Hinglish goes global

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Anthea,

Thanks for clarifying things on this complex issue!

HS

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Anthea Fraser Gupta wrote:

> Bit of a mixture of terms here....
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> 'Hinglish' is usually used for a code-mixed variety with Hindi and English, which can be seen in many chat rooms, such as this extract:
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> ’’.... pesh hai aapke saamne, ek sundar, sasta wa tikaau advertisement! hallan ki hamare paas funda hai ek, par is pe based ads, woh to hain anek.is ad mein, you’ll get gloss, glamour, fun, jokes(mostly PJ’S),saare movie staars, looong-loong gaanewale jingles, ...in total, everything! ’’
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> hey woh toh theek hai, but, what about the product details, ji?
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>               ’’ hain, whatz ’dat? arrey bhai, fikar not. we are giving the audiences a dekko of their favourite actors, naah! so, who cares ki product mein kya gun hai. kyun, hai na, so, whatz there?’’*******************************************************************
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> You also get it in popular journalism and a lot of popular music and verse, such as this (taken from a chat room -- goes on for verses):
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> male:
> You are my chicken fry
> You are my fish fry
> You are my chicken fry
> You are my fish fry
> kabhii naa kahnaa kudiye bye bye bye
> kabhii naa kahnaa kudiye bye bye bye
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> female:
> You are my samosa
> You are my masala dosa
> You are my samosa
> You are my masala dosa
> main na kahoongi mundiyaa bye bye bye
> main na kahoongi mundiyaa bye bye bye
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> Now these two languages might be the two languages official at National Level in India, but Hindi is also a regional language, and using 'Hindi' to mean 'Indian' isn't on. Bengalis and Tamils (inter alia) are not prone to mix English and Hindi like this, though they can usually understand it. Many of the examples in the article (e.g. Eve-teasing) are pan-Indian English, nothing to do with Hindi. And obviously the experience of being Bangalored is more a British than an Indian one.  The words are a mixture of Standard English expressions and the extremely colloquial.
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> Nor is Hindi the dominant South Asian language in the UK. And just because a word used in English looks like a Hindi word doesn't mean it got to English from Hindi -- it could be from a related language. 'Chuddies' (most usual spelling here) were introduced to the UK by Meera Syal and her team in the satirical series 'Goodness Gracious Me', in the catchphrase 'Kiss my chuddies'. It seems to owe more to Gujarati than Hindi.
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> I don't know where mistakes come in, but not all is Hindi that is Indian.....
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> Anthea Fraser Gupta (yeah -- that's the Bengali Gupta. Husband's surname)
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> School of English, University of Leeds
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