Do you wonder how many English words were coined in India and how the Indian language changed the contemporary English? It seems that we underestimate this influence, which is the second most vital shift after technology and social media revolutions, which have coined popular terms as: like, following, lol, email, internet or wifi. Do you want to know more? Just read it!
Official languages in India
India is one of the most multilingual countries around the world. Even if English is concidered as an official language, bear in mind that the Constitution of India recognizes 23 Indian languages, spoken in different parts the country: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Meitei, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
Would you like to know more about the spoken languages in India? Watch this video.
After watching this video, you will be aware about the period of British rule in India, named “The Raj”, which caused that the Indian English set up some mainly used English words, like: veranda, bungalow, jungle, pyjamas, nirvana, shampoo, ginger, pepper, indigo, chili, cashmere or shawl – just to mention a few of them. One of the peculiar examples is a cultural shift of the word “patchouli”, which was firstly applied as moth-balls, next was associated with the royalty who used perfume with this typical and heavy smell of patchouli. What is the most surprising, this fragrance was the favourite one of the hippie population in the 1960s and finally it has become the domain perfume used by the prostitutes. Nevertheless, it is also worth highlighting how the Indian has impacted on the contemporary English. For instance, Hindi speakers have tendency to build sentences with progressive tenses, like “I’m believing you” as well as making a fusion of English and Indian, which is well-known as Hinglish (Hindi English).
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How India changed the English language
Written by Aleksandra Święcicka. Journalist, web editor and social media expert. Communication Trainee at TermCoord