A Hindi-English jumble, spoken by 350 million

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Christian Science Monitor,

from the November 23, 2004 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1123/p01s03-wosc.html

A Hindi-English jumble, spoken by 350 million

By Scott Baldauf  Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

GURGAON, INDIA - Turn on any Indian television station these days and
you're likely to hear things like "Hungry kya?" and "What your bahana is?"
Or one of your friends might ask you to "pre-pone" your dinner plans or
accuse you of "Eve-teasing." No, you didn't mishear them. These and
countless other new words and phrases are part of the fastest-growing
language in the country: Hinglish.

The mix of Hindi and English is the language of the street and the college
campus, and its sound sets many parents' teeth on edge. It's a bridge
between two cultures that has become an island of its own, a distinct
hybrid culture for people who aspire to make it rich abroad without
sacrificing the sassiness of the mother tongue. And it may soon claim more
native speakers worldwide than English.

Once, Indians would ridicule the jumbled language of their expatriate
cousins, the so-called ABCDs - or the American-Born Confused Desi. (Desi
means countryman.) Now that jumble is hip, and turning up in the oddest
places, from television ads to taxicabs, and even hit movies, such as
"Bend it Like Beckham" or "Monsoon Wedding."

"Before, advertisements used to be conceived in English and then just
translated into Hindi almost as an afterthought," says Ashok Chakravarty,
head of the creative division of Publicis India, an advertising firm
outside New Delhi. But that method doesn't work for the vast majority of
Indians who know only a smattering of English. "You may be understood, but
not vibed with. That's why all the multinational corporations now speak
Hinglish in their ads."

To get an idea of what the tamasha (ruckus) is all about, listen to a
typical Hinglish advertisement. Pepsi, for instance, has given its global
"Ask for more" campaign a local Hinglish flavor: "Yeh Dil Maange More"
(the heart wants more). Not to be outdone, Coke has its own Hinglish
slogan: "Life ho to aisi" (Life should be like this).

Domino's Pizza, which offers Indian curiosities such as the chicken tikka
pizza, asks its customers "Hungry kya?" (Are you hungry?), and McDonald's
current campaign spoofs the jumbled construction of Hinglish sentences
with its campaign, "What your bahana is?" (Bahana means excuse, as in,
"What's your excuse for eating McDonald's and not home-cooked food?")
None of this would have happened 10 years ago, says Sushobhan Mukherjee,
strategic planning director for Publicis India.

"My grandfather's generation grew up thinking, 'If I can't speak English
correctly, I won't speak it,' " says Mr. Mukherjee. "Now, power has
shifted to the young, and they want to be understood rather than be
correct." Hinglish has a buzz now, adds Sanjay Sipahimalani, executive
creative director of Publicis India. "Ten years ago, if somebody used
Hindi in an otherwise perfect English sentence, I don't think that we
would have hired him. It would be a sign of a lack of education. Now it's
a huge asset."

The turning point that made Hinglish hip, say cultural observers, was the
introduction of cable television in the mid-1990s. Eagerly anticipated
music channels like MTV and its competitor, Channel V, originally provided
only English music, presented by foreign-born Indian video jockeys who
spoke only in English. Outside metro areas, the response was not
encouraging. Then Channel V started a new campaign that included comic
spoofs on the way Indians speak English. By 1996, Channel V's penetration
of the Indian market went from under 10 percent to over 60 percent.

"There are two trends going on here," says Vikram Chandra, a TV newscaster
for NDTV news channel in New Delhi. "One is that [businesses] have to
Indianize in order to survive in this market.... At the same time, most
Indians recognize that to succeed and do well, English is where it's at."
In effect, Indians are trying to have it both ways.

English coaching institutes are now burgeoning nationwide. Yet what
Indians speak at work is not necessarily what they speak at home, with
their friends, or on the bus. Indeed, David Crystal, a British linguist at
the University of Wales, recently projected that at about 350 million, the
world's Hinglish speakers may soon outnumber native English speakers.
While most of the Indians who come to the West to work in the
information-technology sector speak English, the sheer numbers of
Hinglishmen in IT makes it almost inevitable that some Hinglish words will
get globalized.

The subcontinental tug of Hinglish is already being felt abroad. In
Britain, the No. 1 favorite meal is an Anglo-Indian invention called
Chicken Tikka Masala. And last week, Microsoft announced the company's
decision to launch local versions of Windows and Office software in all 14
of India's major languages, including Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. Indians
have always had a way with English words. Sexual harassment, for instance,
is known as "Eve-teasing." Mourners don't give condolences, they
"condole." And then there's "pre-pone," the logical but nonexistent
opposite of "post-pone": "I'm busy for dinner. Can we pre-pone for lunch
instead?"

Different Indian cities have their own Hinglish words. In Bombay, men who
have a bald spot with a fringe of hair all around are called "stadiums,"
as in "Hey stadium, you're standing on my foot." For the vast majority of
Indians who have never studied English, and indeed, who may be barely
literate, Hinglish is a foreign language that allows them to connect with
their immediate world.

"In Bombay, everybody knows the word 'tension,' " says Shaziya Khan, a
young advertising whiz in Bombay. "My maid one day told me, 'Aajkul humko
bahut tension hain.'" (Translation: These days, I feel a lot of tension.)
"She understands, and I understand. It really works."

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