Indian English

Karma Queen

Just found a nice little thing about Indian English. Made me chuckle

click! click!

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Indian_English

beach

All I can say at the moment is that ‘super’ is a Tamil word!

Super Duper Hit means a Blockbuster

natasha chanda acharya

hey, excellent piece. A lot of research has been going on in this field. it was a good read.

Digital Drifter

I'm surprised that they didn't bring up cases of complete
mis-understanding of words. For e.g. 'homely', please look up a
dictionary to refresh your understanding of the word. Now, take up
the Sunday papers and look at the matrimonials section!

Are they really telling prospective grooms about how plain and ugly
their daughters are? :-)

There are others but this is a classic.

OTOH, no Indian English phrase irritates me as much as 'Time-pass'.
Grrr...

Of course, the tendency to add 'no' to every sentence & question as in
'You are coming to the movie,no?' is by now an ingrained habit,I'd
say.

I think Channel V music channel got to the heart of the matter by
their standard line

'What to do? We are like this only!'

--

Nick-H

Yes! also "Very Good"

One Tamil friend of mine was surprised to discover that the word 'fiddle' [violin] is actually English, not Tamil. Tamil only, he really thought it was!

Ahhh, my feeble attempt at Tenglish is making me home-sick, especially as here there is too much of cold, too much of rain...

I will go and come...

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Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

goangoangone

That link's interesting.........so how do you speak rhotic or non-rhotic ?

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GoanGoan......here

timmy

I read recently that "Hinglish" (Hindi/English mix) was now being recognised as a language of its own.

It's common in Bollywood movies, but also in advertising. A couple I've noticed are slogans such as:

Coca Cola - Life ho to aisi

Dominos - Hungry, kya?

Clearly "life" and "hungry" are not Hindi words.

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Hyderabadi

Here is a little quiz. Which of the following words came to English from Indian languages?

a. candy
b. pundit
c. shampoo
d. cot

If you answered "pundit" you are only partly right. In fact, all four words are of desi origin. Candy came from Sanskrit khand (piece), pundit from Hindi pandit, shampoo from Hindi champee (head massage), and cot from Hindi cot.

And these are not all. The Oxford English Dictionary lists nearly 1000 words from Indian languages that are now part of English. And to think we learned English as a "foreign" language!

English is a true khichdi language. If you speak English, you know dozens of languages, or at least parts of them. English has borrowed, stolen, and copied words from languages as well known as French (chic, cuisine, finale), and as exotic as Tongan (taboo), for example. A bunch of Indian languages: Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, and more have contributed words to English.

For all its riches and splendor, India was once known as a golden bird. It was not for nothing that the English called India the crown jewel in the British empire. During the Raj, 200 years of dominion over India, the English helped themselves to more than just spices, minerals, cotton, and other wealth. They also took words from many Indian languages, though we don't mind that.

When one is living in a culture for two centuries, it's hard not to pick up a few words along the way. No matter how isolated the sahib's bungalows were from the Indian folk, it would have been impossible to shut off rich words to describe the colorful landscape, spicy preparations, and unusual textures all around. From clothing to food to spirituality, the word went around, so to speak. Here are a few of the words that are now a bona fide part of the English language:

Food: chutney, mulligatawny, tandoor, punch, curry
Cloths: calico, cashmere, chintz, seersucker, jute
Clothing: bandana, dungarees, jodhpurs, khakis, pajamas, cummerbund
Animals: mongoose, cheetah, mynah
Trees: banyan, mango, orange, teak
Religion and spirituality: avatar, swami, mantra, brahmin, nirvana, yoga
People: fakir, mandarin, nabob
More

PeakXV

It figures those old British lushes had something to do with the origins of Punch.


http://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/lei...via/punch.html

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We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ...and know the place for the first time.
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Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

sunilg

definitely one of the best threads on IM.........

now we have a point to fight on - is it "Englishification" of Hindi or "Hindification" of English ...


btw, these two words have always troubled me...

Satan - Shaitan
Saint - Sant

IM'ers plz throw some light on the origin of these words, are they Hindi/Sanskrit or English/?.

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...Bismillah

Soujanya

I don't use Indian slang at all, I kind of detest it but when my German friend was here[Apparently, she had been to India about 4 times] and while talking, she always used something like...
''We are going to the Pizza hut, no?'' LOLLLLL, Wasn't I truly shocked?! Dear me, I should have guessed she'd pick up the Indian accent! Lol, Now back in Germany, people tell her how much her accen't changed to......HINGLISH! Hehe....

Soujanya

accent's*

hyderabad_ki_sher

I wonder about the origin of the word tiffin(breakfast).Is that too of Indian origin?

Lugubert

Lovely thread! Thanks for the Wiki links; despite being a frequent Wikiuser, I hadn't used it until now.
Nabob/Nawab is of course correct. Mandarin might surprise people, but it is thought to be derived from Sanskrit mantri 'minister' and then brought to China by the Portuguese. Fakir did not originate in India: it is the Arabic word for 'poor' and might have reached Europe directly, not via India.

Wiki mentioned the -wallas, but here's a thing that I've seen no mentioning of anywhere: I find lots of words ending in English -man in for example the publication India Perspectives, downloadable from http://meaindia.nic.in/iphome.htm . There is in Standard English (SE) words like postman etc., but I don't think that wiseman, lensman (photographer), youngman, godman, holyman, armyman, all in one word each, are normal in SE. It just occurred to me last week that this might be a "translation loan" from 'walla'.

One word not mentioned in Wiki is 'undertrial', a very handy word for a prisoner awaiting trial.

The subject is also treated at this site.

The mentioned book Hobson-Jobson is available on-line for example here, and there's an equally entertaining and more modern if slightly amateurish follow-up, Hanklyn-Janklin, written by Nigel Hankin [ISBN: 8187943041].

Lugubert

I forgot the questions:

Satan from Shaitan is Semitic. It means accuser, adversary in Arabic as well as in Bible Hebrew.

Saint is Latin, from a supposed root sak- 'to sanctify'. I can't trace it further back in time.

Tiffin m-i-g-h-t be English. Hobson-Jobson explains.