The Adaptable English Language

As a little kid, our weekends always included the hour long drive to Flushing, NY which was considered to be a westernized version of India. There, you were surrounded by oodles of Indian “aunties” and “uncles” (which, by the way, I am not related to) speaking English with such spicy flavor that even the most learned would envy.

Most people have considered English to be a universally consistent language. Centuries ago this language was forced upon several nations, India being one of them. Now, I have to warn you that India is a country that has fought back, albeit passively, but still fought back. Even when foreigners tried to instill the English language in our schools, we still fought back.


All right, maybe we didn’t actually fight back so much since we now have more than a 100 million Indians speaking the language. However...we have definitely morphed it to our little brown heart’s content. We've created our own unique phrases, mispronunciations, slang, euphemisms and politically incorrect idioms. And by gosh, we're darn proud of it! Jai Hind!! or should I say Jai Ho!!

As a whole, the world has to agree that we are a very creative bunch. Our creativity being mostly evident in our own special version of English. For example, we are very fond of adding English suffixes to our Indian words. Take for instance the use of the suffix “–ism”. Add that to any Indian word, mostly Hindi and you have the makings of a new expression like “gundaism”. For those of you who are not as scholarly as I am with English, gundaism describes an anti-social behavior of a person. These suffixes are great when you want to create new usages for Indian terms. We also make ample use of prefixes. Take the “post” out “postpone” and replace it with a “pre” and create the new word “prepone”. This newfangled word can be used in many settings; such as describing a party, which has been moved up in time.

Something must be said for our love of plurals. Indians love to pluralize. No, I’m not taking about our census again. We’re still on the topic of words. We take delight in adding an “s” to the end of words that don’t really need it, only to come up with words such as "furnitures", "deers" and "woods". Unfortunately, that love is not constant because we leave the “s” behind in words such as pant. “I can’t find my blue pant”.

Another literary talent we have is in creating compound words. Unlike our American counterparts, we don’t have plain-Jane cousins. Instead, we have the super-duper cousin-brothers and cousin-sisters. This is great because any regular non-Indian would have a terrible time trying to differentiate the sex of a person by the mere mention of a name. Take my name for instance. “Ammu” is clearly a girl’s name. Any Indian….well, South Indian anyway….wouldn’t dare think that level headed parents would name their son such a girlie name. But tell this to any non-Indian and they would think that you are trying your best to imitate a cow….ammoooooooo. Because we feel your pain (Indians are also a caring bunch), we created these words to make it easier for you to recognize whether our cousins are male or female. Oh, that’s ok……You’re welcome!

Aside from making words longer than necessary, we also took it upon ourselves to shorten others. While many consider Obama to be a really enthusiastic guy. We think he is a real enthu guy. Yep, you got it! Enthusiasm is now called enthu. As a result of such morphing, it can be used in new and exciting ways.

I can hear your heart pounding with excitement right now.

“Enthu” can be used as an adjective, as I just did, or as noun. “That guy has a lot of enthu!” In normal English, you would have to use two different words, whereas in Indian-English (my own compound word) you get two for the price of one. You see the advantage here, people?

“Hus”, “desp” and “senti” are also words that were shortened. Can you guess what their original form was? No? Try “husband”, “desperate” and “sentimental”. Yep, may sound a little silly in the beginning but try typing them over and over and you’ll see how many key strokes you can save by using the simplified version.

So you see, morphing is not a bad idea. As long as you respect the language and have the interest to learn a good part of it, you’re well off. And don’t worry, Indians are not the only ones to play around with this language. Americans, Europeans Asians and everyone else in between have taken this form of communication and instantaneously adapted it to suit the local circumstances.

Go ahead and create your own slang and euphemisms. It just might catch on!