Direction for Q11. to Q15. Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:
Learning the Queen's English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toe nails, the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had. So, you can see that learning came slowly to me. On the other hand, I had plenty oftime. Ilearned your language in an immigration detention centre, in Essex, in the southeastern part of the United Kingdom. Two years, they locked me in there. Time was all I had.
But why did I go to all the trouble? It is because of what some of the older girls explained to me: to survive, you must look good or talk even better. The plain ones and the silent ones, it seems their paperwork in never in order. You say, they get repatriated. We say, sent home early.
The Other Hand is the story of a young woman who flees conflict in her home village in the oil-rich region of southern Nigeria. She makes her way to the UK as an illegal immigrant and is detained for a long period of time at an immigrant detention centre near London. When she finally gets out, she seeks out the only two people she knows in England, whom she met on a Nigerian beach during a life-changing event a few years before. Will she be able to find them, and if so will they help her? And if not, will she survive in her newly adopted country as an immigrant?
Q11. What is meant by 'Queen's English' in the text given:
(A) Good, formal English
(B) Fluent, vernacular English
(C) English as spoken in the UK
(D) Good formal American English
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Correct Answer :
(A) and (C) only
Solution :
The correct option is (A) and (C) only.
Explanation:
The term "Queen's English" (historically referring to the English spoken by the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom) is a widely recognized idiom that denotes standard, grammatically correct, and formal British English. Let us analyze the given statements in relation to this definition and the context of the passage:
1. Statement (A) - "Good, formal English": This is correct. The Queen's English represents the standard prestige dialect of English, characterized by formal usage, correct grammar, and clear pronunciation.
2. Statement (B) - "Fluent, vernacular English": This is incorrect. "Vernacular" refers to the native, everyday spoken language or dialect of a specific population or region, which often includes informal slang, colloquialisms, and regional variations. The Queen's English stands in contrast to regional vernaculars as it represents the standardized formal version.
3. Statement (C) - "English as spoken in the UK": This is correct in this context. The passage explicitly links the narrator's learning of this language to her detention in Essex, located in the southeastern part of the United Kingdom. In international contexts, "Queen's English" is synonymous with standard British English.
4. Statement (D) - "Good formal American English": This is incorrect. The Queen's English is distinctly British and does not refer to American English dialects or standards.
Therefore, only statements (A) and (C) accurately describe the meaning of "Queen's English" as used in the context of the text, making the option (A) and (C) only the correct choice.
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