An Acclamation to Indian English

The English language has always been a huge fascination for me. As far as I can remember, I've always written poems and essays to express myself and I still do, because that's a part of my system. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I know everything about the language. There are various dialects within the English language itself- there's the American accent, then there's the British Accent, there's Australian accent, one New Zealandian accent, and then there's the Indian English. You may think that there is not much that's special about Indian English. But did you know that, after the USA, the 3rd country to have the highest English speaking population is actually India, coming right after Nigeria? This might sound like an unwarranted exaggeration, but it's not. Our census takes into consideration only our Mother tongue, one being our first language. It doesn't have a question that tracks how many speak English here in the Indian subcontinent. India actually has 12.18% of English speakers with varying degrees of competence and fluency, coming next to United States, which has 95.46% of English speakers.

During the colonization of India and the emergence of East India Company through the British Government in the mid 1800s, India was quickly subject to lots of things, ideas & concepts which were quickly looted by the British. But, they did take more than just things. For instance, words like "jungle" or "bungalow" didn't exist in the typical English language, but they were words that originated from words that we used in India. That is probably something we can easily figure out, right? How about another word? Did you know the word "shampoo" actually came from India? Yes! "Shampoo" sounds like it is very much a part of English. But then, it was actually taken from a Sanskrit word "chāmpo" (चाँपो), which means "cleansing, soothing and massaging the head and hair".

Shampoo originally meant head massage in several North Indian languages. Both the word and the concept were introduced to Britain from colonial India. Its English usage in Anglo-Indian dates to 1762. In the 1900s, the meaning of the word shifted from the sense of massage to the that of applying soap to the hair. Originally, soap and shampoo were very similar products; both containing surfactants, a type of detergent. Over time, shampoo for the hair and normal soap became two different words.

Now, how about another? We all use the word cash in our everyday lives. But did you know that such a word didn't exist until it was coined in India from our languages?

During the early 17th century, East India Company coins were minted in England and shipped to the East. In England, over time the word cash was adopted from Sanskrit कर्ष karsa, a weight of gold or silver. This influenced the colonial British cash "Indian monetary system, Chinese coin, etc.," which is from Tamil kasu, Sanskrit karsha, Sinhalese kasi. – That is, cash meaning money influenced a more specific cash meaning certain kinds of Asian money. This meaning was mixed with similar words from various other foreign languages, from the French 'casse', and presumably Italian 'cassa'.

Mind blowing, right? How about another word? Let's take food for instance. Have you heard of "mulligatawny" soup? You might now have heard of the word, but you certainly would've had this many time in your life, if you are an Indian. It is basically

"Milagu-thanni" from Tamil language spoken down south in India, which essentially hot pepper water, a.k.a rasam!

[The name originates from the Tamil words miḷagāy (Tamil: மிளகாய் 'chilli') or miḷagu (மிளகு 'pepper'), and taṇṇi (தண்ணி, 'water')]

During the 1800s, Mulligatawny became very popular among the British high ranks that they started writing down the recipes, which varied over time, after being subject to British modifications as well.

Now let's go to a word that has no Indian origin, yet is specifically used in Indian English a lot- the word "Brinjal". It is referred to as eggplant in English. It's called baingan (बैंगन) in Hindi, Kattirikkāy (கத்திரிக்காய்) in Tamil, Badanekāyi (ಬದನೆಕಾಯಿ), etc., but there's not a single Indian language which uses brinjal while referring to the eggplant. However, it is still almost exclusively used in Indian English.

Do you know what a catamaran is? It's a watercraft that features two parallel hulls of equal size. This word is derived from the Tamil word, kattumaram (கட்டுமரம்), which basically translates to "logs bound together". However, the original kattumaram did not refer to double-hulled boats at all, but to a type of single-hulled raft of the people made of three to seven tree trunks lashed together, in Tamilnadu.

We have seen people wear bangles. The word bangle is actually derived from "Bangri" (Hindi). We all love eating candy, right? It actually shares its origin very much from India ("Khanda" in Sanskrit), making it's way to Persia (Quandi), further going down to French, where "sucrecandi" means sugar candy in old French, finally finding home in English as candy.

This is just me scratching the surface. There are so many words which I haven't covered here, simply because it's impossible to cover all the words that have been directly derived from the diverse languages of India, within one article. This is the beauty of India and it's relationship & contribution to the world through the language of English. Our country is not only rich in soil, spices & raw materials, but also rich with knowledge spread around the diverse people in our Land. Be Indian and be proud.