Do you Speak Hinglish? Part 2

Click here for Part 1

       by Arif Khan

 
In addition to Lawler's observations, other unique patterns are also standard and will frequently be encountered in Indian English:

Use of the words but or only as intensifiers such as in: "I was just joking but." or "It was she only who cooked this rice." 

Anglicization of Indian words especially in Chennai by adding "ify" to a local Tamil word . 

Use of yaar,daa,machaa,abey,arey in an English conversation. 

Use of the word ki (Hindi) to mean, loosely, that, such as in 
"What I mean is ki we should adopt this plan instead." 

Idiomatic English for quantification in use of preposition "of", as in "There is so much of happiness in being honest." 

Use of "open" and "close" instead of switch/turn on/off, as in "Open the air conditioner" instead of "Turn on the air conditioner". 

Use of "off it" and "on it" instead of "switch it off" and "switch it on". 

Use of "current went" and "current came" for "The power went out" and "The power came back" 

Use of "I can able to cook" instead of "I can cook" - a widespread gramatical error in Tamil Nadu. 

Creation of nonsensical, rhyming double-words to denote generality of idea or act, a 'totality' of the word's denotation, as in "No more ice-cream-fice-cream for you!", "Let's go have some chai-vai (tea, "tea and stuff")." or "There's a lot of this fighting-witing going on in the neighbourhood." 

Use of "baazi"/"baaji" or "-giri" for the same purpose, as in "business-baazi" or "cheating-giri". 

Use of word "wallah" to denote occupation or 'doing of/involvement in doing' something, as in "The taxi-wallah overcharged me.", "The grocery-wallah sells fresh fruit." or "He's a real music-wallah: his CD collection is huge." 

Use of the word maane (Bengali) or matlab (Hindi/Urdu) to mean, loosely, "meaning" ("What I mean is..."), as in "The problem with your idea, maane, what I feel is missing, is 
ki it does not address the problem of overstaffing." or "Your explanation, matlab, your feeble attempt at one, was sorely lacking in cohesiveness." 

Overuse of the words "Generally"/"Actually"/"Obviously"/"Basically" in the beginning 
of a sentence.e.g "Actually I am not feeling well". 
Use of the word "since" instead of "for" in conjunction with periods of time, as in "I have been working since four years" instead of "I have been working for four years" or

 "I have been working since four years ago". This usage is more common among speakers of North Indian languages such as Hindi where the words for both "since" and "for" are the same. 

Use of the word 'different-different': We went to different different places in the city in search of a good hotel. 
 

Indian and Pakistan restaurants in Europe and North America
are injecting such words as masala, biryani, pulao, tikka
in English

 
Idioms
"Your good name please?": "What is your name?", carryover from Hindi expression. 

"Deadly", "high-tech", "sexy" are used in idiomatic ways as adjectives. Deadly means intense, "high-tech" stylish and "sexy" excellent or extremely cool. Examples are "That 
movie was deadly, yaar; what an action scene!", "Your shoes are high-tech. Where'd you get them?" and "That's a sexy car, man!". 

"He met his Panipat": reference to a decisive battle; similar to English Waterloo. "To face one's Kurukshetra": to come to a major turning-point or conflict; from Mahabharata. 

"Hello, What do you want?": used by some when answering a phone call, meant to be polite. Commonly perceived as rude by non Indians. 

"What a nonsense/silly you are!" or "Don't be doing such nonsense anymore.": occasional - idiomatic use of nonsense/silly as nouns. 

"pindrop silence" literally means that such a silence should be maintained that even a pindrop can be heard 

"back" replacing "ago" when talking about elapsed time, as in "I met him five years back" rather than "I met him five years ago". 

"freak out" is meant to have fun, as in "lets go to the party and freak out" 

Titles (of respect; formal)

Referring to elders, strangers or anyone meriting respect as "'jee'"/"'ji'" as in "Please call a taxi for Gupta-ji" 
Use of "Shree"/"Shri" (Mr.) or "Shreemati"/"Shrimati" (Ms./Mrs.): Shri Ravi Shankar or Shreemati Das Gupta. 
As with Shree/Shreemati, use of "Saahib" (Mr.) and "Begum" (Mrs.) as in "Welcome to India, Smith-saahib." or 
"Begum Khan would like some tea." 

Use of "Mrs" as a common noun. For example, 
"My Mrs. is not feeling well" means "My wife is not doing well". 

Interjections & casual references

"Theek hai" or "Theek acchhe" (th being heavily aspirated and retroflex) meaning "Okay," "alright," "great," "fine," or "sure." 
Casual use of words yaar (friend, buddy, dude, man), bhai (brother) and bhaiyya (very informal for brother) much as with the American English 'man' or 'dude', as in " Arey! 
C'mon, yaar! Don't be such a killjoy!", "Long time no see, bhai." or "Ay, bhaiyya! Over here!" 

Use of interjections Arey! and acchha! to express a wide range of emotions, usually positive though occasionally not, as in "Arey! What a good job you did!", "Accha, so 
that's your plan." or "Arey, what bad luck, yaar!" 

Use of oof! to show distress or frustration, as in "Oof! The baby's crying again!" 

Use of "Waah" to express admiration, especially in musical settings, as in "Waah! Waah! You play the sitar so well!" 

Use of "just" and "simply" in a seemingly arbitrary manner in southern India, especially Kerala. e.g. Q:"Why did you do it?" A:"Simply!" or "Just I was telling to [sic] him. 

"Lady's finger" means "Okra" (as in some other English-speaking countries) 

"Hotel" means "restaurant" (as well as specifically "big hotel") in India: "I ate in the hotel" 

"Lodge" is used to refer to small hotels "specs" means spectacles (as in colloquial UK English) "cent percent" means "100 percent" as in "He got cent percent in maths" 
"centum" is also frequently used to refer to 100 
 

High-End : (Supposedly) of very high quality (used sarcastically for work and people) n - Many (He takes n troubles to stay neat) 

Misused Words

The verb "repair" in southern India is used as a noun for a broken object as in, "the TV became repair." 

The same word is used for saying when the broken object is fixed "The TV is repaired and now it is working properly" 

The word "dress" is used to refer to all men, women and children clothes "She bought a new dress" 

The word "cloth" is usually referred only to any clothes that are not wearable like "waste cloth" "use that cloth for cleaning" "cloth" and "clothe" are used interchangeably

Indians frequently inject words from Indian languages, such as Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Urdu into English. While the currency of such words usually remains restricted to Indians and other Indian subcontinentals, there are many which have been regularly entered into the Oxford English Dictionary as their popularity extended into worldwide mainstream English. Some of the more common examples are "jungle",
"bungalow", "bandana", "pyjamas"; others were introduced via the transmission of Indian culture, examples of which are "pundit" and "guru".

Words unique to (i.e. not generally well-known outside South Asia) and/or popular in India include those in the following by no means exhaustive list:

batchmate or batch-mate (Not classmate, but of a schoolmate of the same grade) cousin-brother (male first cousin) & cousin-sister (female first cousin); used conversely is one's 
own brother/sister (of one's parent, as opposed to uncle or aunt; English brother/sister): most Indians live in extended families and many do not differentiate even nominally 
between cousins and direct siblings. crore (ten million) 
dias (dais) eve teasing (catcalling - harassment of women) 
funda short for fundamental foot overbridge (bridge meant for pedestrians) fundu (adjective meaning a brilliant or intelligent person, derived from funda) godown (warehouse) 
Himalayan blunder (grave mistake) lakh (one hundred thousand) nose-screw (woman's nose ornament) 
opticals (eyeglasses) pomfret (a popular turbot-like fish, derived from its local name, paplet) prepone (the opposite of 'postpone') scheduled caste (a socially/economically marginalised Hindu caste, given special privileges by the government) scheduled tribe (a socially/economically marginalised Indian tribe, given special privileges by the government) upgradation (commonly used in business communication instead of 'upgrade') would-be (fiancé/fiancée) Pondy (pornography) 

The book Hobson-Jobson by Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, first published in 1886, gives a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words.