Nepali English or Other Varieties of English: Perspectives from English Language Teachers in Nepal

Abstract

This qualitative content analysis article aims at exploring the perspectives of English language teachers on Nepali English (NE). I purposively selected six college level English language teachers from Sunsari and Morang districts and collected the required data through a semi-structured interview. The study reveals that NE has emerged in Nepal as a result of mother tongue influence, nativization of English to local contexts, and exposure from the non-native teachers during the second language acquisition process, and it is practically more appropriate than other varieties of English in Nepal. All the research participants favour NE as it is more intelligible and easier to teach and learn than the other varieties of English, promotes Nepali identity, boosts confidence, reduces anxiety, and helps to resist the hegemony of British English (BE) or American English (AE). They, however, believe that more research and discourse on NE, its codifi cation and standardization, and power (political, economic, and ideological) are necessary for bringing NE into concrete form. These perspectives from the English language teachers on NE pave the ground for appropriating English language policies, English language curriculum, textbooks, and pedagogy in Nepal, and rethinking the traditional treatment of errors.

On liberation of English from purist pundithood through nativization in Nepal

“…The nativization processes exemplified and described in the paper "reflect the sociolinguistic rules, communicative conventions, and cultural traditions of the local people that suit best their communicative purposes" (Canagarajah 1999: 179-180). Creative Nepali authors of English nativized English to manifest their individual and sociocultural values, to seek their identities and dignity in World Englishes literature, to communicate Nepali social values to the rest of the world, to show some empathy towards English (Karn 2012), to make it comprehensible to the Nepali people and practicable in the Nepali context (Dewan 2022a(Dewan , 2022b, and to liberate English from the so-called purist pundithood or the monolithic vision of English. In this sense, I agree with Baker and Eggington (1999) that monolingual writing as a norm for English writing needs to be revised to incorporate multi-norms of creativity and style and multi-norms of bilingual creativity.…”