] Do U Speak Hinglish?

[Hasan Shabbir]

Do you Speak Hinglish?           by Arif Khan

"Don't stand in front of my back." That was one of the jokes Amitabh Bachchan cut while hosting the popular Indian quiz show KBC. He was showing how English is spoken by many people in India.The standard of education in India is generally considered better than Pakistan and in both the countries English is the official language of the government as well as the commerce and industry.  Many people specially those educated in bad institutions, experience handicaps in finding suitable words that express their real intents and thoughts find it difficult to express their thoughts in their mother tongue and their problem aggravates when they try to express themselves in English. It appears that subconsciously they first think in words of their native language and then translate it in English. For instance a Pakistani youth phoned up his American girl friend; "My heart was wanting kay I talk with you." Here kay was used as Urdu word meaning that. There is growing trend for anglicizing Urdu in Pakistan and a new colloquial language is emerging. Pakistani actresses and models sound so funny when they try to speak English just to show off.  One Pakistani actress took a tutor to teach her English.  She hosted her birthday party. When the guests started  arriving she welcomed them in English uttering such phrases as "How honorable of you to come." Welcome, thank you for coming. And when they wished her "Happy Birthday" she was nodding graciously saying, "Thank you. Same to you!". "Same to you". Here is how one Federal Minister issues instruction to his secretary. "Governor Sindh kay sectretary ko phone karo I want two mobiles for my security on my arrival to Karachi. Aur PIA waloon ko bolo kay 9 PM flight to Karachi ko 10 PM per departure rakahin. Mera aaj Karahi Jana MUST hai." Here is one example how our bankers talk, "For issuing new cheque book  we charge RS. 75/-. Yeh amount aap kay account mien debit kar dee gai thee" Since the last few years Pakistan Television has adopted a  policy of injecting English phrases and words Instead of  Arabic and Persian words in scripts of anchor persons and  plays and the manner in which the pronunciation is brutalized is really odious. In some talk shows a queer mixture of English and Urdu sounds so odious.  While the educated are Urdulizing the English language our common folks are anglicizing Urdu. Here are few jokes. An irate customer walks in a shop & shouts, "Where's my free  gift with this oil tin?" Shopkeeper: "Iske Saath koi gift nahin hai bhai saab" (There is no gift for this item) Cusotmer: "Oye ispe likha hai CHOLESTROL FREE "

Grammar, idiom and usage in Indian English
Grammar tweaks

Advertising Agencies, copywriters and journalists in India are injecting many Hindi and Urdu words in Indian English, which may not be understood in the Western countries.  Turn on any Indian television station these days and you're  likely to hear things like "Thanda mani Coke", "Hungry kya?" and "What your bahana is?" Or one of your friends might ask you to "pre-pone" your dinner plans or accuse you of "Eve-teasing."

Pepsi in India has given its global "Ask for more" campaign a local Hinglish flavor: "Yeh Dil Maange More"  (the heart wants more). Not to be outdone, Coke has its own Hinglish slogan: "Life ho to aisi" (Life should be like this).

"In Bombay, everybody knows the word 'tension,' " says Shaziya Khan, a young advertising whiz in Bombay. "My maid one day told me, 'Aajkul humko bahut tension hain.'"  (Translation: These days, I feel a lot of tension.) "She understands, and I understand. It really works."

 

For those aware of the grammar of Indian tongues like Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi and Tamil, the logic behind quirks of Indian English is quite transparent and readily explicable. However, observation by the perspicacious, in spite of ignorance of Indian languages, will reveal much that is characterisable in 'rules' and 'tendencies.' John Lawler 
of the University of Michigan observes the following anomalies in the grammar of Indian English:

The progressive tense in stative verbs: I am understanding it. She is knowing the answer. 

Variations in noun number and determiners: He performed many charities. She loves to pull your legs. 

Prepositions:
pay attention on, 
discuss about, 
convey him my greetings 

Tag questions: You're going, isn't it? He's here, no? 

Word order: Who you have come for? They're late always. 
My all friends are waiting. 

Yes and no agreeing to the form of a question, not just its content -- 
A: You didn't come on the bus? 
B: Yes, I didn't." 

In addition to Lawler's observations, other unique patterns are also standard and will frequently be encountered in Indian English:

Use of the words but or only as intensifiers such as in: "I was just joking but." or "It was she only who cooked this rice." 

Anglicization of Indian words especially in Chennai by adding "ify" to a local Tamil word . 

Use of yaar,daa,machaa,abey,arey in an English conversation. 

Use of the word ki (Hindi) to mean, loosely, that, such as in 
"What I mean is ki we should adopt this plan instead." 

Idiomatic English for quantification in use of preposition "of", as in "There is so much of happiness in being honest." 

Use of "open" and "close" instead of switch/turn on/off, as in "Open the air conditioner" instead of "Turn on the air conditioner". 

Use of "off it" and "on it" instead of "switch it off" and "switch it on". 

Use of "current went" and "current came" for "The power went out" and "The power came back" 

Use of "I can able to cook" instead of "I can cook" - a widespread gramatical error in Tamil Nadu. 

Creation of nonsensical, rhyming double-words to denote generality of idea or act, a 'totality' of the word's denotation, as in "No more ice-cream-fice-cream for you!", "Let's go have some chai-vai (tea, "tea and stuff")." or "There's a lot of this fighting-witing going on in the neighbourhood." 

Use of "baazi"/"baaji" or "-giri" for the same purpose, as in "business-baazi" or "cheating-giri". 

Use of word "wallah" to denote occupation or 'doing of/involvement in doing' something, as in "The taxi-wallah overcharged me.", "The grocery-wallah sells fresh fruit." or "He's a real music-wallah: his CD collection is huge." 

Use of the word maane (Bengali) or matlab (Hindi/Urdu) to mean, loosely, "meaning" ("What I mean is..."), as in "The problem with your idea, maane, what I feel is missing, is 
ki it does not address the problem of overstaffing." or "Your explanation, matlab, your feeble attempt at one, was sorely lacking in cohesiveness." 

Overuse of the words "Generally"/"Actually"/"Obviously"/"Basically" in the beginning 
of a sentence.e.g "Actually I am not feeling well". 
Use of the word "since" instead of "for" in conjunction with periods of time, as in "I have been working since four years" instead of "I have been working for four years" or

 "I have been working since four years ago". This usage is more common among speakers of North Indian languages such as Hindi where the words for both "since" and "for" are the same. 

Use of the word 'different-different': We went to different different places in the city in search of a good hotel. 
Idioms
"Your good name please?": "What is your name?", carryover from Hindi expression. 

"Deadly", "high-tech", "sexy" are used in idiomatic ways as adjectives. Deadly means intense, "high-tech" stylish and "sexy" excellent or extremely cool. Examples are "That 
movie was deadly, yaar; what an action scene!", "Your shoes are high-tech. Where'd you get them?" and "That's a sexy car, man!". 

"He met his Panipat": reference to a decisive battle; similar to English Waterloo. "To face one's Kurukshetra": to come to a major turning-point or conflict; from Mahabharata. 

"Hello, What do you want?": used by some when answering a phone call, meant to be polite. Commonly perceived as rude by non Indians. 

"What a nonsense/silly you are!" or "Don't be doing such nonsense anymore.": occasional - idiomatic use of nonsense/silly as nouns. 

"pindrop silence" literally means that such a silence should be maintained that even a pindrop can be heard 

"back" replacing "ago" when talking about elapsed time, as in "I met him five years back" rather than "I met him five years ago". 

"freak out" is meant to have fun, as in "lets go to the party and freak out" 

Titles (of respect; formal)

Referring to elders, strangers or anyone meriting respect as "'jee'"/"'ji'" as in "Please call a taxi for Gupta-ji" 
Use of "Shree"/"Shri" (Mr.) or "Shreemati"/"Shrimati" (Ms./Mrs.): Shri Ravi Shankar or Shreemati Das Gupta. 
As with Shree/Shreemati, use of "Saahib" (Mr.) and "Begum" (Mrs.) as in "Welcome to India, Smith-saahib." or 
"Begum Khan would like some tea." 

Use of "Mrs" as a common noun. For example, 
"My Mrs. is not feeling well" means "My wife is not doing well". 

Interjections & casual references

"Theek hai" or "Theek acchhe" (th being heavily aspirated and retroflex) meaning "Okay," "alright," "great," "fine," or "sure." 
Casual use of words yaar (friend, buddy, dude, man), bhai (brother) and bhaiyya (very informal for brother) much as with the American English 'man' or 'dude', as in " Arey! 
C'mon, yaar! Don't be such a killjoy!", "Long time no see, bhai." or "Ay, bhaiyya! Over here!" 

Use of interjections Arey! and acchha! to express a wide range of emotions, usually positive though occasionally not, as in "Arey! What a good job you did!", "Accha, so 
that's your plan." or "Arey, what bad luck, yaar!" 

Use of oof! to show distress or frustration, as in "Oof! The baby's crying again!" 

Use of "Waah" to express admiration, especially in musical settings, as in "Waah! Waah! You play the sitar so well!" 

Use of "just" and "simply" in a seemingly arbitrary manner in southern India, especially Kerala. e.g. Q:"Why did you do it?" A:"Simply!" or "Just I was telling to [sic] him. 

"Lady's finger" means "Okra" (as in some other English-speaking countries) 

"Hotel" means "restaurant" (as well as specifically "big hotel") in India: "I ate in the hotel" 

"Lodge" is used to refer to small hotels "specs" means spectacles (as in colloquial UK English) "cent percent" means "100 percent" as in "He got cent percent in maths" 
"centum" is also frequently used to refer to 100 
 

High-End : (Supposedly) of very high quality (used sarcastically for work and people) n - Many (He takes n troubles to stay neat) 

Misused Words

The verb "repair" in southern India is used as a noun for a broken object as in, "the TV became repair." 

The same word is used for saying when the broken object is fixed "The TV is repaired and now it is working properly" 

The word "dress" is used to refer to all men, women and children clothes "She bought a new dress" 

The word "cloth" is usually referred only to any clothes that are not wearable like "waste cloth" "use that cloth for cleaning" "cloth" and "clothe" are used interchangeably

Indians frequently inject words from Indian languages, such as Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Urdu into English. While the currency of such words usually remains restricted to Indians and other Indian subcontinentals, there are many which have been regularly entered into the Oxford English Dictionary as their popularity extended into worldwide mainstream English. Some of the more common examples are "jungle",
"bungalow", "bandana", "pyjamas"; others were introduced via the transmission of Indian culture, examples of which are "pundit" and "guru".

Words unique to (i.e. not generally well-known outside South Asia) and/or popular in India include those in the following by no means exhaustive list:

batchmate or batch-mate (Not classmate, but of a schoolmate of the same grade) cousin-brother (male first cousin) & cousin-sister (female first cousin); used conversely is one's 
own brother/sister (of one's parent, as opposed to uncle or aunt; English brother/sister): most Indians live in extended families and many do not differentiate even nominally 
between cousins and direct siblings. crore (ten million) 
dias (dais) eve teasing (catcalling - harassment of women) 
funda short for fundamental foot overbridge (bridge meant for pedestrians) fundu (adjective meaning a brilliant or intelligent person, derived from funda) godown (warehouse) 
Himalayan blunder (grave mistake) lakh (one hundred thousand) nose-screw (woman's nose ornament) 
opticals (eyeglasses) pomfret (a popular turbot-like fish, derived from its local name, paplet) prepone (the opposite of 'postpone') scheduled caste (a socially/economically marginalised Hindu caste, given special privileges by the government) scheduled tribe (a socially/economically marginalised Indian tribe, given special privileges by the government) upgradation (commonly used in business communication instead of 'upgrade') would-be (fiancé/fiancée) Pondy (pornography) 

The book Hobson-Jobson by Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, first published in 1886, gives a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words.