The Below Statement

'The use of below in Indian English is well worth a study', writes K S Yadurajan in the Deccan Herald.

Several railway officers have assured me that a standard opening in railway official correspondence is: ‘Dear Sir, with reference to your above see my below’.

Below can be used as a adverb: go below the deck; we saw the blue waters spread below us. But in IE we see the use of below as an attributive modifier of a noun — the below statement.

More here.

Pirate Talk

Mid-Day ('Takla Hatela ya Lamba Khamba?', Mid-day, May 20, 2006) reports that the Mumbai underworld has coined new slang names for Bollywood actors and actresses. This list was extracted from a conversation between video pirates in Karachi and Mumbai, recorded by an anti-piracy cell.

The men

- Chyawanprash: Amitabh Bachchan (after the brand he endorses)
- Takla Hatela: Salman Khan (recently went bald)
- Jhakaas Mamu: Anil Kapoor
- Chikna Kaana: Saif Ali Khan
- Junior Daadhi: Abhishek Bachchan (thanks to his ever-present stubble)
- Booddha Hakla: Shah Rukh Khan
- Kavla hakla: Shahid Kapur (the aspiring SRK)
- Satkela AK-47 or Munnabhai: Sunjay Dutt
- Kala Ghoda: Ajay Devgan
- Charsi Punter: Fardeen Khan
- Chumma Jumma: Emraan Hashmi

The women

- Kajrawali: Aishwarya Rai
- Chhipkali: Urmila Matondkar
- Item bomb: Mallika Sherawat
- Boodhi Ghodi Lal Lagam: Rekha
- Carrom Board: Priyanka Chopra
- MMS item: Kareena Kapoor
- Shaani Batli: Rani Mukerji
- Lamba Khamba: Shilpa Shetty
- Khallaas Baby: Isha Koppikar
- Mota rola: Manisha Koirala

Been There. Done the Needful.

Got the T-shirt.

Your aunty is showing

First it was low-slung chaddi-revealing jeans. Now there's another mention of unmentionables in the current issue of Time Out Mumbai:

Cha-bra

A compound noun formed by joining the syllables cha and bra. Rhymes with sir. Shorthand for chaddi-bra, it's a Marathi synonym for lingerie.

Usage: Chee. All you see on page 3 is skinny models going to parties wearing only cha-bra.

Who writes this stuff anyway? Some Maharashtrian tai with an underwear fetish?

Sri Lankan English

The September 2005 issue of the OED Newsletter contains an article by Richard Boyle, one of the OED's consultants, which looks at the history of Sri Lankan English. A useful overview of the subject from the author of Knox's Words, a study of words of Sri Lankan origin recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Slang sighting: Dedhfutia

Dedfutia was the name of Sanjay Narvekar's character in Vaastav, the Mahesh Manjrekar film about Mumbai's underworld. The word is Marathi slang for a midget ('one-and-a-half-footer' is the literal translation) and is currently Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray's favoured epithet for State Revenue Minister Narayan Rane.

While addressing Sainiks from Rane's Sindhudurg district, Thackeray used what he proudly calls, Thackeri (street-language that is generally below the belt) and called Rane a variety of names. These included: bhadwa (pimp), dedhfutya (referring to his short stature), vasoolmantri (extortion minister), phurse (poisonous snake) and a mad dog. (Mid-Day, September 3, 2005)

Slang Sighting: Thumbs Up

Illiterate, uneducated. A reference to the Hindi idiom 'angootha chhaap', which describes illiterate individuals who place thumb impressions on documents in lieu of signatures.

"Most of these people including me are 'thumbs up' (uneducated)," said a 37-year-old Gujarati trader. (Hindustan Times, August 26, 2005)

Asian Voices in the UK

Voices is an ambitious BBC project that maps changes in regional accents and dialects in the UK. There's a wealth of material on the website, which includes over a thousand clips, links to many radio shows based on the BBC surveys, and a mini-site on the Asian Network, which deals with the languages of the Asian community. Here, you can contribute words to a Desi Dictionary or listen to Southall Punjabis talking about Pinglish, a cross between Punjabi and English. There's also a breakfast series called Out of English, which explores how Asian words are slipping into common English usage.

Elsewhere on the Voices site, there's an interesting article about the speech of the East End. I've written about Benglish earlier: the BBC's research shows that this dialect is replacing Cockney in parts of London.

Speaking in an interview for BBC Voices, Sue Fox, a socio-linguist at the Queen Mary College, University of London says that a new dialect is emerging to replace Cockney and that it's a mixture between English and Bangladeshi... Fox's findings are the result of her research into the way that Cockney is being influenced by the speech of Bangladeshi and other communities in Tower Hamlets. In the interview with the BBC Fox says: "This is very exciting for linguists - the language of London is changing. The majority of young people of school age are of Bangladeshi origin and this has had tremendous impact on the dialect spoken in the area.

"What I've actually found with the young people in Tower Hamlets is that they are using a variety of English which is not traditionally associated with cockney English - it's a variety that we might say is Bangladeshi-accented. And in turn what I've found is that some adolescents of white British origin are also using these features in their speech as well".

David Crystal sees this phenomenon repeating itself in cities across the UK, as foreign languages and regional dialects mix and influence each other:

For example, in Liverpool as well as the traditional Scouse accent you will hear distinct Caribbean-Scouse, African-Scouse as well as Indian-Scouse accents. In Cardiff I've heard a number of accent mixes that weren't previously heard before such as Cardiff-Arabic and Cardiff-Hindi. This pattern is repeating itself in many urban communities across the UK, people are especially keen to develop a strong sense of local identity.

Fascinating stuff. Unfortunately, there aren't any recordings of Cardiff Hindi or Indian Scouse on the site, though I did find this clip of Lancashire Urdu...

Two Tongues

I've been experimenting with Indic IMEs, software that allows you to use the English QWERT keyboard to enter text in Indian languages. I thought I'd try my hand at an unfamilar script, so I downloaded the Gujarati IME and typed up an excerpt from Sujata Bhatt's bilingual poem, 'Search For My Tongue', which mixes Gujarati lines with English transliterations. The task was surprisingly easy, though I must admit that the script isn't difficult to grasp if you're familiar with Devnagari. Anyway, here's the excerpt, which describes what it's like to have 'two tongues in your mouth'.

You ask me what I mean
by saying I have lost my tongue.
I ask you, what would you do
if you had two tongues in your mouth,
and lost the first one, the mother tongue,
and could not really know the other,
the foreign tongue.
You could not use them both together
even if you thought that way.
And if you lived in a place where you had to
speak a foreign tongue--
your mother tongue would rot,
rot and die in your mouth
until you had to spit it out.
I thought I spit it out
but overnight while I dream,

મને હુતું કે આબ્બી જીભ આબ્બી ભાષા
munay hutoo kay aakhee jeebh aakhee bhasha
મેં થૂંકી નાબી છે
may thoonky nakhi chay
પરંતુ રાત્રે સ્વપ્નાંમાં મારી ભાષા પાછી આવે છે
parantoo rattray svupnama mari bhasha pachi aavay chay
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી જીભ
foolnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh
મોઢામાં બીલે છે
moddhama kheelay chay
ફુલની જેમ મારી ભાષા મારી જીભ
fullnee jaim mari bhasha mari jeebh
મોઢામાં પાકે છે
moddhama pakay chay

it grows back, a stump of a shoot
grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins,
it ties the other tongue in knots,
the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth,
it pushes the other tongue aside.
Everytime I think I have forgotten,
I think I have lost the mother tongue,
it blossoms out of my mouth.

If you can't see the Gujarati text, here's some help. You may also need to download a Gujarati Unicode font.

Is your Hinglish up to speed?

That's the question asked in the press release for the revised second edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, published today in the United Kingdom. The new edition includes several common words of South Asian origin, like desi, lehnga, Lollywood, masala, mehndi, tamasha, and of course, Hinglish, defined as 'a blend of Hindi and English, in particular a variety of English used by speakers of Hindi, characterized by frequent use of Hindi vocabulary or constructions'. There are a few surprise entries in the list:

Kitty party noun (chiefly Indian) a regular gathering of a group of women (usually over a meal) in which each member contributes to a central pool and lots are drawn to decide which member will get the entire sum as well as who will host the next gathering.

Bindaas adjective (Indian informal) carefree, fashionable and independent-minded.

You can find the complete list of new words and phrases here.

Alexander McCall Smith on Indian English

'Indian English has got this gorgeous dignity still, and the rhythms of the language and the correctness, the structure is still there,' says the creator of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in the Hindu Literary Review .

The Night of the Gutters

Today is the last day of the month in the Hindu calendar, from tomorrow begins the month of Shravan, during which many Hindus abstain from alcohol and non-vegetarian food. It's a day of indulgence for many people, a last chance to drink yourself silly till you fall into a gutter. That's why it's called Gutteri Amavas, the night of the gutters. Happy drinking!

Luck by fuck

In Mumbai street talk, things don't happen by chance, they happen 'luck by chance'. And now in Bandra, the locals have a new spin on this colloquial expression: over here, things happen 'luck by fuck'.

Swalpa adjust maadi

Libran Lover warns outsiders off this supposedly quintessential Bangalore phrase, which means 'Please adjust a little'.

You are using that phrase because you have either already done something that requires you to apologize to a Bangalorean or you are about to impose on him/her. Don't make it worse for the poor Bangalorean by throwing in that phrase in your pathetic accent. Hearing that phrase coming out of your clumsy mouth would induce Bangaloreans to have reactions ranging from simply smiling at you in their sweet indulgent way to grabbing your head and bashing it against the nearest electricity pole.

You can find the complete rant here.

Benglish

Recently, I've been intrigued by mentions of Benglish in the UK press. It sounds quite unlike anything an Indian would call Benglish or Bonglish: this new variety has been described as a London vernacular that crosses West Indian patois with the Sylheti dialect spoken by East End Bangladeshis. That's about all the information I've found, apart from a review of Tony White's Foxy-T which quotes the following passage, supposedly written in Benglish.

Couple a well fit girl make straight over where Shabbaz and Ranky is wait at the bar. Them two was dress up init and Zafar find him cant take him eye off them behind and how them G-strings show through them white trousers. Them G-string is disappear right up there arse. Easy now Zafar. Shit man them two girl was lean over and say something in him spar ear and touch them arm and laugh init but Zafar just watch them behind like he never seen a girl before... Him no figure how some fit woman like Foxy-T aint make the most of herself is it and just wear them trackie bottom and polo shirt.

Not much Bangla there, innit? If anyone out there has any more information, do let me know.

Wodehouse Babu

Baboo Jabberjee, BA, was a character created by the English humorist F. Anstey for Punch, an Indian law-student in England who has learnt his English from books and speaks in absurdly inflated phrases. (He describes himself as 'saturated to the skin of his teeth in best English masterpieces of immaculate and moderately good prose extracts'). Anstey's Punch sketches were compiled into a book in 1897 and the character also featured in a sequel, A Bayard from Bengal, published in 1902. I've read both the Jabberjee books: they're politically incorrect, of course, but also quite funny, with devastating parodies of Babu English. Apparently, they had a great influence on P. G. Wodehouse's style: I've just discovered this extract from Richard Usborne's Plum Sauce at the Random House site, which shows how Jabberjee's words are sometimes repeated verbatim by Bertie Wooster, 'if perhaps with faint quotation marks in his voice'.

Jabberjee writes: 'As poet Burns remarks with great truthfulness, "Rank is but a penny stamp, and a Man is a man and all that."' This is a pleasant skid on the banana skin of education. Bertie and Jeeves, you remember, get tangled up in this same quotation at a moment of great crisis.

Rem acu tetigisti, non possumus, surgit amari aliquid, ultra vires, mens sana in corpore sano, amende honorable - these are gobbets of education that Jabberjee uses and Jeeves takes over. And (this is sad) we find that it was Jabberjee, and not Bertie, who first made that excellent Shakespeare emendation, only conceivable through the ears, only translatable through the eyes. Jabberjee writes: 'Jessamina inherits, in Hamlet's immortal phraseology, "an eye like Ma's to threaten and command".'

Journalists like David Gardner have claimed to find echoes of P. G. Wodehouse in Indian English, but it seems more likely that the reverse is true: Wodehouse's style owes a debt to Babu bombast.

A Posteriori - II

Nitin Karani's pointed out that an earlier post seems to be missing - I must have deleted it while I was clearing out some unused drafts. Here's an excerpt I found in my notes:

Tariq Rahman, speculating about Akbar’s proficiency in Indian dialects in Language, Ideology and Power, notes that the great Mughal used a Hindustani obscenity on at least one occasion. On Abul Fazl’s testimony, when Akbar was about to kill Adham Khan he exclaimed ‘ay gandu!’ before punching the traitor in the face. (The relevant line from Abul Fazl reads Hazrat ba zaban Hindustani farmudand ke ai kandu, or in translation, ‘My sire said in the Hindustani tongue, O catamite!’)

Mera Song Bhi Sexy

Bollywood's Hall of Shame should have a room reserved for all the veteran Urdu poets who have attempted songs in Hinglish. Your average Bollywood hack can write songs like 'Meri pant bhi sexy' and get away with it, but mixing English with literary Urdu is like pouring Coke on caviar (not to mention that it's downright embarrassing when a Javed Akhtar or a Gulzar tries to get jiggy). You can't but cringe when someone like Majrooh Sultanpuri writes songs for 'youngsters' with lyrics like this:

Main ek disco
Tu ek disco
Duniya hai ek disco
Disco 82! Disco 82!

(I am a disco
You are a disco
The world is a disco
Disco 82! Disco 82!)

Have Hinglish lyrics evolved since 1982, when Majrooh wrote these immortal words? This article in the Indian Express claims they have, and lists some contemporary examples to prove that Hinglish songs these days are 'less corny and more direct'. I'm not convinced: Javed Akhtar's 'It's the time to disco/ Kaun milega kisko' might pass, but 'Burn the dancefloor, O baliye' is the most awkward mix of languages I've heard in a long time.

Feeling Tinglish

Joie De Vivre asks: 'So much babada bibada over this thing called Hinglish... how come no one is mentioning Tinglish?'

Righta? Wronga?

One of the wonderful things about English as it is spoken in south India is the way it acquires an alien music. I once asked a stranger in the street for directions and was told to keep going straiiiighta. It was the most remarkable pronunciation of the word I’d ever heard: the tongue curled back on the t to stretch the diphthong as far as it would go and then moved forward swiftly to tap on the palate. I could tell that it would be a long journey, there would be a bend in the road at some point, but it would curve back eventually and I was to stop right there. Not too abruptly: that last t was softened with a half-vowel, after all.

There’s something about closing a word with a hard consonant that irks the Tamil speaker, so the inflections of his own language are applied to English loanwords: in Chennai, it's quite correctu to say leftu, rightu, and straightu. This linguistic tic is so common, it's become a standard feature in spoofs of South Indian English. So you have advertising slogans that claim 'Eastu, Westu, Northu, Southu, Vasthu bestu', and joke translations from the Tamil that read like this:

Moonu broughtu
tied it on the cotu
cloudu broughtu
put it on the bedu

(Sathya Sankaran, Corrupted Mind, June 30, 2005)

Usage of this kind is highly informal, of course, so there's no standard way of rendering the half-vowel. One person may write tightu, another tighta. Tight-aa? on the other hand, is how you might ask a friend if he's had too much to drink: the aa tag is a separate device altogether that conveys emphasis or interrogation. (A Tamil De Niro, if such a thing existed, would stand in front of the mirror and say 'You're talking to who? I-aa?', to which the reflection would doubtless reply 'Amaa! You-e!'). I'm sure a native speaker could point out many more variations and uses of the vowel tag: this blog goes so far as to suggest, tongue in cheek, that you can get by in Chennai without any Tamil, 'all you need to survive is to put an "A" after an English word'.

example: Yogu sits in Chennai auto.

Yogu: Po!
Rajnikant Autowala: Aiyyo!!! Po whereA!?!?!
Yogu: Amma!!! Po Lefta...then Righta!!!
Rajnikant Autowala: Aha...OK ma...understanda.

Destination Reacheda.

Rajnikant Autowala: Pathu ruppes saar...
Yogu: Pathu rupees ma!?!?! Tambee!!! Vermina!!! Mongrela!!! Appa Kundee!!! Chenee rida BIG fareA!?!?! shiva shiva...
Rajnikant Autowala: Sunday ma! Shiva temble yextra farea!!!

(Yogustus Caesar, GetAFix, 17 Oct, 2004)

Chico Marx in a mundu? Well, not quite. Unlike the Marx Brothers' mock-Italian, this brand of Instant Tamlish is used even when no parody is intended. You'll find it in internet forums frequented by Tamilians, where people tend to write as they speak. Here, the vowel tags merely reproduce the inflections of the spoken language. Some random examples from the TFM and Sysindia forums:

Romba correctu!

Original-a illa duplicate-aa?

Iyya naga sonna sonathu than correctu mathavanga yellam corruptu.

Anyway, ippa noveloda plot tighta irukku.

It sounds like a combo of maalkouns + chandrakouns, correctaa ?

Telugu films are stepsu, dancu & fightu. That's all.

Yes, that's about it. I'm going to watch TV now, see if I can catch Righta? Wronga? on the Tamil channel.