I REFER to Fadzilah Amin’s reply to J. Wood in “Open Channel” (MOE, Oct 20).

She quoted Bicester Hash House Harriers’ call, “Are you on?”, in support of the acceptability of that expression, alongside the expression “Are you in”.

I have been a hasher and I know that Bicester did not, for a moment, have to choose between using “on” or “in”.

In hashing, the shout “Are you on?” is an abbreviation of “Are you on trail?”. Briefly, hashing consists of runners following a series of broken trails marked with bits of paper (in country environments) or small dollops of flour (in city environments). Faster, front runners have the job of picking up the trail between one break and the start of the next trail. These front runners scatter in all directions searching for continuation paper or flour, and hollering “Are you on?” to fellow searchers. The first searcher to find the new trail shouts “On, on!” and everyone then converges to where they heard his (or her) voice come from.

Thus, “Are you on?” was a ready-made expression that would have been impossible for Bicester to depart from in favour of “Are you in?” – I. Ho

What model of English to adopt

THE English we are currently learning and using in Malaysia is not Queen’s English or RP (Received Pronunciation) as figures saliently indicate that there is only a 3% minority speaking or using it on this planet. The rest are all Englishes, rather, other varieties of English. At the macro level, what we are speaking here is new English; at the micro level, it is Malaysian English.

New or world Englishes, to cite just a few examples, are American English, Malaysian English, Singlish, and Bruneian English.

Bhaj Kachru, who coined the term “World English”, states that Englishes can be understood in an expanding three-concentric-circle model. The inner circle is the Englishes spoken by native speakers from Britain, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In the second expanding circle, there are Englishes spoken by once English colonised nations like Singapore, India, Malaysia and the Philippines, while the outermost circle refers to the English used by nations which take English as a foreign language. They include Japan, Spain, Korea and China.

In China and Taiwan, American English has been adopted as a model. Subsequently, people are trained to speak like Americans. As for Malaysia, British English was once used at institutional and administrative levels and thus we always believe that we are using British English. But in practice, over the years, very few, or perhaps none, really speak the Queen’s English. To be accurate, we speak Malaysian English in reality.

If we delimit our English as Malaysian English, then the cultural boundary should be fuzzy and porous. That said, the English we use on a daily basis in this country doesn’t have to be orthodox British or that used by purists. Regional elements ought to be tolerated and understood in this variety. In this vein, a structure like “I already pay him” rather than “I have paid him” is understandable and can be accepted.

The argument is, what model should we adopt? I would suggest the more tangible model, viz, Malaysian English and use it in our own seasoned way but make it intelligible in terms of syntax and pronunciation to foreign users. – Khei Yok Man

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