Introduction:
- Brief History: “The Raj”
English first landed in India in the early 1600s with the arrival of the East India Company that transformed the country into a settler colony. Its main role for the English company at first was just of a trading post. In the first stages of the colonization the British had an indirect rule of the colony. They used the local leaders as the connection between the British and the natives because of their impossibility to communicate with the local population. But this situation changed and by the year 1765, when we see the start of The Raj, they directly ruled most parts of India.
India became a place to start new business and to get materials to the mother land. It was in the year 1765 that the British won the Battle of Buxar and the beginning of the downfall of the Mughal Empire began. It was thanks to this battle and the Battle of Plassey that they were able to stablish their supremacy. This meant that their biggest enemy, the Mugal Empire, lost power and influence allowing the British to eventually become the first ruling power in the country. The British Empire was able to get the hold of Bengal’s trade, causing the Dutch and the French companies to lose their influence in the area. And this situation lasted until the year 1947, when India gained its independence from the Empire. By that time India had already became the “Jewel of the Crown” because of its huge importance for the First and Second British Empires.
- Education
The British Empire made the teaching of English a top priority because they thought that it would reduce administrative charges and help with the economic development of the colony. However, there was a debate in the early stages of the colony whether or not English should be taught at schools. There were two main schools that defended different models of education in the colony: the orientalists and the utilitarians also known as Anglicans. The orientalists, which were lead by Dr. H.Wilson and H.T. Princep, defended that native languages like Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian should be maintained as the main languages of education in the colony. They considered that the East India Company should promote oriental learning rather than Western education. On the other hand, the utilitarians or Anglicans advocated to promote English as the language of education for the whole colony. They claimed that Indians should learn English in school because everybody would benefit from it. This way translators would not be needed and a more direct rule over the colony could be implemented.
What is more, Christian missionaries among other humanitarians pressured the company to establish English as the language of education. Missionaries played a very important role in the development of education in India and the spread of English across the colonies. At the end, several British authorities such as the utilitarian Thomas Babington Macaulay; that defended the decision to teach English because it would contribute to a faster inclusion of the Indian society to the Empire, won the argument. That is why from 1835 onwards, a Western education with English as the language of learning was introduced in India.
The “English Education Act” of 1835 passed by the parliament forced the East India Company to reallocate the founds they were investing in a Muslin/Hindu-based education, to promote Western curriculum with English as the language of instruction. With this decision, the Empire was able to introduce English as one the languages of India and not just the language of the colonizers. In the following graphs we can see the evolution of education with the increase of the number of English schools and the improvement of the literacy rates during the colonial period.
In these graphs we can clearly see how the colony was able to improve their education conditions thanks to the creation of new English schools and the investments the company made to promote the learning of language. Because English has been spoken in india for over 400 years now, the Indian variety is now considered one of the most important ones.
However, due to the long period of time that English has been spoken as a second language in a country where there are millions of speakers with different native tonges; it has suffered some noticiable changes because of the contact with those languages.
What is more, it is also important to bear in mind the fact that many people in India are bilingual or trilingual, which means that they mix the languages in their minds transforming them and creating new concepts out of their multilingual mental lexicon. This issue will be developed further on in the following sections of this article.
- English in India: Social and Cultural Clashes in the Globalization Era
India is a multilingual country with more than one official language. Both Hindi and English are used for official purposes but there is not a single official language. India is the second most populated country of the world; this is just one of the many factors that have contributed to the fact that there are 22 official languages in the country. However, there are many other languages in the country that do not have this official status because of the reduced number of speakers they have.
However, it is important to notice that although English is an official language, it is in the 44th position of the ranking of languages of the country because of the small number of native speakers it has. When India gained its independence, there were some debates regarding the eradication of English because of its relation with the Empire. But at the end, the language managed to stay as an official one in the country and this decision worked in favour of the Indian people in the long run. The role English plays nowadays in India is mainly as a Lingua Franca. According to the 2001 census, only 226,449 people speak it as a native language, that is only the 0.022% of the population of India. Nonetheless, the importance of English in the country is undeniable. It is through this language that the majority of the population is able to have access to higher education, science, and a wider range of books among other things. What is more, because of the quantity of languages spoken across the country, English is used by people from different regions of India to communicate. When India gained its independence, it was divided into different linguistics groups and that is why a common language such as English is necessary to work as a link or bridge language that allows people from around the country to understand each other.
It is clear that English is important in the Indian society; however, what most people do not know is that India’s role in the evolution of English is also very important. Bilingualism and trilingualism is very common in this country to the extend that more people speak English as a second language in India than in Western Europe (not counting the UK).
Another important issue to take into account when studying this variety is the fact that educated speakers tend to imitate the British and American accents. Educated speakers do not want to be recognized by their intonation or pronunciation and that is why the most educated they are, the less they show the features of their variety. This is very important to take into account because they do not think their variety has as much prestige as the American or British ones and that is why they try to get rid of it.
Indian English: Linguistic Characterisation
In order to make a brief analysis of the linguistic features of this variety, it is important to bear in mind the fact that it is influenced by several factors. Its language ecology is quite complex because as it was stated in the previous section, it is in contact with many other languages. This translates into the fact that there are some features that are only shown in certain regions of the country. The different features that will be explain in the following sections are all influenced by the mother tongue of the speakers and the region they live in. This is why not all the features will be applicable to all the speakers of the variety. What is more, the most educated speakers would try to avoid the characteristic features of their variety, imitating the British and American varieties because of their prestige.
Although there is a clear division between the four more important Englishes of India, we are not going to focus on any of them because that would take us into a way deeper analysis than the intended for this short introduction to Indian English. That is why Babu English, Butler English, Bearer English and Kitchen English will only be mentioned briefly.
- Introduction
In her work Indian English, Sailaja Pingali makes a distinction between ‘Indian English’ (IndE) and ‘English in India’. In fact, many scholars maintain that there is not such a thing as Indian English, as they claim that the written form of the language is not different from that of standard English (British or American), and that therefore the only use of certain phonological features and some lexical items does not make it a single independent variety. In addition, they consider it to be close to American English with regards to several usages.
Andreas Sedlastschek has also analysed the challenges Indian English poses as a linguistic entity “and its existence as a variety in its own right”. He states that “although linguists nowadays agree widely that IndE has established itself as an ‘independent language tradition’” there are still doubts on to what extent Indian English is “unique or different” when comparing it with other varieties of English (Sedlastschek, 2009: 2), and the fact that there has been little empiric research on the usage of IndE makes it more complicated. However, there are other scholars who consider it a distinct variety, and for them, the term ‘Indian English’ is seen as acceptable. In academia, the term preferred is ‘English in India’, which pays more importance to the historical, literary and cultural aspects of the language in India, instead of denoting purely linguistic features. Sailaja Pingali mentions other terms which are used to refer to the English language in India, such as ‘Inglish’ (Hosali 1999) or ‘Indlish’ (Sanyal 2006). (Pingali, 2009: 13).
Just like in British English, there are plenty of varieties of Indian English as well, distinct from the acrolect or Standard Indian English. Silaja Pingali mentions that “the difference lies in the fact that the different varieties of English in India are not fixed in terms of their features” (Pingali, 2009: 14). By the English variety individuals speak, it is feasible to distinguish the person’s social and linguistic background. These varieties are influenced by the different languages that are in contact with English in the different regions of the country, and we can draw the most notable differences in terms of phonology, to the extent that speakers of Indian English from different regions may sometimes not even be able to understand each other.
In a country like India in which there are 19 officially recognized regional languages and there is a continuous contact among them and the English language, the linguistic situation is therefore extraordinarily rich and complex. The most recognized dialects of English in India are Malayali English, Maharashtrian English, Punjabi English, Bengali English, Hindi English, Butler English (or Bearer English), Babu English, and Bazaar English, among others.
- Pronunciation
Indian English like most varieties can be easily recognized by its speech patterns. Due to the importance of this variety across the globe, most English speakers are able to recognize its features. Thanks to globalization, Indian English is no longer just spoken in the South Asian country, but now the Indian diaspora has spread making the variety global.
The first thing that captures the attention regarding this variety is its syllabic rhythm. Almost all the varieties of English are stress-timed so this makes the Indian one an oddity among the world Englishes. This is the source of some problems regarding comprehension because English speakers are not used to this kind of rhythm. However, as it was already mentioned, the most educated Indian speakers tend to show an accent closer to the British or American ones because of their so-called prestige. This is why not all speakers in India show the same features in their speech along with the fact that the first language of each speaker also has a great impact in the development of different characteristic features.
Main phonetic features of Indian English:
> Alveolar retroflex stops of /t/ and /d/ as [ʈ] and [ɖ], although in educated speakers it is replaced by alveolar plosives like in British and American English.
> Rhoticity after vowels, although the educated new generations tend to avoid the phenomenon.
> No distinction between long and short vowels. Not clear distinction between /ɒ/ and /ɔː/
> Trap-bath slip: a vowel split in which the phoneme /æ/ was lengthened and merged with the long /ɑː/
> Drop of –ed ending after /k/ and /t/
> Voiceless plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ are un-aspirated in initial word position.
> [V] and [W] merge that are pronounced interchangeably regardless of the spelling, although not in the Punjabi, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali varieties.
> Th-stop or lack of interdentals: /θ/ is pronounced as think /t/ and /ð/ as in words like this /d/
> Use of dark [l] for all the realizations of the phoneme “l”
> Replacement of two adjacent vowels by a single long vowel followed by /r/ sound.
> Pronunciation of vowels usually dropped in other standard varieties of English in words such as with “typically” in which all the vowels are pronounced.
- Grammar and Syntax
As a result of the large number of direct transfers of grammar features from native languages and the way English is influenced by them, the grammar and syntax of Indian English differs from that of other standard English forms. Some distinguishing features of Indian English are the use of the articles, prepositions, modals, tense, and aspect.
DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES
One interesting feature to have into account is the seemingly arbitrary use of the definite and indefinite articles in Indian English. On numerous occasions, the indefinite article “a” is replaced by “one”, so that a sentence like: “And a lovely white bear was sleeping there” would be said by Indian English speakers with the number “one”: “And one lovely white bear was sleeping there”. (Baldridge, 1995)
Another thing to consider is the dropping of both the definite and indefinite articles when they are required in Standard English, like in“The IMA Secretary profusely thanked different organisations for showing solidarity with doctor and his wife in their hour of crisis”, in an article called “Kidnapped Doctor Couple Returns Home, Gives Different Versions to SSP, DIG” for The Times of India. In contrast, however, Indian English users employ the definite article more often with proper names than in British English or American English standards, especially with the names of hospitals, schools and universities, like in “Dr. Koshy is now pursuing a Ph.D course in geriatrics at the Cambridge University on scholarship” (The Hindu; January 25. 2002) Chesterman stated in 1993 that this issue depends on the degree of familiarity of the speaker towards the places they refer to:
[W]e say Buckingham Palace but the Mariinsky Palace… This appears to be because the English building is more familiar to English people, who are therefore “insiders” with respect to it. In some sense, then, familiar buildings are felt to have clearer conceptual outlines; and herein lies the key to the difference between null and the. The gives a concept bounds, limits; it concretizes, defines. But if a concept is already familiar enough, clear enough in and of itself, it does not need such extraboundedness. (Chesterman, 1993)
TENSES AND ASPECT
In many Indian languages, tense does not follow the rules that are inherent to the English language. These languages, which are constantly in contact with the English spoken in India, have influenced the use of tenses in Indian English and made it more flexible. Some deviations we may find are, as pointed out in “Indianisation of English: Analysis of Linguistic Features in Selected Post-1980 Indian English Fiction” (2010):
1. Violation of sequence of tenses,
2. Use of the Past Perfect and the Present Perfect for the Simple Past,
3. Use of the Past Perfect for the Present Perfect,
4. Use of Simple Present for the Present Perfect Progressive, and
5. Use of the progressive with verbs of perception and state.(Bandyopadhyay, 2010, 40)
One of the most well-known and stereotypical features of Indian English is the overuse of the present continuous with stative verbs, like in “I am wanting a cup of coffee”, whereas in the rest of varieties of English, it is used to express actions, not states. One possible explanation for this use of the present continuous is that it is something common in Hindi. This is also visible with the past continuous, as in “She was having many sarees” rather than “She had many sarees” (Trudgill & Hannah, p. 132). This feature is visible in the poem ‘Very Indian Poem in Indian English’ written by Nissim Ezekiel who, although having adopted English as the language of his art, “naturalized the language to the Indian English poetic tradition,” (Nath, 2007, 164):
It is also worth mentioning the use of present or past perfect instead of the simple past tense as another feature characteristic of Indian English. Verma (1978) explains that “in English, the present perfect establishes a link between the past and the present. It is not used in the environment of the simple past. In Indian English, this distinction is neutralized” (1978, 80), as we can see in “I have seen him in 1960” or “I have read that newspaper yesterday”. In addition, some Indian English speakers use the Past Perfect in situations in which speakers of English would use Present perfect, because, as Sumana Bandyopadhyay assures, they pursue to put “emphasis on the completion of the activity in the past rather than its relevance to the present” (2010: 41). In addition, maybe due to the fact that there is not a progressive aspect of the Present Perfect in the Indian tense system, many speakers of Indian English use the Present Simple instead of the Present Perfect Progressive. Sumana Bandyopadhyay states that “In the Indian tense system, an act of continuing at the time of speaking, even if it began at a certain time in the past, belongs to the present. Therefore, this is assumed as Present Progressive by Indian speakers.” (2010: 41).
One of the most mentioned features of Indian English is the formation of questions without inverting the subject and the auxiliary verbs. As we can see in “Why you are leaving?”, speakers of Indian English do not apply the subject-auxiliary inversion rule when making WH-questions. (Shekar ad Hegde 1996). This also applies to direct yes/no questions which we generally find with the order of declarative sentences too: “You are ready?”. Also with reference to questions, it is important to highlight that the use of the tag “isn’t it” as universal is a prominent feature of Indian English, regardless of person, tense or auxiliary verb, as in “You have spoken to your father, isn’t it?”.
Another tag which is widely used by Indian speakers of English is the negative marker No?, as in “You are coming to my house, no?”. Both “isn’t it” and “no” as question tags come from the use of nain Hindi, as in aapkaa naam reenaa hai na?, what could be translated as “Your name is Reena, isn’t it/no?”. (Baldridge, 1995)
PREPOSITIONS
Another thing that should be considered when studying Indian English is the use of prepositions, as we can see in “She said she would neither resign nor bow down to their demands” or “The next course will commence from Monday, 8 January”. In some cases, Indian English speakers use certain prepositions when in other Standard English they would be wrong (like “discuss about” or “pay attention on”). In order instances, they would omit the preposition when they are indispensable in other standard English varieties or include them when they would be omitted. (Balasubramanian, 2009: 35)
MODALS
Sumana Bandyopadhyay mentions several different usages with regards to modal verbs in Indian English that differ from those of English speakers, such as the indiscriminate use of “will” and “would”, as in “I would not be able to summit my paper tomorrow”, and the use of “may” instead of “should”, “ought to”, or “must”. Similarly, Indian English speakers prefer “could” to “can”. (2010: 41)
TRANSITIVE VERBS USED INTRANSITIVELY
It is common in Indian English to omit the direct object with some transitive verbs. Sridhar (1992) explains that “the discourse norm in Indian languages is to omit object noun phrases… when they are recoverable from context” (p.144), and Hosali (1991) states that this also occurs “in a distinctive manner by large numbers of educated Indian speakers of English” (p. 65). She provides the following example: “I would appreciate if you would reply quickly”.
- Morphology
Indian English is very rich in terms of word formation and speakers make use of a lot of compounds, especially nominal and adjectival compounding. For example, Indian English speakers use the compounds “cousin-brother” and “cousin-sister” to state the gender of the cousin, something which is characteristic of most Indian languages.
Another morphological feature of Indian English having to do with creativity is the shortening of some words. For example, “enthusiasm” is shortened to “enthu” so that it can be used not only as a substantive but also as an adjective, as in “She is a real enthu lady.” (Baldridge, 1995)
There is also a tendency by Indian English speakers to pluralize words which should not be pluralized in Standard English, as in “furnitures” or “childrens”, but we also find instances in which words should be pluralized and they are not, for example: “One of my relative”. (Baldridge, 1995)
Interestingly, there are some aspects of Indian English morphology that come as a result of contact between languages and that are worth mentioning. For example, some Indian words which are already plural in the native language are re-pluralized with the addition of -s when entering the English language, as in “rotis”. On the other hand, there are some English suffixes like “fy”, “ic”, “dom” or “ism” that are put with Indian words to create new usages for the Indian terms. For example, “muskafy” comes from the Hindi word “muska” and means to flutter somebody. (Baldridge, 1995)
In addition, there are also certain changes in the use of words with prefixes, as the inclusion of the word “prepone” as opposed to “postpone” in meaning.
- Lexis
The Indian English lexicon has many characteristic words that are used daily by its millions of speakers. These concepts can be a result of abbreviation, acronyms, new expressions or simply by giving new usages to English words. Examples of the use of acronyms can be easily seen in newspapers where a heading can contain as many as they consider appropriate as with the Daily Indian Express “Go to HC, SC tells NICE.” (or “Go to High Court, Supreme Court tells Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises.”)
This is a clear example of how the country has appropriated English and is now comfortable expressing their ideas as they please. This variety is no longer trying to imitate British English because nobody from the UK would be able to read a newspaper written with so many unknown acronyms. It is also important to mention that there is no dictionary that explains all these acronyms and many times newspapers forget to explain them, so unless you are used to them; it would be impossible to understand what is happening. The significant thing to take into account regarding this phenomenon is that the vast majority of the population understand them. Even the illiterate and the people who do not usually speak English, know their meanings. What is more, this phenomenon is so spread in the Indian society that majority of politic parties use them. This circumstance has increased with the appearance of the mobile phone and the success of texting that has created a society that depends even more on acronyms.
Also very important is the occasional code-switching between English and the native language of the speakers. This contributes to the development of the Indian identity that brings some of the words from the mother tongues into the foreign one in order to make it more personal. This way, speakers create a sense of belonging and are able to understand each other in a more personal dimension. What is more, due to the long history that links English with the numerous languages of India; there are many loan words that have been included into International English as well as into the Indian variety.
- Conclusion
Indian English is a very complex variety and one of the eldest ones from outside the British Isles. Its 400 years of history have seen a constant change due to the contact with the huge range of language that can be found in the country. Indian English is now one of the most important varieties of English because of the large number of speakers it has and their influence in the world. This language has proven to be very important in the country because of its role as a lingua franca in a society with so many languages.
However, although English has been a very important aspect of recent Indian history; Indian society has also had a great impact in the evolution of English as well. There are many borrowings from Indian languages in everyday English as it was stated previously. Words such as “brahmin (Sanskrit), loot(Hindi), and thug(Hindi), which have long entered the international common core of English lexis” (Sedlatschek, 2009) are just a few examples of India’s influence in the Anglophone world.
That is why, when analysing Indian English, we need to be aware of the influence of both cultures on each other.
Follow-up materials and recommended further sources
- Readings:
· Balasubramanian, C. (2009). Register Variation in Indian English.Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
· Bock, S. (2003). Indian English as an ESL-variety: common core and interference.Verlag: Open Publishing GmbH.
· Schneider, E. W. Postcolonial English: varieties across the world.Cambridge University Press.
· Sedlatschek, A. (2009). Contemporary Indian English: variation and change.Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
· Macaulay, T. B. (1835). Macaulay’s Minute .
- Audio-visual materials
· A Sampling of Indian English Accents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9arM_agKFA
· Indian boy with a strong accent that looses the accent when he sings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8aCPZe7Rsw
· How To Mess English Like An Indian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV-33Dwun9Q
· Indian English teacher giving an online lesson:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoNGbJlFNV0
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