I had some trouble getting my internet settings right on Airtel GPRS connections, so I called up the technical support. I selected English as the preferred language thinking that it would be easier to converse. Oh, I wished!! Little did I know that I had selected Indian BPO English, or Inglish(read this as,”language which you get when the BPOs train too hard to get out some heavy US accent out of their employee’s), as the language.
People who have called up the customer care cell of any service provider, would agree with me. Or at the least, the people who believe in the good old unaccented (Indian accented) english would agree. What has happened to the the english taught in our curriculum? Why do the call centre employees drop all the conjunctions from the sentences? Why do they have rabble out in hurry? Why is want to becoming wanna? Are they mistaking it to the US accent? Why can’t they sick to plain old accent which they have by birth, so that we “slow” Indians understand it properly?
India is said to be one of the major hub for BPO operations, with lots of multinationals servicing their customers through call centers located in India, operated by Indians. Do we provide the international clients with the cream of the employees, or is this kind of pathetic, messed up accented language passed on as english to them?