Introduction to Indian English | Hacker News Reader

Introduction to Indian English

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Not exactly Indian English, but my favourite English word with an Indian origin is Juggernaut.

Its a morphed version of the name of an Indian deity – Jagannath.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut:

> A juggernaut, in current English usage, is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive, and unstoppable. > This English usage originates in the mid-nineteenth century. Juggernaut is the early rendering in English of Jagannath, an important deity in the Hindu traditions of eastern and north-eastern India. The meaning originates from the Hindu temple cars, which are chariots, often huge, used in processions or religious parades for Jagannath and other deities, the largest of which, once set into motion, are difficult to stop, steer or control by humans, on account of their massive weight.

Juggernaut is definitely one of my favourites. Also, bandicoot from Telegu’s pandikokku, literally “pig rat”.

Thats a good one. Also as an Indian I didn't know Anaconda, Pariah, Mango, Mulligatawny, etc originated from Indian languages

Chintzy for rather twee flowery patterns.

The British Army uses a bazillion Indian words.

Khaki for pale tan. I think it means dust in Urdu?

Basha for your shelter of a tarpaulin usually suspended from a bush by...

Bungees - stretchy rubber ropes with hooks at the end.

Pukka - proper, the real deal. (Although nowadays good kit is referred to as Gucci)

Dumdums - bullets cut at the tip so they break up on impact. Named after the arms factory at Dumdum.

Khaki means brown in a few languages. Means poop in at least hebrew.

Dumdums: I thought it was more filing the tip down. Causes tumbling, which then causes breakup. Nitpick, maybe I'm mistaken.

Khaki for me as an Indian is used to mean the color of police uniforms here. We call them Khakis. It's a dusky brown color. Except that and bungees, I'm not familiar with the other words

Not even solely the army. pyjamas, dekko, dungarees, gymkhana, bangle, pundit, verandah. The list goes on and on. India has been a large source of loanwords over the centuries.

Ah, that's where Pukka Pies gets the name from. To add to your list:

Bungalow - a house in the Bengal style.

I have wondered if there are people in India who fit a description of certain europeans, in that they are said to speak 9 languages, none of them fluently. My father came from India originaly, but is of the type who is concerned with correctness in all things, but speaks fondly of the fun and games of multi lingual word play, and harder to master languages such as punjabi, and classical persian. I think that India is so multi lingual and large to begin with that there will be regional differences in the use of other languages...portugese, spanish, english, and many others and the concept of "indian english" is realy an intro into a much much vaster world of crosscultural exchange and cominication ongoing for millenia. edit: spelling, always spelling

Almost every Indian I know (including me) mixes at least two languages in their daily conversations seamlessly, that too within a sentence. Westerners may find that Indians talking among themselves in their native language(s) drop English words out of nowhere. Again, I can't imagine this to be a uniquely Indian phenomenon. Multilingual people would be doing this.

Lingual purists may find it irritating, but I love such mix-ups!

I think the most confusing one is the usage of "I'll revert back" to mean "I'll get back to you". At least once in my life, I've seen an actual confusion caused by this. Here's how it went:

Let's call the two people involved Bob and Raj. Bob was working in the US and Raj was based in India. Bob emailed the team, addressing Raj, and said one of the attachments in a service needed to be deleted (I don't even remember why anymore).

Raj replied something along the lines of: "Yes, fine with me! Please delete and revert back."

Bob immediately replied, "Once the attachment is deleted, it's gone! It can't be reverted. Please confirm if you really want me to delete it."

It took a bit of back-and-forth before everyone was on the same page. What Raj had actually meant was simply, "Please delete it and get back to me."

That is a common usage in British English as well. E.g “I will update the draft document and revert back to you”.

One of the most annoying things about Duolingo is that they haven’t spared a week of an intern’s time to come up with a way of substituting the British/Indian/Irish/Austrailian/New Zealand/South African… word for the American English word. OK there’s a lot of slang out there and you could really go down a rabbit hole but when the usage is well documented in e.g. Collins-Robert there’s no excuse really.

I worked in customer service and dealt often with people in other countries. I greatly enjoyed learning about customs and phrases, new cultural tidbits.

For Indian English, one of my favorites was “Do the needful”, meaning “Do what’s necessary”. Just thinking it reminds me of my friends and colleagues overseas.

Another common Indian word is prepone, the opposite of postpone.

I have never come across the "where" example.

The article misses out on many common usages, and cites some rather unremarkable ones.

If postpone is to delay until later, and prepone is to bring forwards, can one peripone something (for it to be happening now)?

I agree. The articles misses some really good ones, - prepone, max-to-max (ज़्यादा से ज़्यादा), scanner (for payment QR-codes)

Prepone is now a word in Cambridge dictionary [1]. It acknowledges the origin to India.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/prepone

I wanted an opposite of "procrastinate", but it's not obvious because of etypmologies.

The best I could devise is "progesternate" (via "gestern").

One typical expression that stuck with me is "[please] do the needful" (often used when assigning Jira tickets to someone else).

In a similar vein, there's also "I'll revert back" as a more formal "I'll get back to you".

We have a knack of placing only wherever we like, even at the beginning of a sentence.

Only we understand what the sentence means :)

"Only I'll do it tomorrow". "He only wanted milk."

This is a feature of many Indian languages. Word order doesn’t matter or doesn’t matter as much.

गाय वह चऱायेगा, वह गाय चऱायेगा, चऱायेगा वह गाय all mean “he will take the cow out to graze” irrespective of word order, but of course there can be subtle shifts in meaning. (Apologies for any typos / potentially bad translation). Eg चऱायेगा वह गाय could be “he WILL graze the cow” if vocal stress is applied to चऱायेगा.

A lot of “Indian English” traits make more sense if one understands a few Indic languages. Southern Indic languages have their own super interesting traits as well, eg Tamil speakers often insert “simply” into sentences, this reflects usage in Tamil.

I am Indian and I was confused when I first saw that phrase in a corporate setting. Only revert I knew was git revert.

What I’m learning from this thread is that there are at least as many ways of speaking English in India as there are in the UK. I’d noticed this with pronunciation (one colleague propels P and T sounds with explosive force, but none of the other Indians I work with do this), but I hadn’t picked up on grammar and vocabulary differences.

Apparently this revert thing is common across Indian corporate, but non-existent in other places, eg: academia.

Maybe a difference of aspiration?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant

Aspiration is contrastive in some Indian languages but not in English. (It's regular in most native speakers' English, but never distinguishes words by its presence or absence.) I could imagine that some Indian language speakers would learn to pronounce English /p/, /t/ consistently as [p], [t] and others consistently as [pʰ], [tʰ], even though English native speakers would have this difference in realization conditioned by other things.

The [pʰ], [tʰ] versions would probably sound "louder" or "stronger" when they occur in unusual contexts in English (I guess, I don't have enough control over aspiration in my speech to record a useful sample; maybe I could synthesize it?).

It seems to be a direct translation of the word करणीय (karaniya, that which needs to be done) in many Indic languages.

A more idiomatic translation might be “please get this done”; the “needful” phrase might also be a signal that the writer isn’t that familiar with idioms used in other English-speaking countries.

Hobson-Jobson[1] had a great early compilation of some phrases that arose in the subcontinent— many are still in use.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson-Jobson

PS. there’s some evidence from Google Books[2] that “do the needful” might be an old English legal term as well. More research is definitely required. The bigger point is, the phrase’s popularity in India may be because it mirrors a Sanskrit-derived word often still used in Indian legal contexts.

[2] A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, 1860

https://books.google.com/books?id=VXdIAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA428&dq=%...

Saying this as someone whose first language is Hindi, I have never used this word nor heard anyone else use it. I think whatever similarities there are might be coincidental. Can't say about other Indian languages.

It comes from Sanskrit[1] and is fairly common in languages which use Sanskrit derived terms in large numbers eg some dialects of Bengali, but more importantly “sarkari” (government) Hindi which is way more Sanskitized vs regular Hindi. Regular Hindi even in the Gangetic plains is way more “hybrid”, and this is way before you come to eg Mumbai Hindi.

Here’s the term in gov.in: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%A3%...

Of course the Indian government loves “do the needful” as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22do+the+needful%22+site%3A...

But there’s evidence that “do the needful” might be an old English legal term as well. I’ve updated the parent comment. Further research is definitely required.

[1] https://sanskritabhyas.in/%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%A3%E0%A5%...

> But there’s evidence that “do the needful” might be an old English legal term as well. I’ve updated the parent comment. Further research is definitely required.

Huh. Using Google Books I found "do the needful" as far back as the 17th century. The 17th century hit and 19th century hits were almost all in the context of Mercantile Law, but the several 18th century hits weren't in a legal context, though perhaps the authors were importing legal terminology.

The Mercantile Law usage makes me wonder if the phrase nonetheless found its origin in India, given the centuries-long commercial and legal ties between Britain and India. OTOH, it's a rather natural turn of phrase in English. I'm surprised it isn't more common, though our (American) modern, over-sexed, adolescent culture gives rise to distracting connotations.

I get that but my point is that this word is (almost?) never used colloquially. Lots of terms are used in government, official and legal contexts that are almost never used informally. So all I am saying is that people don't use needful because it is a direct translation of karaniya since they don't use the latter themselves.

In French people also say "veuillez faire le nécessaire" , literally please do the necessary", which sounds similar in sentence structure

As an Indian, I do not like this. Big banks like Hdfc also send emails with subject like - "Intimation to update account" or things like I had already sent an "intimation" email. Just makes no sense, you are a billion dollar bank, get it right.

Yes. "Please do the needful" and "revert", are the most common Inglish phrases I encounter when talking to our employees in that part of the world. More recently 'can I connect?' is a new one that is becoming common.

In my experience, at least some aspects of the Indian English exists because we Indians often mentally translate what we want to say from our native language (which are plentiful) to English before it comes out of our mouth.

I don't imagine this is a uniquely Indian phenomenon – other non-native English speakers would be doing the same.

Even Irish people whose main language since birth is English do this. There's a verb in Gaeilge which does exist in English but is translated as "does be". Examples:

- He does be eating his breakfast

- She does be out walking the dog

It's the continuous/habitual form of to be, so the implication is that she does be walking the dog everyday, or regularly. He does be eating his breakfast everyday.

The interesting thing is that you'll meet Irish people who were never fluent in Irish - learned it in school, sure, but never spoke it daily - who still use this conjugation when speaking English.

It really do be like that sometimes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitual_be#Hypothesized_sourc...

yes, the aave usage does potentially be having its origins in he

That seems like the present progressive to me.

I am eating his breakfast.

She is out walking the dog.

https://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/present_progressive...

To argue with myself, smarter people than I have claimed the same construction as yours in AAVE. Check the section on tense here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_En...

In my native Cantonese (and this probably applies to a lesser extent to Mandarin as well), pronouns are inherently non-gendered, and when we speak in English we tend to randomly pick one (he/she) and thus occasionally get the gender wrong.

That said I think there are "levels" to so called "mental translation" -- I don't think I consciously mentally translate anything at all, but I guess sometimes the neural pathways or whatever are kinda repurposed/re-used even if there are some differences between languages.

Here are my two paise (cents)

(1) The use of "only" for emphasis. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/107454/indian-en...

(2) In an academic setting, people often use "doubt" to mean question. For example, at the end of a lesson, a teacher might say "Does anyone have any doubts?"

(3) Another verb which can be used intransitively is "wish". For example, "I wished Ravi on his birthday".

This does not talk about the numbering system. See [1]

"Lakh" => 100K

"Crore" => 100Lakhs

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English#Numbering_syste...

As an Indian who moved abroad and comes back occasionally this is the hardest part. As an Indian I always think in multiples of 10: 100,1000,10000, 1 lakh etc, but abroad after a certain point people think in multiples of 1000. 1000, million, then multiples of 10..The Indian system to me is more logically consistent

My wife is chinese and they have a very commonly used word for 10,000 so when she needs to say either 10,000 or 100,000 she almost always gets it wrong and says 1,000 instead of 10,000 and says 10,000 instead of 100,000. It's happened so often I mentally translate automatically if it's clear from context.

The Indian system is clearly less consistent from an outsider PoV: You use a 3 digit gap for the first comma, then 2-digit gaps (1 crore is 1,00,00,000); the western system is consistently 3-digits (1 million is 1,000,000).

I hadn't thought of it that way. It's rare we write 1 crore like that. You'd just write 1 crore

I wonder if anyone has some insight...

a bit of a sensitive question, but I've noticed my indian colleagues (PhDs) have a much more limited vocabulary compared to American colleagues. To the point where slightly archaic word or literary words are completely unusable in conversation.

I have to consciously "talk simple"

However, as I understand, higher education is all conducted in English... so it feels like there shouldn't be as large of a gap as there is?

Is English language literature not widely read in school? Are people mostly reading in their local languages?

It's a bit similar to English in Malaysia/Singapore - but there I assume schooling is done in large part in Chinese/Malay and maybe people don't read as much in English

> much more limited vocabulary

These days in my generation (Gen-Z) more youth watch movies and television series in English. Yet I find many of my more urbanized peers roll their eyes when I use a figure of speech i.e a metaphor.

In contrast, I picked up my language from technical books, blogs and documentation - and they sometimes find my choices of wording rather rude and insensitive.

I think I had to be more conscious about picking up the language because I did my early schooling in local language, and picked up reading English books on my own. For them it was natural in an urban environment. However, the urban english is "just enough" to get by. Since it is the "bureacratic" language (Indian schools too are as bureacratic as it can get), they had to be polite and standardized.

> However, as I understand, higher education is all conducted in English...

That english is way more limited, and higher education is way more mechanical than you folks have in the west.

> Is English language literature not widely read in school?

It depends on the quality of the education. I had the lower tier schooling (government-funded and similar). The English included is just rote-learned rather than understood - in high school we were expected to produce approximately same sentences as given in the textbooks, and any creativity in answers might lose grades!

There are better boards (school systems) like CBSE and ICSE, which are expensive and higher level. I have a few friends from ICSE who have much wider vocabulary than me. In the next generation, you will see Indians with better language skills, since most elite Indians now flock to these schooling systems.

Really interesting to hear your experience!

Thanks! There are a lot of little illuminating details in your story :)

Another one: updation

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/updation_n

Another word I didn’t realise was considered archaic and largely forgotten in the West, until I moved out of India is “thrice”!

One of the recent inventions I like: Presstitute

Its a combo of "Press" and "Prostitute" and it aptly describes some journalists and media people who clearly take sides and have sold their souls.

I came across and am fond of "give a click". Came across it watching youtube tutorials, used along the lines of "to open the context menu, give a click on the menu item"

"Please do the needful" is a favourite of mine

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