Indlish

Some 60 years ago, when the British left India, they did not realise the blunder they had made during that time. They taught us English. I now wonder why Mr. Blair gets so upset about getting a sales call from Mr. Kumar in Bangalore. After all, Kumar spent a good part of his childhood education learning English so as to make a living by calling Mr. Blair. The British had created an elite class of English speakers during their rule in India to administer the empire. Even today in India, if you are good at making English jokes, you are a dude, otherwise a yarr (pal). However, over the last decade or two, there is another language that is flourishing, though out of frustration, among not-so-dude Indians. These youngsters, who have tried their best in life, but failed, to learn the nitty-gritties of English grammar, have created an indigenous English called Indlish.

Indlish varies across different regions in India based on the local language. In the north, it is Hinglish, a hybrid of Hindi (the local language) and English; in my home state, it is Punglish from Punjabi. The way ‘Indlish’ works is that when an Indian struggles to find the appropriate noun/verb/adjective to complete an English sentence, they finish it with an Indianized word. Sometimes, they use English words to complete sentences in their local language. However, it is now a common trend on college campuses to use such words.

Some words are quite common like ‘timepass’ (Kill time)or ‘timewaste’ (to not utilize time appropriately). I believe ‘tension’ is one of the most commonly used words by non-English speakers in India, like my grandmother who speaks Punglish, ‘Put tension hee te bimari di jaad hai’(tension is the root of diseases). However, there are some English words which she has had difficulty in pronouncing like inverter, a power backup system in India. She settled with an alternative in Punglish, hor-power (more-power). In India, you never address someone older than you by his/her first or last name or you could be badly scolded by somebody. It is considered very disrespectful. Every person who looks significantly older than you is called AuntyJi or UncleJi, where Ji is the most widely used suffix in North India. The Ji at the end signifies respect. If you are being extremely respectful to someone, you may call him/her SirJi/MadamJi.

In one of my courses during my first semester at Tech, a professor spoke, very fluently in a language similar to English; later on, a friend of mine told me that I was listening to the American English. I liked his style of teaching, cracking jokes in between the lecture to make it interactive. Because of his accent, I often missed the transition from his lecture to his joke, so lagged in laughing. Watching American movies (not porn) helps a lot in getting the hang of the American accent, but to my surprise, I found that even they have Americanized the Queen. There were many words, which I heard in movies and during my interaction with fellow Americans, I didn’t find in my Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. I believe it doesn’t matter if the Queen is in jeans or a sari (Indian woman’s dress). English is now the world’s local language. According to Stefan Bergman- it is the bestest.

Source:http://www.mtulode.com/feature/2010/10/21/culture-shock/