by Dr. V. K. Sunwani, PhD
Language/ bhasha/ bahasha/ zabaan /boli
Language is a fascinating thing, the most complex of human achievements, spontaneously evolved, one unique word or expression at a time, without control. By its nature, language is decentralized, independent.
More than 40 countries have established academic forces to protect their languages. Cardinal Richelieu was the first, founding the illustrious L’Académie française in 1634 with a mandate “to give rules to our language, and to render it pure and elegant.” France deemed it necessary a few years ago to amend its Constitution, specifying French as the official language of the republic.
Culture & language: the English language
In no area of culture is the collision more intense than over the English language. The web has changed English more radically than any invention since paper, and much faster. According to Paul Payack, of the Global Language Monitor, there are currently 988,974 words in the English language, with thousands more emerging every month. The British Council says the English language now has special status of one kind or another in 75 countries. One-third of the world’s books are published in English, two-thirds of all scientists read English, three-quarters of the world’s mail is written in English and four-fifths of all electronic communications are in English. English has become the common linguistic denominator, though it is not an essential minimum factor that if you are proficient only in Hindi or a language other than English you cannot aspire for a high office in India. Whatever you are a Korean executive in Shanghai, a German official in Brussels or a Brazilian biochemist in Sweden, you’re probably speaking English. The world attempts an international brand of English, though not always intelligible, it is its native speakers who have lost the most.
English Continues its Run
The English language has come a long way in 425 years. In 1582, the English grammarian Richard Mulcaster could say that English was “of small reach, stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all.” In the same year William Shakespeare married Ann Hathaway, and the language itself has since flourished as magnificently as the playwright himself. More than one billion people now speak it. Another billion people are learning it. Despite all the new Englishes, it’s the American (movies) and British (stiff upper lip) versions that carry prestige. Australia, USA and Britain, in particular, have invested heavily in branding themselves as destinations for learning English.
English in India
English is a language of intellectual and creative activity in India. After independence and from 1950s onwards, English began to acquire a distinct Indian voice through innovations. In the domain of Indian Writing in English, since the themes and substances are Indian, most creative writers in India emphasize that English is at home in India and India at home with the English language e.g., the British English, that is becoming foreign by the day. Authors such as Mulkraj Anand, RK Narayan, GV Desani, Khushwant Singh, Manohar Malgonkar, Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, R. Parthasarathy, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, are conscious of their multilingual situations. Literature and language become great when they break out of geographical and linguistic confines. This takes us back to the initial question of the mystery of language and literature. The Black Pagoda or the popularly known sun temple at Konark in Orissa is a testimony to both being prose and poetry blended in sculptured artistry.
What is Hinglish?
The latest to hit the language scene is Hinglish, a hybrid of English and south Asian languages, used both in Asia and the UK. English is being spiced up with a sprinkling of words from the sub-continent. This fusion of languages has generated some indigenous phrases. “Timepass” is a way of distracting yourself. If you need to bring a meeting forward, you do the opposite of postponing - in Hinglish you can “prepone”.
In Hinglish, English and the languages of South Asia overlap, with phrases and words borrowed and re-invented. It is used on the Indian sub-continent, with English words blending with Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Kannada, and many others, and also within British Asian families. Hinglish perhaps enlivens ‘standard’ English. Is it really a pukka way to speak? And if you had to get somewhere in a hurry, would you make an “airdash”? South Asian languages have fused with English to take on a new identity. Embrace this pick and mix approach. It is natural that languages will adapt and change to whatever is around.
The user of the non-native, Hinglish variety is bi - or multilingual, with creativity manifested in different kinds of ‘mixing’, ‘switching’, ‘alteration’ and ‘transcreation’ of codes. This variety reveals the use of native similes, metaphors, rhetorical devices, and idiomatic expressions.
Globalization and Hinglish
Throughout the world parents keen for their children to achieve are spending over tuition for English-language schools. China’s English has its own Mandarin term, Yingwen re. And governments are having English their own nativized way, recognizing that along with computers and mass migration, English is the turbine engine of globalization.
Hinglish, in its own way, is also the language of globalization. There are more English-speakers in India than anywhere else in the world. Satellite television, films and the internet have made more and more people in the sub-continent exposed to both Standard English and Hinglish. FN and AN are invariably used for someone joining a new job, or taking leave in a particular part of the day. It happens only in India.
Some Hinglish opinions
There is also a view that Hinglish is expressing itself as a language with high overtones of an emotional ploy with people who use languages spoken in Asia. South Asian countries have accepted the sell-out for economic enrichment, their self esteem taking a back seat. The colour of money dominates the language, in moulding Hinglish reach its summit which is still on its ascent.
Some people opine that the Indian middle class, steadily growing in power on all fronts is losing linguistic ground to Western consumerism, using Hinglish to draw attention. Consider it as legislation of language, hardly acceptable since languages were not created through any legislative diktat. Not a consumerist language, but Hinglish is a language grown for consumer durables for a constant ringing of their cash registers.
Some magazine and journal editors have gone to the extent of advising their scribes against code switching and code mixing within languages and to use shorter sentences rather than long literary ones. There are those who Sanskritise English all the same giving a fillip to Hinglish which has come to stay and cannot be wished away.
Hinglish and power
The arrival of Hinglish and the influence of Indian words on English are also a reflection of the rise of the Indian sub-continent as an economic power-house. David Crystal has described India as having a “unique position in the English-speaking world”. “Hinglish is a linguistic bridge between the major first-language dialects of the world, such as British and American English, and the major foreign-language varieties, such as those emerging in China and Japan.” Hinglish is the result of the productive linguistic innovations determined by the localized functions of a second language variety, which also implicate new communicative strategies or the ones that get transferred from local languages.
The Times of India reported: “Brand India has shaken, stirred and otherwise Bangalored the world’s consciousness.” To Bangalore” is a favoured Hinglishism, meaning to send overseas, as in call centres.
Old Spears and ShakesThere have been much older crossovers between English and the languages of the Indian sub-continent, with words imported through the soldiers and administrators of the British Raj. They include “pundit”, a learned man; “shampoo”, a word for massage; “pyjamas”, a leg garment and “dungarees”, originating from Dungri of Mumbai. Even the suburban-sounding “caravan” and “bungalow”; “bandana” and “bangles” were all taken from Hindi. It is pedantic to mention that. English has absorbed words from all over.
A recent study in Birmingham, looking at groups of Asians and whites in youth clubs, found that white teenagers quickly absorbed words to use as insults, a tendency with all speakers in all languages. Derogatory words first. Karen Corrigan a linguist at the University of Newcastle was one of the organizers of the conference, Sociolinguistics Symposium. ‘People think of migration as a new thing, but it is not,’ she said. ‘There were Vikings and Normans, Irish and many more who influenced language, and the same thing is happening with Asians today.’
Speakers of Spanglish, Singlish, Japlish, Chinglish, Indish
The modern rival to English in fecundity is Chinese, and with 1.3 billion Chinese now being officially urged to learn English, the result is ‘nomogamosis’ ( the Hinglish dictionary explains it as a state of marital harmony; a condition in which spouses are well matched.”). There are many similar offspring. Drinktea, for example, is a sign on a shop door meaning closed, but also derives from Mandarin for resting. Spanglish, used in parts of the USA is where people shift seamlessly between Spanish and English, and where hybrid words are created - such as a sign “No hangear” meaning “no hanging around.” Speaking Singapore Singlish la?
The new breed of speakers isn’t just passively absorbing the language—they’re shaping it. English now has a plural connotation, ranging from “Englog,” the Tagalog-infused English spoken in the Philippines, to “Japlish,” the cryptic English poetry beloved of Japanese copywriters (“Your health and loveliness is our best wish,” I read on a chocolate wrapper in Sri Lanka just yesterday. “Give us a chance to realize it”), Haiku, to “Hinglish” that is everywhere from fast-food ads to South Asian college campuses. “Hungry kya?” (“Are you hungry?”). In South Africa, besides Swahili, many citizens have adopted their own version of English, laced with their own words.
Linguistically speaking, new world non-native speakers of English outnumber native speakers 3 to 1. David Crystal says in English as a Global Language, “There’s never before been a language that’s been spoken by more people as a second than a first.”
Hinglish Relatives Overseas: Cockney, Southall, Estuary, Yorkshire. Liverpool, Bradford, Bombay NY
Arfaan Khan, a linguist of Reading University UK, has predicted the emergence of a ‘whole new dialect’. ‘This will be an increasing trend,’ opined Jeremy Butterfield, editor-in-chief of the Collins dictionaries. ‘If new words are used enough, they will end up in the dictionary, and once they are there they become English words. With the increasingly British multi-cultural society, perhaps in 50 years English will have adopted a mass of words from all the different cultures living on this island.’ Those who complain about the loss of the purity of the language are just passe.
‘English is a mongrel language, and always has been,’ said Butterfield.
All languages are works in progress. The globalization of English, unprecedented in the history of languages, will revolutionize it in ways we can only imagine. In the future, suggests Crystal, there could be a tri-English world: one in which you could speak a local English-based dialect at home, a national variety at work or school, and an international Standard English to talk to foreigners.
Food tastes delicious
It is within ‘culinary speak’ that the largest changes seem to have occurred. ‘The British food habit has been transformed by the arrival of Asian people in the community,’ says Mahendra Verma, director of the Hindi programme at York University. ‘The words are entering local vocabularies. Masala is replacing spice, mooli means white radish, and the word balti is actually Hindi for the type of pan that the dish is cooked in.’
Accepting the words will also help the British understand what is being said when actors in Anglo-Indian comedies use Hindi and Urdu phrases. The young create their own dialect dressing: ‘bling’, describing their fancies as ‘tik’ ‘thik’ and drinking ‘chaa’ or ‘chai’. Asian words will continue to enrich English, innit? Many Asian words have already been naturalized into English. Besides cheetah, having left eastern shores, others vying for a place are dosa, idli, samosa, dal, sabji, ctm (chicken tikka butter masala), atm. A rich spread indeed! One is reminded of AC Baugh’s statement on how sorry a British dining table would have been without the French invasion. Innit?
Big Brother (pun intended) guards our English?
‘Asian-speak’ has been spicing up English, with words such as ‘bheja’ ‘fish fry’ forecasting an explosive impact of the language used by second-generation immigrants.
Aadab, Hello, Namaskar, Namaste, Vanakam, Sat Sri Akal, Kasaa Kaay, Ram Ram, Swagatam, Welcome
Hobson Jobson, all Nabobs, Sahibs and Boxwallahs, Saheb, Saab and Sahibas.
Welcome to the ‘Queen’s Hinglish’.
No holds barred.
Plenty of errors using English. In India; being the examination season, one is more likely to hear
~ “I’m going to give an examination.”
You don’t give an examination, you take one!
Many of us notice this:
~ “I will revert back to you shortly.”
The word ‘revert’ itself means to return to a previous subject or condition, so the insertion of the word ‘back’ in the sentence is not required. It would be fine to say:
~ “I will revert to you shortly.”
Difficulties for English and Hinglish
Not everyone is as open-minded about English, or its advance. Others say such defensiveness misses the point. “This is not about English swamping and eroding local identities it is about creating new identities—and about making everyone bilingual.” (David Graddol).
Hinglish Writing Technology
Some people are of the opinion that e-mail, mobile, and s.m.s are spoiling the English language. They complain of not being able to understand the vocabulary, the grammar and the syntax. Try looking at it another way. Was writing a pleasure in your school days? The scramble for the sharpener; the eraser. And after all the hard work your teacher complained of bad handwriting, the wrongly spelt words. Not anymore. Word processing and technology have converted writing to less of a strain, though there are conventions that cannot be ignored.
Kamala Das is most effusive and eloquent on English and our multilingual situation, besides Raja Rao, Nissim Ezekiel, Khushwant Singh, Jug Suraiya, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Shobaa De, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai and others. She says:
I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one, Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother- tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics. friends. visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half
Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am, don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it
Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is
Here and not there, a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware. Not the deaf, blind speech
Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the
Incoherent mutterings of the blazing
Funeral pyre.
(Summer in Calcutta: An Introduction)
Come over to any metropolis or a growing town in our country and you will find that Hinglish - bicultural and bilingual advertising - holds sway. Pizza and pasta are passé. Eat Parathas (restaurant) in Bhubaneswar, Dalema or Odissi (dance, it’s also a cuisine). Join in a bhoji in Puri. Try Sikkim momos in Delhi, khichdi, kichadi, kedgeree (in Mysore and Chennai). Have a meal at King’s Kourt. (Mysore) or late Amjad Khan’s (Sholay?) at Topkapi (Bangalore), Fish or Mutton thali in a ‘Military’ hotel. (Karnataka), or a Veg. thali distinct from pure veg. thali, meaning the latter is without garlic and onion. Portuguese adopted the word sari in1498 with Indian women and taught us to eat pav roti and vada pav, with feni or vindaloo in Mumbai. Ask for your favourite delicacies from cuisines around the world at Kadhai, Dekchi, Tawa, Khana Khazana, Biriyani, Aahar, Nakli Dhaba, Chapati, Chhapan Bhog, and Dum Pukht (all Indian eateries). Or you can prefer Chaineez (sic) or Tandoor. Roshogolla, Sen Mahashaya and ‘.Sondesh’ shweets (Bengal) are more so in pronunciation as is G. Pulla Reddy in Andhra Pradesh.
Get out the juices and tastes melt in your system with tambakhu, gudhaku, pakhaal (water rice) butter milk, yoggurt(sic), ghol dahi (Orissa), rasam ( all over South India), kadhi (Maharashtra), lassi (Punjab), tambul (Meghalaya) depending on the regions you are staying in, whether an Indian or a videshi. Don’t end up without paan (betel, beetel, beetle, bettle, betle, beltee, betlee) preferring the variety, Kolkata, Maghadi, Benaras, Nagpur, Manipur, and the spelling displayed on the kiosk. Idli (Udupi) has almost become the national breakfast of our country just as d & r (dal and roti) seem to be heading towards a standard Hinglish dinner.
Conclusion
There are puritans in all cultures who say you can be the master of one language only, pure, holy and sacrosanct. They advise you not to try to cross two or more languages. Do we only have one fixed identity? As Charles Morgan said we all wear masks and when we shake hands it is really not so, but a clash of armour with armour. In real as in reel life, we do step in and out of different identities. Can’t we? So the same with languages?
The British, South London, RP has always boasted of my (English) language. It will always be the same. Sorry. Shakespeare’s English was different from Chaucer’s. The evolution of language is never going to stop, more so for the English tongue.
ATBKITCUL8R (got it?)
All The Best Keep in Touch See You Later.
That is the English of the future.
References
BBC News, Magazine, 8 Nov.2006
Anushka Asthana, The Observer, 25 April 2004
Graddol, David: English Next, Milton Keynes, Open University
Newsweek, 7 May 2005
English Today, OUP, January 2007
Nav Bharat, 22 June 2007
www.rediffmail.com
www.languageinindia..com
Acknowledgement
Most grateful thanks to Smt Pushp Lata Negi, our librarian, who searched the appropriate lines from Kamala Das, besides some other references.
About the Author
Dr Vijay Kumar Sunwani is the Principal of the Regional Institute of Education (NCERT), Bhubaneswar, India. He teaches English Literature.
