Indian English
Indian English is a class of varieties of the English language spoken in the Republic of India, and among the Indian diaspora elsewhere in the world. In his book The English Language David Crystal observed, "British English is now, numerically speaking, a minority dialect, compared with American, or even Indian, English." The Constitution of India has mandated Hindi in the Devanagari script to be an official language of the Indian union; English is an additional official language for government work along with Hindi. English is an official language of 7 states and 5 Union Territories and also additional official language of 7 states and 1 Union Territory. English is also the sole official language of the Judiciary of India, unless a state Governor or legislature mandates the use of regional language, or the President has given approval for the use of regional languages in courts.
Status
After independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, English remained an official language of the new Dominion of India, and later, the Republic of India. Only a few hundred thousand Indians, or less than 0.1% of the total population, speak English as their first language.According to the 2001 Census, 12.6% of Indians knew English. An analysis of the 2001 Census of India concluded that approximately 86 million Indians reported English as their second language, and another 39 million reported it as their third language.
According to the 2005 India Human Development Survey, of the 41,554 surveyed, households reported that 72% of men did not speak any English, 28% spoke at least some English, and 5% spoke fluent English. Among women, the corresponding percentages were 83% speaking no English, 17% speaking at least some English, and 3% speaking English fluently. According to statistics of District Information System for Education of National University of Educational Planning and Administration under Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, enrollment in English-medium schools increased by 50% between 2008–09 and 2013–14. The number of English-medium school students in India increased from over 15 million in 2008–09 to 29 million by 2013–14.
According to the 2011 Census, 129 million Indians spoke English. 259,678 Indians spoke English as their first language. It concluded that approximately 83 million Indians reported English as their second language, and 46 million reported it as their third language, making English the second-most spoken language in India.
India ranks 22 out of 72 countries in the 2016 EF English Proficiency Index published by the EF Education First. The index gives the country a score of 57.30 indicating "moderate proficiency". India ranks 4th out of 19 Asian countries included in the index. Among Asian countries, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines received higher scores than India.
Journalist Manu Joseph, in a 2011 article in The New York Times, wrote that due to the prominence and usage of the language and the desire for English-language education, "English is the de facto national language of India. It is a bitter truth." In his book, 'In Search of Indian English:History, Politics and Indigenisation', Ranjan Kumar Auddy shows that the history of the rise of Indian nationalism and the history of the emergence of Indian English are deeply inter-related.
Court language
English, according to the Indian Constitution, is the language of the Supreme Court and all the High Courts of India. However, in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan there is use of Hindi in courts because of Presidential approval. In 2018, the Punjab and Haryana High Court also await Presidential approval for Hindi use as well.Names
The first occurrence of the term Indian English dates from 1696, though the term did not become common until the 19th century. In the colonial era the most common terms in use were Anglo-Indian English, or simply Anglo-Indian, both dating from 1860. Other less common terms in use were Indo-Anglian and Indo-English. An item of Anglo-Indian English was known as an Anglo-Indianism from 1851.In the modern era, a range of colloquial portmanteau words for Indian English have been used. The earliest of these is Indlish, and others include Indiglish, Indenglish, Indglish, Indish, Inglish and Indianlish.
Features
Indian English generally uses the Indian numbering system. Idiomatic forms derived from Indian literary languages and vernaculars have been absorbed into Indian English. Nevertheless, there remains general homogeneity in phonetics, vocabulary, and phraseology between various dialects of Indian English.Formal written publications in English in India tend to use lakh/crore for Indian currency and Western numbering for foreign currencies.
History
The English language set foot in India with the granting of the East India Company charter by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 and the subsequent establishment of trading ports in coastal cities such as Surat, Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.English language public instruction began in India in the 1830s during the rule of the East India Company. In 1835, English replaced Persian as the official language of the Company. Lord Macaulay played a major role in introducing English and western concepts to education in India. He supported the replacement of Persian by English as the official language, the use of English as the medium of instruction in all schools, and the training of English-speaking Indians as teachers. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, primary, middle, and high-schools were opened in many districts of British India, with most high-schools offering English language instruction in some subjects. In 1857, just before the end of Company rule, universities modeled on the University of London and using English as the medium of instruction were established in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. During the British Raj, lasting from 1858 to 1947, English language penetration increased throughout India. This was driven in part by the gradually increasing hiring of Indians in the civil services. At the time of India's independence in 1947, English was the only functional lingua franca in the country.
After Indian Independence in 1947, Hindi was declared the first official language, and attempts were made to declare Hindi the sole national language of India. Due to protests from Tamil Nadu and other non-Hindi-speaking states, it was decided to temporarily retain English for official purposes until at least 1965. By the end of this period, however, opposition from non-Hindi states was still too strong to have Hindi declared the sole language. With this in mind, the English Language Amendment Bill declared English to be an associate language "until such time as all non-Hindi States had agreed to its being dropped." This has not yet occurred, and it is still widely used. For instance, it is the only reliable means of day-to-day communication between the central government and the non-Hindi states.
The view of the English language among many Indians has gone from associating it with colonialism to associating it with economic progress, and English continues to be an official language of India.
While there is an assumption that English is readily available in India, available studies show that its usage is actually restricted to the elite, because of inadequate education to large parts of the Indian population. The use of outdated teaching methods and the poor grasp of English exhibited by the authors of many guidebooks disadvantage students who rely on these books, giving India only a moderate proficiency in English.
Hinglish and other hybrid languages
The term Hinglish is a portmanteau of the languages English and Hindi. This typically refers to the macaronic hybrid use of Hindi and English. It is often the growing preferred language of the urban and semi-urban educated Indian youth, as well as the Indian diaspora abroad. The Hindi film industry, more popularly known as Bollywood, incorporates considerable amounts of Hinglish as well. Many internet platforms and voice commands on Google also recognize Hinglish.Other macaronic hybrids such as Manglish, Kanglish, Tenglish, and Tanglish or Tamglish exist in South India.
Phonology
Vowels
In general, Indian English has fewer peculiarities in its vowel sounds than the consonants, especially as spoken by native speakers of languages like Hindi, the vowel phoneme system having some similarities with that of English. Among the distinctive features of the vowel-sounds employed by some Indian English speakers:- Modern Indians, especially a minority of English students and teachers along with some people in various professions like telephone customer service agents, often speak with a non-rhotic accent. Examples of this include flower pronounced as, never as, water as, etc. Some south Indians, however, like native Telugu speakers speak with a rhotic accent, but the // becomes an, and an alveolar tap is used, resulting in water and never as and respectively.
- *Features characteristic of North American English, such as rhoticity and r-coloured vowels, have been gaining influence on Indian English in recent years as cultural and economic ties increase between India and the United States.
- Many North Indians have a sing-song pattern similar to Hiberno-English, which perhaps results from a similar pattern used while speaking Hindi.
- Indian English speakers do not make a clear distinction between and unlike RP, i.e. they have the cot-caught merger
- Diphthong is pronounced as
- Diphthong is pronounced as
- may be more front
- Most Indians have the trap–bath split of Received Pronunciation, affecting words such as class, staff and last. Though the trap-bath split is prevalent in Indian English, it varies greatly. Many younger Indians who read and listen to American English do not have this split. The distribution is somewhat similar to Australian English in Regional Indian English varieties, but it has a complete split in Cultivated Indian English and Standard Indian English varieties.
- Most Indians do not have the hoarse-horse merger.
- Pronunciation of as
- Pronunciation of and as
- Pronunciation of and as
Consonants
- The voiceless plosives are always unaspirated in Indian English, whereas in RP, General American and most other English accents they are aspirated in word-initial or stressed syllables. Thus "pin" is pronounced in Indian English but in most other dialects. In native Indian languages, the distinction between aspirated and unaspirated plosives is phonemic, and the English stops are equated with the unaspirated rather than the aspirated phonemes of the local languages. The same is true of the voiceless postalveolar affricate.
- The alveolar stops English, are often retroflex,, especially in the South of India. In Indian languages there are two entirely distinct sets of coronal plosives: one dental and the other retroflex. Native speakers of Indian languages prefer to pronounce the English alveolar plosives sound as more retroflex than dental, and the use of retroflex consonants is a common feature of Indian English. In the Devanagari script of Hindi, all alveolar plosives of English are transcribed as their retroflex counterparts. One good reason for this is that unlike most other native Indian languages, Hindi does not have true retroflex plosives. The so-called retroflexes in Hindi are actually articulated as apical post-alveolar plosives, sometimes even with a tendency to come down to the alveolar region. So a Hindi speaker normally cannot distinguish the difference between their own apical post-alveolar plosives and English's alveolar plosives. Languages such as Tamil have true retroflex plosives, however, wherein the articulation is done with the tongue curved upwards and backwards at the roof of the mouth. This also causes the preceding alveolar to allophonically change to . Mostly in south India, some speakers allophonically further change the voiced retroflex plosives to voiced retroflex flap, and the nasal to a nasalised retroflex flap.
- Most major native languages of India lack the dental fricatives and , although occurs variably in languages like Gujarati and Tamil. Usually, the aspirated voiceless dental plosive is substituted for in the north and the unaspirated voiced dental plosive, or possibly the aspirated version, is substituted for. For example, "thin" would be realised as instead of for North Indian speakers, whereas it would be pronounced unaspirated in the south.
- The rhotic consonant /r/ is pronounced in most accents either as an alveolar approximant or more commonly as a retroflex flap, alveolar tap or alveolar trill based on the influence by the native phonology.
- Pronunciations vary between rhotic and non-rhotic; with pronunciations leaning towards native phonology being generally rhotic, and others being non-rhotic.
- *In recent years, rhoticity has been increasing. Generally, American English is seen as having a large influence on the English language in India recently.
- Most Indian languages including Standard Hindi, do not differentiate between and . Instead, many Indians use a frictionless labiodental approximant for words with either sound, possibly in free variation with and/or depending upon region. Thus, wet and vet are often homophones.
- Related to the previous characteristic, many Indians prefer to pronounce words such as as, as opposed to, and as as opposed to.
- South Indians tend to curl the tongue more for and.
- Sometimes, Indian speakers interchange and, especially when plurals are being formed, unlike speakers of other varieties of English, who use for the pluralisation of words ending in a voiceless consonant, for words ending in a voiced consonant or vowel, and for words ending in a sibilant.
- In case of the postalveolar affricates , native languages like Hindi have corresponding affricates articulated from the palatal region, rather than postalveolar, and they have more of a stop component than fricative; this is reflected in their English.
- Whilst retaining in the final position, many Indian speakers add the sound after it when it occurs in the middle of a word. Hence → .
- Syllabic, and are usually replaced by the VC clusters, and , or if a high vowel precedes, by . Syllable nuclei in words with the spelling er/re are also replaced by VC clusters. e.g., metre, →.
- Indian English uses clear in all instances like Irish English whereas other varieties use clear in syllable-initial positions and dark l in coda and syllabic positions.
- Most Indian languages lack the voiced alveolar fricative. A significant portion of Indians thus, even though their native languages do have its nearest equivalent: the unvoiced, often use the voiced palatal affricate , just as with a Korean accent. This makes words such as and sound as and . This replacement is equally true for Persian and Arabic loanwords into Hindi. The probable reason is the confusion created by the use of the Devanagari grapheme with a dot beneath it to represent . This is common among people without formal English education. In Telugu, and are allophones, so words such as rosy become and words such as fridge become.
- In Assamese, and are pronounced as ; and and are pronounced as. Retroflex and dental consonants are not present and only alveolar consonants are used unlike other Indian languages. Similar to Bengali, is pronounced as and in Assamese. For example; change is pronounced as, vote is pronounced as and English is pronounced as.
- Again, in Assamese and Bhojpuri, all instances of are spoken like, a phenomenon that is also apparent in their English. Exactly the opposite is seen for many Bengalis.
- Inability to pronounce certain consonant clusters by people of rural backgrounds, as with some Spanish-speakers. This is usually dealt with by epenthesis. e.g., .
- Many Indians with lower exposure to English also may pronounce as an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive. Again note that in Hindi Devanagari the loaned from Persian and Arabic is written by putting a dot beneath the grapheme for native :. This substitution is rarer than that for, and in fact in many Hindi is used by native speakers instead of, or the two are used interchangeably.
- Many speakers of Indian English do not use the voiced postalveolar fricative. Some Indians use or instead, e.g. , and in the south Indian variants, with as in, e.g. .
Spelling pronunciation
- In words where the digraph represents a voiced velar plosive in other accents, some Indian English speakers supply a murmured version, for example . No other accent of English admits this voiced aspiration.
- Similarly, the digraph may be aspirated as or, resulting in realisations such as , found in no other English accent. This is somewhat similar to the traditional distinction between and present in English, however, wherein the former is, whilst the latter is.
- In unstressed syllables, which speakers of American English would realise as a schwa, speakers of Indian English would use the spelling vowel, making sound as instead of. This trait is also present in other South Asian dialects.
- The word "of" is usually pronounced with a instead of a as in most other accents.
- Use of instead of for the "-ed" ending of the past tense after voiceless consonants, for example "developed" may be instead of RP.
- Use of instead of for the ending of the plural after voiced consonants, for example may be instead of.
- Pronunciation of as in both the noun and the verb, instead of as a noun and as a verb.
- Silent letters may be pronounced. For example, 'salmon' is usually pronounced with a distinct.
Supra-segmental features
Numbering system
The Indian numbering system is preferred for digit grouping. When written in words, or when spoken, numbers less than 100,000/100 000 are expressed just as they are in Standard English. Numbers including and beyond 100,000/100 000 are expressed in a subset of the Indian numbering system. Thus, the following scale is used:Larger numbers are generally expressed as multiples of the above.
Vocabulary
Indian English includes many political, sociological, and administrative terms, such as dharna, hartal, eve-teasing, vote bank, swaraj, swadeshi, scheduled caste, scheduled tribe, and NRI. It incorporates some Anglo-Indian words such as tiffin, hill station, gymkhana, along with slang.Some examples of words and phrases unique to, or chiefly used in, standard written Indian English include:
- academics : Academic pursuits in contrast to technical or practical work.
- * e.g. "For 14 years he immersed himself in academics and was a fine achiever."
- cinema hall : A cinema or movie theatre.
- * e.g. "Cinema halls in Uttar Pradesh will soon display the newly-unveiled logo for Kumbh Mela, right after the national anthem is played"
- : To do that which is necessary or required, with the respectful implication that the other party is trusted to understand what needs doing without being given detailed instructions.
- * e.g. "When asked if the UP government could reduce Value Added Tax on petro-products to bring down prices, the CM said that the state government was aware of the situation and will do the needful."
- English-knowing : Of a person or group of people that uses or speaks English.
- * e.g. "The official and Service atmosphere... set the tone for almost all Indian middle-class life, especially the English-knowing intelligentsia."
- freeship : A studentship or scholarship.
- * e.g. "Two permanent freeships, each tenable for one year and one of which is for the second and the other for the third year class."
- * e.g. "Private institutions can only develop if they are allowed to charge reasonable fees, while also providing need based freeships and scholarships for a certain percentage of students."
- hotel : A restaurant or café.
- * e.g. "A group of four friends had gone to have dinner at a roadside hotel.", 10 Feb 1999,
- matrimonial : Advertisements in a newspaper for the purpose of finding a marriageable partner.
- * e.g. "When I have a job I'll have to begin a whole new search for my better half... Back to the newspaper matrimonials on Sundays.", 10 Feb 1999,
- press person : A newspaper journalist, a reporter, a member of the press.
- * e.g. "The Prime Minister greeted the presspersons with a 'namaskar' and a broad smile."
- redressal : redress
- * e.g. "There is an urgent need for setting up an independent authority for redressal of telecom consumer complaints."
- * e.g. "Where does he go for the redressal of his genuine grievances?"
- upgradation The enhancement or upgrading of status, value or level of something.
- * e.g. "Our Company lays great stress on technical training and knowledge upgradation."
- revert : To report back with information.
- * e.g. "Please revert with the required documentation."
- chain-snatching : To repeatedly pickpocket and escape.
- * e.g. "Please close the train windows to prevent chain-snatching."
- prepone : To bring forward to an earlier date or time.
- * e.g. "The meeting has been preponed due to a change in the schedule."
Dictionaries
Numerous other dictionaries ostensibly covering Indian English, though for the most part being merely collections of administratively-useful words from local languages, include : Rousseau A Dictionary of Words used in the East Indies, Wilkins Glossary to the Fifth Report, Stocqueler The Oriental Interpreter and Treasury of East Indian Knowledge, Elliot A Supplement to the Glossary of Indian Terms: A-J, Brown The Zillah Dictionary in the Roman Character, Carnegy Kutcherry Technicalities and its second edition Kachahri Technicalities, Wilson Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, Giles A Glossary of Reference, on Subjects connected with the Far East, Whitworth Anglo-Indian Dictionary, Temple A Glossary of Indian Terms relating to Religion, Customs, Government, Land, and Crooke Things India: Being Discursive Notes on Various Subjects connected with India.
The first dictionary of Indian English to be published after independence was Hawkins Common Indian Words in English. Other efforts include : Lewis Sahibs, Nabobs and Boxwallahs, Muthiah Words in Indian English, Sengupta's Indian English supplement to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Hankin Hanklyn-Janklin . Nihalani et al. Indian and British English: A Handbook of Usage and Pronunciation delineates how Indian English differs from British English for a large number of specific lexical items. The Macmillan publishing company also produced a range of synchronic general dictionaries for the Indian market, such as the Macmillan Comprehensive Dictionary.
The most recent and comprehensive dictionary is Carls A Dictionary of Indian English, with a Supplement on Word-formation Patterns.