always escaped out of the torture of learning sounds as they only had to write to pass examinations. But they always had difficulties with pronunciations in the real world.
It has been observed in south-east countries that the people know the spellings of a lot many words than the sounds (which are not right most of the times), which is inversely so in a country with native English speaking population.
I have heard a lot many libertarians from south-east Asian countries, especially India crying that it really does not matter if you pronounce a word differently than a native speaker, “if it’s a proper noun, you can say which ever way you like”. Oh my god, please kill me: if they are so liberals, then why do they worship the text (spellings), and why do they mispronounce their native language words? Why did they anglicize their native language words? (Refer to page______). The proclivity to put script ahead of speech is damaging to languages world-wide.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Habitual imitation.
Habitual imitation has played a major role in giving a new shape to the language. We can not deny our habit of harking back to words (minimal pair), whenever we have to spell a new word trying to find existence in the language. We closely descry similar structured words varying only in one phoneme.
In other words, if you are asked to spell a word you are not familiar with, you do not know the meaning, its application, its origin, you would probably try to match it with the sounds of the words you know. For example: If you are asked to spell ‘bæt’, and you did not know anything about the word, you would try to wrack your brain to memorize similar words sounds) varying in one phoneme only. You would try to refresh your memory to recall ‘cæt’, ‘hæt’, ‘fæt’, ‘mæt’, ‘ræt’, etc.
Linguafranca is all about refreshing your memory, telling you things you do not know, or things you know but can not recall in time, and get you in the habit of recognizing sounds and structural arrangements, help you relate to all of the generalities. As in above example, when vowel ‘a’ is sandwiched between two consonant sounds and the syllable is stressed it would give ‘æ’ sound.
There are numerous words of foreign origin, the first time they were spelled, were not spelled right, and may be because of the perceptual differences or lack of understanding. Or may be they were spelled by some George from English speaking region, who could not capture the sound, or just simply spelled in a possible idle moment to kill time, or may be because people were not able to give the actual sound. Or the then-popular George might have given them options, but because of the communication gap they picked the wrong option by themselves according to their ease. And habitual imitation kindled it, and acted as an electrode in a nuclear reactor of language.
Habitual imitation is like Uranium-238 rod in the nuclear reactor of the language. The idea is, if we can put some neuron rods( periodic codifications) in place to tame the power of the fuel and somehow put a check on the plausible explosion that damage sounds, words, and finally speech; instead of just sitting back and vacillating over the confounding, and let it complicate it further.
It’s a fuel; more fuel we put more powerful combustion we expect in the cylinder. We’ve got to control the irregular and un-warranted infusion to make it rather beneficial to the language. Use it effectively and efficiently to tap the full potential of the growth of the language. For the universal comprehension among the speakers. As is practically impossible to reverse the damage, once the language is abused at a larger scale. And what scale is larger than a relatively bigger civilization ( Asian countries) more than happy to adopt, experiment, and apparently abuse a new language.
THANKS TO ANGLICIZATION AND SOUND DISTORTION.
And now every body is saying words the way the spelling suggests, or what they understand from the way those words are spelled; but not the way it should be said worldwide. The beauty of the original words is lost. It acts as a threat to both, the foreign language from which the words have come from, and also to English as a Universal language. Why English? Because there is every possibility that by the course of time a new sub-script style would emerge. Which is a Universal fact, but we hitherto failed to recognize. And at a later stage we start to realize the follies fanned out by habitual imitation, which in-turn makes it quite difficult to communicate. Which would have been avoided if had considered the importance of sound and application of letters in the formation of English replica of a foreign word( with the use English alphabet), and we start to correct at a much later stage when it is bound to confound every body.
This doesn’t mean that we never thought of written English logically. At one time we might think that something is perfectly fine, as is solving the purpose but later we realize a need for change. This is the base of development. Till the time we are not ready for any change we won’t develop anything. If we had thought of bulb as the end of electronics, we would have probably stuck with not more than a bulb in our hand.
In order to improve comprehension among English speakers across the globe, it is essential to decrease the disparity ( perceptual differences).
We’ll discuss how effectively we can correct those follies fanned out by possible habitual imitation.
I remember one instance, some time in 2006 people protested a shoe making company for printing `Allah` on the shoes they made. Company didn’t know that the people will get offended. Not every body who believe in God will take such disrespect.
’Allah’ is also a spelling for Muslim God. People know Allah as a spelling for the name of the God ‘۸la:’, the ’۸’ sound in ‘۸la:’, is a solid ‘u’ sound, as in but, cut, hut, rut, etc. Every body who know ‘۸la:’ would say ‘ ۸la: ‘ , but for the rest of the world it’s `Allah` , phonetically, `Æla: ` , with solid `a` sound as in fat, cat , rat , mat , etc.
What if today, after seeing that protest for the name sake, God himself say, “I respect your feeling for what ever you did to get it corrected , and I also know that you all love me very much” , “But there is one thing I would like to ask , I know that u can say my name right, but why did the you spelled it `Allah`? The rest of the world who do not worship me read my name as ’Æla:’ ,where ‘a’ is solid . Don’t worship a lesser GOD (the printed word).
“Please educate every body on this and please change the spelling if possible.”
The fact is that nobody is as forgiving as GOD is.
Giving space for alternate pronunciations & alternate spellings.
This difference in understanding is giving rise to alternate spelling for “Sheikh” and “Grey” as: “Shaikh” & “Gray”, and such like words and also alternate pronunciations. People are confused between “∫eikh”, “∫i:kh”, “shaikh”, and “sheikh”. And between allophones: “K” or “ख़”. If we use ‘ei’ in ‘Sheikh’, it could be misconstrued for soft ‘e’ sound (soft ‘e’ sound as an alternate pronunciation already exist in dictionaries worldwide, the original sound is ‘∫eikh’ with soft ‘a’ sound.
Whosoever know of shaikhs would agree on the sound but what about the rest of the world who does not know of ‘∫eikhs’, and understands the vowel combination “ei” as “i:” sound. They could be in a soup someday if they aren’t lucky enough, as deadly shakes could kill.
Shouldn’t we weigh a foreign language entry before we assimilate it in English language as a part, in terms of structural compatibility and possible sound change with the course of time, to save the original sound, and to avoid possible structural confounding?
Not everybody but Shaikhs would agree.
Delhi : The capital of India. Phonetically if we hyphenate the word, it is ‘Del-hi’, where ‘del’ is a solid syllable with solid ‘e’ sound in well, jell, set, get, etc. When it was named first ,it was named as ‘िदॣली’. ‘द’ as’ ‘ð’ .We can get ‘ð’ sound with ‘th’ combination in English. The only reason why ‘th’ was not used could be, that it would be misconstrued as Ø sound as in thanks, thunder, thatch, etc.
The origin sound is ‘ðil-li:’, where ‘ðil’ is solid with solid ‘i’sound.
How did ‘ðil-li:’ sound changed to ‘Del-hi’( D sound –solid ‘e’ sound – l sound-short ‘i’)?
Ignorance and perceptual difference made ‘ðil-li’ ‘Del-hi’ .
Till the time I was in my teens, everybody said ‘ðil-li:’ ðil-li:’ . And now, though everybody in India know that its ‘ðil-i:’, but they say it ‘Del-i:’. It’s not that people find it difficult to say ‘ðil-i:’ , everybody can say it . It an India word, every sound in the word is there in the National language of the country. If a Kid, whose History teacher did not tell him its ‘ðil-li:’, says it as ‘del-i’ because his English teacher told him that way, it is acceptable. But what made educated & English speaking populace, who took their History lessons well say it ‘Del-hi:’? May be the pretext of wrong spelling, or may be any other personal reason.
I think the name change, yes, I would call it a name change, happened because initially when it was spelled with English alphabetic script, we were not able to capture the sound correctly and we spelled it ‘Delhi , which is wrong.
By the course of time people interacted with the rest of the world for Business purposes, and communicated the wrong spelling. The wrong spelling was peppered through out the world, as ‘ðil-i’ had been a business center, and on all of the written communications ‘ðil-i:’ was spelled as ‘Delhi’. Also the name was broadcasted as ‘Delhi’, because broad-caster said it the way it was spelled. And the rest of the know it as ‘del-i’, with a solid ‘e’ sound.
I m not going to give you a list of such like words to make you believe the present state ( how many such like words are there, how does it effect your speech). Do your homework by yourself. Only if you think its quite true, if you think that this all make some sense, then only follow the blog, otherwise just shun like the way we always do.
Start with this, and I will show you how you can perfect your speech. Start to learn to respect original sounds and see sound do wonders for you.
Don’t worry I’ll share it later.
In other words, if you are asked to spell a word you are not familiar with, you do not know the meaning, its application, its origin, you would probably try to match it with the sounds of the words you know. For example: If you are asked to spell ‘bæt’, and you did not know anything about the word, you would try to wrack your brain to memorize similar words sounds) varying in one phoneme only. You would try to refresh your memory to recall ‘cæt’, ‘hæt’, ‘fæt’, ‘mæt’, ‘ræt’, etc.
Linguafranca is all about refreshing your memory, telling you things you do not know, or things you know but can not recall in time, and get you in the habit of recognizing sounds and structural arrangements, help you relate to all of the generalities. As in above example, when vowel ‘a’ is sandwiched between two consonant sounds and the syllable is stressed it would give ‘æ’ sound.
There are numerous words of foreign origin, the first time they were spelled, were not spelled right, and may be because of the perceptual differences or lack of understanding. Or may be they were spelled by some George from English speaking region, who could not capture the sound, or just simply spelled in a possible idle moment to kill time, or may be because people were not able to give the actual sound. Or the then-popular George might have given them options, but because of the communication gap they picked the wrong option by themselves according to their ease. And habitual imitation kindled it, and acted as an electrode in a nuclear reactor of language.
Habitual imitation is like Uranium-238 rod in the nuclear reactor of the language. The idea is, if we can put some neuron rods( periodic codifications) in place to tame the power of the fuel and somehow put a check on the plausible explosion that damage sounds, words, and finally speech; instead of just sitting back and vacillating over the confounding, and let it complicate it further.
It’s a fuel; more fuel we put more powerful combustion we expect in the cylinder. We’ve got to control the irregular and un-warranted infusion to make it rather beneficial to the language. Use it effectively and efficiently to tap the full potential of the growth of the language. For the universal comprehension among the speakers. As is practically impossible to reverse the damage, once the language is abused at a larger scale. And what scale is larger than a relatively bigger civilization ( Asian countries) more than happy to adopt, experiment, and apparently abuse a new language.
THANKS TO ANGLICIZATION AND SOUND DISTORTION.
And now every body is saying words the way the spelling suggests, or what they understand from the way those words are spelled; but not the way it should be said worldwide. The beauty of the original words is lost. It acts as a threat to both, the foreign language from which the words have come from, and also to English as a Universal language. Why English? Because there is every possibility that by the course of time a new sub-script style would emerge. Which is a Universal fact, but we hitherto failed to recognize. And at a later stage we start to realize the follies fanned out by habitual imitation, which in-turn makes it quite difficult to communicate. Which would have been avoided if had considered the importance of sound and application of letters in the formation of English replica of a foreign word( with the use English alphabet), and we start to correct at a much later stage when it is bound to confound every body.
This doesn’t mean that we never thought of written English logically. At one time we might think that something is perfectly fine, as is solving the purpose but later we realize a need for change. This is the base of development. Till the time we are not ready for any change we won’t develop anything. If we had thought of bulb as the end of electronics, we would have probably stuck with not more than a bulb in our hand.
In order to improve comprehension among English speakers across the globe, it is essential to decrease the disparity ( perceptual differences).
We’ll discuss how effectively we can correct those follies fanned out by possible habitual imitation.
I remember one instance, some time in 2006 people protested a shoe making company for printing `Allah` on the shoes they made. Company didn’t know that the people will get offended. Not every body who believe in God will take such disrespect.
’Allah’ is also a spelling for Muslim God. People know Allah as a spelling for the name of the God ‘۸la:’, the ’۸’ sound in ‘۸la:’, is a solid ‘u’ sound, as in but, cut, hut, rut, etc. Every body who know ‘۸la:’ would say ‘ ۸la: ‘ , but for the rest of the world it’s `Allah` , phonetically, `Æla: ` , with solid `a` sound as in fat, cat , rat , mat , etc.
What if today, after seeing that protest for the name sake, God himself say, “I respect your feeling for what ever you did to get it corrected , and I also know that you all love me very much” , “But there is one thing I would like to ask , I know that u can say my name right, but why did the you spelled it `Allah`? The rest of the world who do not worship me read my name as ’Æla:’ ,where ‘a’ is solid . Don’t worship a lesser GOD (the printed word).
“Please educate every body on this and please change the spelling if possible.”
The fact is that nobody is as forgiving as GOD is.
Giving space for alternate pronunciations & alternate spellings.
This difference in understanding is giving rise to alternate spelling for “Sheikh” and “Grey” as: “Shaikh” & “Gray”, and such like words and also alternate pronunciations. People are confused between “∫eikh”, “∫i:kh”, “shaikh”, and “sheikh”. And between allophones: “K” or “ख़”. If we use ‘ei’ in ‘Sheikh’, it could be misconstrued for soft ‘e’ sound (soft ‘e’ sound as an alternate pronunciation already exist in dictionaries worldwide, the original sound is ‘∫eikh’ with soft ‘a’ sound.
Whosoever know of shaikhs would agree on the sound but what about the rest of the world who does not know of ‘∫eikhs’, and understands the vowel combination “ei” as “i:” sound. They could be in a soup someday if they aren’t lucky enough, as deadly shakes could kill.
Shouldn’t we weigh a foreign language entry before we assimilate it in English language as a part, in terms of structural compatibility and possible sound change with the course of time, to save the original sound, and to avoid possible structural confounding?
Not everybody but Shaikhs would agree.
Delhi : The capital of India. Phonetically if we hyphenate the word, it is ‘Del-hi’, where ‘del’ is a solid syllable with solid ‘e’ sound in well, jell, set, get, etc. When it was named first ,it was named as ‘िदॣली’. ‘द’ as’ ‘ð’ .We can get ‘ð’ sound with ‘th’ combination in English. The only reason why ‘th’ was not used could be, that it would be misconstrued as Ø sound as in thanks, thunder, thatch, etc.
The origin sound is ‘ðil-li:’, where ‘ðil’ is solid with solid ‘i’sound.
How did ‘ðil-li:’ sound changed to ‘Del-hi’( D sound –solid ‘e’ sound – l sound-short ‘i’)?
Ignorance and perceptual difference made ‘ðil-li’ ‘Del-hi’ .
Till the time I was in my teens, everybody said ‘ðil-li:’ ðil-li:’ . And now, though everybody in India know that its ‘ðil-i:’, but they say it ‘Del-i:’. It’s not that people find it difficult to say ‘ðil-i:’ , everybody can say it . It an India word, every sound in the word is there in the National language of the country. If a Kid, whose History teacher did not tell him its ‘ðil-li:’, says it as ‘del-i’ because his English teacher told him that way, it is acceptable. But what made educated & English speaking populace, who took their History lessons well say it ‘Del-hi:’? May be the pretext of wrong spelling, or may be any other personal reason.
I think the name change, yes, I would call it a name change, happened because initially when it was spelled with English alphabetic script, we were not able to capture the sound correctly and we spelled it ‘Delhi , which is wrong.
By the course of time people interacted with the rest of the world for Business purposes, and communicated the wrong spelling. The wrong spelling was peppered through out the world, as ‘ðil-i’ had been a business center, and on all of the written communications ‘ðil-i:’ was spelled as ‘Delhi’. Also the name was broadcasted as ‘Delhi’, because broad-caster said it the way it was spelled. And the rest of the know it as ‘del-i’, with a solid ‘e’ sound.
I m not going to give you a list of such like words to make you believe the present state ( how many such like words are there, how does it effect your speech). Do your homework by yourself. Only if you think its quite true, if you think that this all make some sense, then only follow the blog, otherwise just shun like the way we always do.
Start with this, and I will show you how you can perfect your speech. Start to learn to respect original sounds and see sound do wonders for you.
Don’t worry I’ll share it later.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
English advantage.
One of the biggest reasons why India is considered as a preferred destination for out-sourcing is the English speaking population of India. English tops the list as a second language of India. Nevertheless, it's also very much evident that India might lose on this advantage if she does not learn to cash on it, for that matter, like any other country in the race to woe big businesses to outsource. This advantage will not be an advantage any long.
The cost advantage is diminishing according to the recent survey conducted by A T Kearney; is not just enough to retain the competitive edge over China, Philippines, et.al. The market for services other than voice support is comparatively small; and will remain small in volumes in comparison to voice support services. There is yet a lot to be explored in relatively larger segment, which still has many un-addressed issues.
Irrespective of the new alleyways of domain expertise such as, finance, law, human resource, telecommunications, copyrights, healthcare, and such like services; the regular fresh English speaking work force to cater to human voice support functions will remain in volumes. The industry can change the resolution to new alleys for a while, but should never lose its focus from the backbone of the industry. At least not at the cost of the essence.
To expand the scope of business process outsourcing, to snare volumes, we need to zero-in on building clients faith by redefining the parameters of quality deliverance.
Big businesses know of the limitations and understand the nuances of human contact needs to strengthen the bond of trust with their consumers; and that's the only reason why they silly-sally to outsource, or somehow compromise with the available resource, and somehow let the resource deliver of its own volition.
They look askance at the speech habits of the available resource, but because of the cost benefits, they give it a pass. Many a times businesses silly-sally over the idea of moving their Consumer care/human voice support base, and the location switch reappraisals are centered on the cost benefits only.
Now the choice is among the destinations offering cheaper alternatives, Chapter-13, Chapter-7, or any other option available.
The fact is, it’s not an option, is compromise.
The time is not far to see businesses volt-face in favor of a destination who can understand the need, and act before any other competitor does. If they can do away with Chapters altogether and still maintain their creditability.
We really don't have to sit back basking in the comfort zone, chipping away at the mainstay to embark on new alleyways of BPO, as it'll have impinge on the market share; because whenever a client outsource she also compromise on certain things. The client will be more than happy if she does not have to compromise on something that can affect her business. Whosoever does it first and with precision; will take the lead. Not someone, who is just passing the monkey over.
The very core of the business is actually not how much good you are but how well you deliver. How fast you take cognizance of future needs.
Indians are considered well endowed with grey cells; are diligent, and have the fire to excel.
But the industry as a whole seems to over look the importance of quality deliverance of human support functions, as is blinkered by the new avenues and sometimes fail to realize the importance of speech in its true sense, to understand the concept of speech impacts on their business. Industry has been escaping from the challenge altogether and always turned deaf ear to the evolving industry needs.
If a destination has to improve its attractiveness for the offshore business, has to take cognizance of the potential growth prospects by the redefining the cognitive base, and by pruning the stance with knowledge acquisition in the domain of voice training.
I would love to share one of the unsatisfactory cop-outs of the industry, which I noticed when I got the chance to visit a so -called captive unit recently.
Few verses from what they worship as Bible.
"Dearest creature in creation, study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I'll keep you, Suzy, busy. Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer."
"Just compare heart, beard and heard. Dies and diet, Lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. But be careful how you speak: Say break and streak, but bleak and streak; cloven, oven, how and low, script and receipt."
"Finally which rhymes with enough-Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give it up!!!"
Moreover, the heading was: "English is tough stuff"
Who would not be convinced with such a work (700 words) of art, if client can, but me?
It is nothing but an easy escape to blame it entirely on English, instead of understanding the need for segmental/phonetic conditioning, the coherence and generalities of morphological alterations needed to twig the concept better.
Businesses are bending over backwards to find something that could click, but their own frames of reference and their vacuity on the subject is making it quite a job. Anything other than Jones is in complete denial altogether.
Only knowledge driven approach would help maintain the lead among preferred destinations. Only if we can cut loose from ostensible old philosophies, which have no functional significance; to reinforce the stance over something, which is affecting the business.
The language seems to be fraught with confounding and the training department seems rather flummoxed by them.
But this is not at all incorrigible.
All this is a result of habitual imitation of the follies of the yesteryears. We can correct this if we can just sit back and try to see the core of the so-called problem.
Rajeev, a good friend of mine; is quite successful in his career with the BPO industry. Four visits to USA in the last 2 years, all financed by the company, all of them were to bring new processes. Is working as a Group manager, is diligent so is successful.
He knows grammar, vocabulary, and the thought process is also good. However, most of the times I find him vacillating between alternate pronunciations; between his understanding of the sound predictability and the possible probabilities of sound sequences. He forces his way to identify the structural cues to identify the sounds sequences.
The only thing I like about him is that he does not give up it up for the distorted and sound damaging Indian way of utterance, as most of the libertarians in India have.
Either they match the rhythm they are comfortable with or they kill speech. Either ways they kill word sounds. This very much apparent as are left with guessing only, whenever they are encountered with a completely new word. They mispronounce or cling on to their "chulta hah" philosophy.
The capability to customize utterance and the phoneme prediction is not well developed. Every time they fall through to tap the sound patterns.
The strengthening of the knowledge base will only keep the business from moving to a new destination altogether, or back to the lands where it came from.
So save the advantage falling in to decline.
The cost advantage is diminishing according to the recent survey conducted by A T Kearney; is not just enough to retain the competitive edge over China, Philippines, et.al. The market for services other than voice support is comparatively small; and will remain small in volumes in comparison to voice support services. There is yet a lot to be explored in relatively larger segment, which still has many un-addressed issues.
Irrespective of the new alleyways of domain expertise such as, finance, law, human resource, telecommunications, copyrights, healthcare, and such like services; the regular fresh English speaking work force to cater to human voice support functions will remain in volumes. The industry can change the resolution to new alleys for a while, but should never lose its focus from the backbone of the industry. At least not at the cost of the essence.
To expand the scope of business process outsourcing, to snare volumes, we need to zero-in on building clients faith by redefining the parameters of quality deliverance.
Big businesses know of the limitations and understand the nuances of human contact needs to strengthen the bond of trust with their consumers; and that's the only reason why they silly-sally to outsource, or somehow compromise with the available resource, and somehow let the resource deliver of its own volition.
They look askance at the speech habits of the available resource, but because of the cost benefits, they give it a pass. Many a times businesses silly-sally over the idea of moving their Consumer care/human voice support base, and the location switch reappraisals are centered on the cost benefits only.
Now the choice is among the destinations offering cheaper alternatives, Chapter-13, Chapter-7, or any other option available.
The fact is, it’s not an option, is compromise.
The time is not far to see businesses volt-face in favor of a destination who can understand the need, and act before any other competitor does. If they can do away with Chapters altogether and still maintain their creditability.
We really don't have to sit back basking in the comfort zone, chipping away at the mainstay to embark on new alleyways of BPO, as it'll have impinge on the market share; because whenever a client outsource she also compromise on certain things. The client will be more than happy if she does not have to compromise on something that can affect her business. Whosoever does it first and with precision; will take the lead. Not someone, who is just passing the monkey over.
The very core of the business is actually not how much good you are but how well you deliver. How fast you take cognizance of future needs.
Indians are considered well endowed with grey cells; are diligent, and have the fire to excel.
But the industry as a whole seems to over look the importance of quality deliverance of human support functions, as is blinkered by the new avenues and sometimes fail to realize the importance of speech in its true sense, to understand the concept of speech impacts on their business. Industry has been escaping from the challenge altogether and always turned deaf ear to the evolving industry needs.
If a destination has to improve its attractiveness for the offshore business, has to take cognizance of the potential growth prospects by the redefining the cognitive base, and by pruning the stance with knowledge acquisition in the domain of voice training.
I would love to share one of the unsatisfactory cop-outs of the industry, which I noticed when I got the chance to visit a so -called captive unit recently.
Few verses from what they worship as Bible.
"Dearest creature in creation, study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I'll keep you, Suzy, busy. Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer."
"Just compare heart, beard and heard. Dies and diet, Lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. But be careful how you speak: Say break and streak, but bleak and streak; cloven, oven, how and low, script and receipt."
"Finally which rhymes with enough-Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give it up!!!"
Moreover, the heading was: "English is tough stuff"
Who would not be convinced with such a work (700 words) of art, if client can, but me?
It is nothing but an easy escape to blame it entirely on English, instead of understanding the need for segmental/phonetic conditioning, the coherence and generalities of morphological alterations needed to twig the concept better.
Businesses are bending over backwards to find something that could click, but their own frames of reference and their vacuity on the subject is making it quite a job. Anything other than Jones is in complete denial altogether.
Only knowledge driven approach would help maintain the lead among preferred destinations. Only if we can cut loose from ostensible old philosophies, which have no functional significance; to reinforce the stance over something, which is affecting the business.
The language seems to be fraught with confounding and the training department seems rather flummoxed by them.
But this is not at all incorrigible.
All this is a result of habitual imitation of the follies of the yesteryears. We can correct this if we can just sit back and try to see the core of the so-called problem.
Rajeev, a good friend of mine; is quite successful in his career with the BPO industry. Four visits to USA in the last 2 years, all financed by the company, all of them were to bring new processes. Is working as a Group manager, is diligent so is successful.
He knows grammar, vocabulary, and the thought process is also good. However, most of the times I find him vacillating between alternate pronunciations; between his understanding of the sound predictability and the possible probabilities of sound sequences. He forces his way to identify the structural cues to identify the sounds sequences.
The only thing I like about him is that he does not give up it up for the distorted and sound damaging Indian way of utterance, as most of the libertarians in India have.
Either they match the rhythm they are comfortable with or they kill speech. Either ways they kill word sounds. This very much apparent as are left with guessing only, whenever they are encountered with a completely new word. They mispronounce or cling on to their "chulta hah" philosophy.
The capability to customize utterance and the phoneme prediction is not well developed. Every time they fall through to tap the sound patterns.
The strengthening of the knowledge base will only keep the business from moving to a new destination altogether, or back to the lands where it came from.
So save the advantage falling in to decline.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sound probabilities.
Language learning snags and speech imperfections due to unawareness of sound probabilities and rhythm match counts for a major percentage of the total unease and apprehensions to speak in a language other than your native language. Social and habitual factors most of the times impede the language learning abilities and attainable prowess. Moreover, socio-habitual factors clubbed with sub-scripting styles, and habitual imitation in different regions is a disaster for a language. So is the propensity of reducing your world to the people who speak likewise.
You can easily attain a degree of fluency by modifying your speech habits, and by making it in line with the rhythm of your native language, but your morpho-phonological sense would be jeopardized if you pay no heed to the most important component of a universally understandable speech. Right sounds. So is the case with most of the South-Asians.
Your speech is affected by the knowledge of the word sounds; which in-turn is affected by perceptual factors, whatever you have learned from the people you interact with.
Auditory cues are needed to identify the structure of a word and to help you spell it; and also the structural cues to identify the sound or the sequence of sounds with prevalent scripting styles.
Speech sound and frequency predictability is very helpful to identify spoken words. Moreover, until the time you are not aware of the close sound variables and the differences, how would you remember and differentiate it from what has been ingrained in your speech?
The same is true with structural understanding of words for the right utterance of a word.
If I were to give you auditory cues to spell a new word, of which you've never seen the script form before. All those factors will come in to play to help to recognize the structure of the word; and that form may or may not be acceptable to the rest of the world.
As opposed to the native speakers, it is easy to remember words as spellings than as sounds for someone beginning to learn a new language. A native speaker speaks more words than she writes, which is inversely so with someone from region who speaks comparatively less of English and also understands quite well the sub-scripting style to write their native language words with English alphabetic script.
Speech theories, which defined you as Tongue-tight/ nerve-tight were formulated in ignorance on the speech organ movement or articulatory saga alone. To some extent, seems quite true when illustrated with so many nicely elaborated examples. Though I m surrounded with sorts who dotes on these renowned philosophies, but I always doubted the effectiveness of the so-called articulatory phonetics.
I recently had a chance to share the popular sub-scripting style prevailing in India with Trainers; who by birth are from regions other than the native English-speaking region and learn of there Mexican and German styles. Why do I call it sub-scripting style?
Because it is not suggestive of the actual sound. It’s not that difficult to twig and memorize words from different languages if we don't let the sub-scripting styles intervene the whole process. They struggled real hard to say foreign words when I showed the script form and shared the actual sounds simultaneously. Nevertheless, there was a higher degree of coherence when I shared the sounds only. They would simply decipher word sounds in script they can easily relate to, sub-scripting style they followed..
It has been observed that we always tend to confused ourselves with the sub-scripting styles. We can learn any language if we have a good nerve coordination and well developed nerve centers, which can serve as a reliable repository to recall information. Both had difficulties to remember new language words; which is obvious and still acceptable till the time they are peculiar of the sounds.
I'll make it little easy for you to relate to it: Just pick any favorite song from your native language, and try to decipher all of the words in that song in English alphabetic script. You may not be able to write an understandable peace of work for a native speaker suggesting closest possible alternate sounds, just because of the effect of popular sub-scripting style in your area on your life; you know of the sounds but are doubtful of the morph-phonological aspect. If possible, share it with different speakers around the world. You'll realize how good the sub-scripting style you follow is; if is suggestive of the actual sound of the word; and the morpho-phonological compatibility of the script.
Such a script is everywhere around you, and is really getting over you to make your speech imperfect. The fact is that you are not even aware of the impact on your speech habits. This habitual resort to the sub-scripting style and the morpho-phonological understanding always intervene and addles you to learn the language to the core.
There is a higher degree of transparency in usage and popularization of foreign language words in academic disciplines, and is inversely so in non-academic profession.
It’s all written on your speech notes. Your speech reflects your morpho-phonological understanding .The sub-script is a creation of non-professional populace, and its popularity to creep into your daily speech is kindled by the media.
The moment you hear a new word, you'll take time to analyze the sound patterns; and try to differentiate new sounds from close variable you already know.
The moment you are not sure of the actual pronunciation; you’ll; Yes! You’ll take time to decide from the different variables you know of.
The transposition of the popular scripting style to form English replica of different language words gained grounds with the popularity of English itself; which is sometimes unfairly expected to be understood and accepted by everybody. Nevertheless, the ignorance of the structural compatibility to form new English versions, which are suggestive of the actual sounds world-over created the big gap. As they had to find English replica of their native sound so badly as had always been in vogue, but did not know of the structural sequences suggesting the phono-perfect spellings. Phono-morpho did not cohere well, as were backed by the perceptual factors only; which is what they somehow managed to support it with.
All this can be altered to attain a degree of coherence and systematic phonemics to captured sounds with the help of generalizations about the morphological factors. And that is in fact possible by something which has offered a substantial support to the expansion of so called sub-scripting style: Mobile telephony, as is one of the biggest channels to fan out the much dreaded scripting style.
Moreover, if you choose to be carefree of the correctness of the utterance you might attain fluency, but that would always be at the cost of the sounds.
The idea is that many words of foreign origin have lost their identity; both in sound and appearance that we sometimes find different regions jostle brains hard to consciously recognize the actual sound, the actual pronunciation.
What do we expect?
Do we expect every body, from someone who does not speak that much (beginning to learn to speak English), to someone who does more than just speak, to know the origin of every other word, and their contrasting applications of English alphabetic script?
The idea is, that it would be far fetching; way too much. Then why should we let egregious follies to act as an impediment in communication. Ain’t is possible to educate every body to save them from being ignoramus enough to damage words from so many different languages.
The real need for a base accent emerged with the increasing interaction of different communities having different phonetic perceptions. Not everybody understands it the way it should be understood. The idea is to minimize the regional perceptual differences in phonetic applications and habits.
The contribution of countries like India & China, had been little less hitherto, but there is every possibility that they'll turn out to be one of the major contributors as they are making their presence felt worldwide; and also if we consider the increasing population of English speakers in these countries. Odds on, we’ll all witness the unprecedented spate of entries from these regions. But we can not let their free-floating habit of spelling their native language words with English alphabetic script to jeopardize languages just like that.
There is a real need for a base paradigm to clear up the maze they are floating in.
You can easily attain a degree of fluency by modifying your speech habits, and by making it in line with the rhythm of your native language, but your morpho-phonological sense would be jeopardized if you pay no heed to the most important component of a universally understandable speech. Right sounds. So is the case with most of the South-Asians.
Your speech is affected by the knowledge of the word sounds; which in-turn is affected by perceptual factors, whatever you have learned from the people you interact with.
Auditory cues are needed to identify the structure of a word and to help you spell it; and also the structural cues to identify the sound or the sequence of sounds with prevalent scripting styles.
Speech sound and frequency predictability is very helpful to identify spoken words. Moreover, until the time you are not aware of the close sound variables and the differences, how would you remember and differentiate it from what has been ingrained in your speech?
The same is true with structural understanding of words for the right utterance of a word.
If I were to give you auditory cues to spell a new word, of which you've never seen the script form before. All those factors will come in to play to help to recognize the structure of the word; and that form may or may not be acceptable to the rest of the world.
As opposed to the native speakers, it is easy to remember words as spellings than as sounds for someone beginning to learn a new language. A native speaker speaks more words than she writes, which is inversely so with someone from region who speaks comparatively less of English and also understands quite well the sub-scripting style to write their native language words with English alphabetic script.
Speech theories, which defined you as Tongue-tight/ nerve-tight were formulated in ignorance on the speech organ movement or articulatory saga alone. To some extent, seems quite true when illustrated with so many nicely elaborated examples. Though I m surrounded with sorts who dotes on these renowned philosophies, but I always doubted the effectiveness of the so-called articulatory phonetics.
I recently had a chance to share the popular sub-scripting style prevailing in India with Trainers; who by birth are from regions other than the native English-speaking region and learn of there Mexican and German styles. Why do I call it sub-scripting style?
Because it is not suggestive of the actual sound. It’s not that difficult to twig and memorize words from different languages if we don't let the sub-scripting styles intervene the whole process. They struggled real hard to say foreign words when I showed the script form and shared the actual sounds simultaneously. Nevertheless, there was a higher degree of coherence when I shared the sounds only. They would simply decipher word sounds in script they can easily relate to, sub-scripting style they followed..
It has been observed that we always tend to confused ourselves with the sub-scripting styles. We can learn any language if we have a good nerve coordination and well developed nerve centers, which can serve as a reliable repository to recall information. Both had difficulties to remember new language words; which is obvious and still acceptable till the time they are peculiar of the sounds.
I'll make it little easy for you to relate to it: Just pick any favorite song from your native language, and try to decipher all of the words in that song in English alphabetic script. You may not be able to write an understandable peace of work for a native speaker suggesting closest possible alternate sounds, just because of the effect of popular sub-scripting style in your area on your life; you know of the sounds but are doubtful of the morph-phonological aspect. If possible, share it with different speakers around the world. You'll realize how good the sub-scripting style you follow is; if is suggestive of the actual sound of the word; and the morpho-phonological compatibility of the script.
Such a script is everywhere around you, and is really getting over you to make your speech imperfect. The fact is that you are not even aware of the impact on your speech habits. This habitual resort to the sub-scripting style and the morpho-phonological understanding always intervene and addles you to learn the language to the core.
There is a higher degree of transparency in usage and popularization of foreign language words in academic disciplines, and is inversely so in non-academic profession.
It’s all written on your speech notes. Your speech reflects your morpho-phonological understanding .The sub-script is a creation of non-professional populace, and its popularity to creep into your daily speech is kindled by the media.
The moment you hear a new word, you'll take time to analyze the sound patterns; and try to differentiate new sounds from close variable you already know.
The moment you are not sure of the actual pronunciation; you’ll; Yes! You’ll take time to decide from the different variables you know of.
The transposition of the popular scripting style to form English replica of different language words gained grounds with the popularity of English itself; which is sometimes unfairly expected to be understood and accepted by everybody. Nevertheless, the ignorance of the structural compatibility to form new English versions, which are suggestive of the actual sounds world-over created the big gap. As they had to find English replica of their native sound so badly as had always been in vogue, but did not know of the structural sequences suggesting the phono-perfect spellings. Phono-morpho did not cohere well, as were backed by the perceptual factors only; which is what they somehow managed to support it with.
All this can be altered to attain a degree of coherence and systematic phonemics to captured sounds with the help of generalizations about the morphological factors. And that is in fact possible by something which has offered a substantial support to the expansion of so called sub-scripting style: Mobile telephony, as is one of the biggest channels to fan out the much dreaded scripting style.
Moreover, if you choose to be carefree of the correctness of the utterance you might attain fluency, but that would always be at the cost of the sounds.
The idea is that many words of foreign origin have lost their identity; both in sound and appearance that we sometimes find different regions jostle brains hard to consciously recognize the actual sound, the actual pronunciation.
What do we expect?
Do we expect every body, from someone who does not speak that much (beginning to learn to speak English), to someone who does more than just speak, to know the origin of every other word, and their contrasting applications of English alphabetic script?
The idea is, that it would be far fetching; way too much. Then why should we let egregious follies to act as an impediment in communication. Ain’t is possible to educate every body to save them from being ignoramus enough to damage words from so many different languages.
The real need for a base accent emerged with the increasing interaction of different communities having different phonetic perceptions. Not everybody understands it the way it should be understood. The idea is to minimize the regional perceptual differences in phonetic applications and habits.
The contribution of countries like India & China, had been little less hitherto, but there is every possibility that they'll turn out to be one of the major contributors as they are making their presence felt worldwide; and also if we consider the increasing population of English speakers in these countries. Odds on, we’ll all witness the unprecedented spate of entries from these regions. But we can not let their free-floating habit of spelling their native language words with English alphabetic script to jeopardize languages just like that.
There is a real need for a base paradigm to clear up the maze they are floating in.
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