Hinglish

Hinglish, a portmanteau of Hindi and English, is the macaronic hybrid use of English and South Asian languages, involving code-switching between these languages whereby they are freely interchanged within a sentence or between sentences.[1] While the name is based on the Hindi language, it does not refer exclusively to Hindi, but "is used in India, with English words blending with Punjabi, and Hindi, and also within British Asian families to enliven standard English."[1][2]

History

Since the time of British Raj, there has been a history of Indic words making place in English. Raj is a Hindi word for 'rule', "British Raj" itself is an example of one of the earliest Hinglish words. Guru, yoga, ghee, pyjama and thug are a few examples. Similarly, many English loan words also came to stay in India. Time, Late, School, College, District, State etc. are example of few words which have naturalised in Indic languages, long before the word Hinglish came into being.

In recent years, due to an increase in literacy and connectivity, the interchange and mixing of languages has reached new heights, especially in social media, leading to the recognition of Hinglish. And typing Indic languages using English keyboard is also helped for increasing use of Hinglish words in social media.

Going mainstream


A dictionary for Hinglish has also been published.[1]

Users

This is more commonly seen in urban and semi-urban centers of the Hindi-speaking states of India,[3] and is spoken even by the Indian diaspora. Many speakers do not realize that they are incorporating English words into Hindi sentences or Hindi words into English sentences. David Crystal, a British linguist at the University of Wales, projected in 2004 that at about 350 million, the world's Hinglish speakers may soon outnumber native English speakers.[4]

Hinglish is also affecting the English spoken in the United Kingdom, with the adaptation of words and expressions used by Indian immigrants and their offspring into colloquial English in the United Kingdom.[1]

Aspects and examples

Hinglish refers not just to the use of Indic language words into English, but vice versa also.

Example of using Indic Words in an English sentence: How to Speak Pukka.

Some examples of Hinglish vocabulary are:[1][5]

Hinglish is also the way English is pronounced by people speaking Hindi. Example of Hinglish:

The above pronunciations are typically used in rural areas. The urban population uses the Indian English pronunciation.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Coughlan, Sean (8 November 2006). "It's Hinglish, innit?" (PDF). BBC News Magazine. Archived from the original on 25 February 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
  2. ↑ "Hinglish is the new NRI and global language". The Times of India. 2 February 2015. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
  3. ↑ Thakur, Saroj; Dutta, Kamlesh; Thakur, Aushima (2007). Davis, Graeme; Bernhardt, Karl, eds. "Hinglish: Code switching, code mixing and indigenization in multilingual environment". Lingua et Linguistica. Journal of Language and Linguistics. 1.2: 112–6. ISBN 978-1-84799-129-4.
  4. ↑ Scott Baldauf (November 23, 2004). "A Hindi-English jumble, spoken by 350 million". Christian Science Monitor.
  5. ↑ O'Brien, Jane (13 December 2012). "Learn English online: How the internet is changing language". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 14 December 2012.

Further reading

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