It’s not a rare sight in Pakistan, especially Karachi where I am from, to see people trying hard to speak English even if they can’t. It’s a language you need to know to impress people, to make others feel you went to an English-Medium school and happen to know a language that existed in Pakistan almost 60 years ago under the British mandate.
Hey, British left, why speak English then? Well because it is the IN thing. Last time I was there, which was around 3 years ago, people tried to talk to me in English even though they know I speak the national language Urdu. Just telling someone I am on vacation and study in the states was enough for them to perceive me as someone who needs to be impressed as they assumed that I would speak good English. If I know Urdu, know Urdu then the rule of thumb is that we communicate in Urdu…. simple!
In Karachi, this not a trend but it is also a serious business. People who know little bit of English or happen to have diplomas are teaching English and making quite bit money for themselves. Not that I envy them, even though I should, but what intrigues me is the idea behind learning English.
Since when did English become a language one needs to know to survive? Answer is obvious, Globalization. We live in a world that is now rapid fast then ever before, communication is now easier then it was ever before and Internet, which is predominantly in the English language, has taken over everything.
If you need a job, you should have good command of spoken English. If you want to impress the opposite sex, you need to speak English. If you want to mingle with people from high society, you have to speak English. So Karachi decided that the first step in learning all things English would be to learn English. Don’t get me started on the clothes girls wear these days all over Pakistan, they make fashion shows in Paris look like wardrobe malfunction day-in-day-out.
Even if you are the dumbest of all people, you can beat a smart person if you speak English and that smart person doesn’t. This is really hard to understand. Recently my cousin asked me if I knew someone who could speak good English, with a decent accent because he had a vacancy at his call center, they pay anywhere around Rs 15,000 to 20,000 depending how well you can communicate and experience. That is not bad, an average person in Pakistan I think makes less than Rs 4,000/month.
It would be very interesting to see what happens as things change and the Karachi construction boom kicks in… I feel safe now I guess; I am never going to die of hunger in Karachi 
This post, more or less, is a commentary of the story Where talk is cheap but not necessarily grammatical by Maliha Rehman.
