Englishes in India - in all their glory

Eggplant and Potato Curry with Sambaar Powder

Dec 01, 2022

What prompted this post is both a conversation between my two littles in the car one morning recently, and the growing pressure of having to complete an academic paper on the topic in the next few weeks. So with this post, I’ll allow myself some more procrastination, in the hopes that what I pen here will fuel the other, more serious paper.

So the conversation between my littles. They were discussing our time in Frankfurt this summer, and the older little said something about “when we lived there….” My younger little immediately countered this with a “but we didn’t live there, Rehaan, we just stayed there for the summer.” Now why did I find this interesting? Because this, among many others, is one of the lexical distinctions I chose to examine for my PhD dissertation years and years ago. I had realized all that time ago, as I was busy compiling my corpus for the aforementioned tome, that in the circles I moved in, the two words were often in a way that I wasn’t familiar with. Not necessarily interchangeably. But that “stay” was used almost synonymously with “live”, and that in India, the the words didn’t make the temporary/permanent distinction that I was used to with other varieties of English. And it fascinated me that my 6-year old had gleaned the small difference in meaning between the two that is recognized in other varieties of English, most notably those in the traditional native English-speaking countries.

Now since then, I’ve written quite a bit on how English in India has become Indian. From lexical explorations, to grammatical explorations, to explorations of larger pieces of discourse. And it is all absolutely fascinating. I have mentioned a couple of the topics here – remember my piece on the Amul Butter advertisements?

So I thought that today, I’d give you a small glimpse into the sheer enormity of the varieties of English one encounters in urban India, a diversity which no existing model on World Englishes or International Englishes seems capable of doing justice. Plurality is essential to understanding India in every way – and the varieties of English in India are no exception. And that makes me wonder if we really need models (which linguists are very fond of) to explain everything. I wrote a paper a couple of years ago approaching this idea, and called it “Now we are having lot to think about, isn’t it?” A bit of a cheeky title in which I used three features stereotypical of the English used in India (verbs like have being used in the progressive, a lack of articles in certain quantifiers, and isn’t it used as an invariant tag). But it is also a title with which I wanted to suggest that while there is a definite need to go beyond identifying what makes the Englishes used in India Indian, different, proposing more models to either describe or predict variation and change wasn’t necessarily the answer. So. Where do we go from here? Well…where do I go from here?

And while I, doubtless, have to delve into the topic of models, of changing Englishes, of the realities in a terribly multi-faceted society much more seriously and…er…academically…in the next few weeks, let me just have some fun here. (And as an aside: I have wondered many times recently how one defines academic; whether and how that definition has changed. It is far easier for me to identify when something is not academic, but the idea of what exactly constitutes academic seems much more slippery. And with this pondering has come a necessary questioning of how relevant traditional notions of academic are in today’s changing world….a digression that I would like to explore more in the future)

Back to diversity in India, then. The Englishes in India are just as diverse as its populace. And how could they not be? Because they are used, if the statistics that 10% of Indians use English in some capacity are anywhere close to accurate, by more than 130 million people speaking numerous different first languages from different language families, from all walks of life, different religions, different cultures, different everything. So today, I want to provide you with just a glimpse here into that diversity. I’ll focus here not on the varieties of English resulting from a creative combination of two or more languages, the bilingual creativity I wrote about in the post on Amul Butter ads. Instead, I’ll focus on just trying to illustrate the sheer magnitude of range of the varieties of English used within the country, varieties that are vigorous and draw from local roots. Innumerable local roots.

There are, then, varieties that show the use of a verb like “live” instead of “stay.” Varieties that call on one to “kindly adjust” when squeezing in to an already terribly crowded bus. Or call on someone to “do the needful.” Varieties that ask one what another’s “good name” is; varieties in which a man refers to his spouse as “my son’s mother.” And then there are varieties that stray so far from what one might recognize as English, but still use English words, and, more importantly, still get their message across. And with all these varieties, the frequency of use of these features is great enough to warrant them being taken seriously – they are features of a variety, not merely errors. I mean, this idea of frequency of use is at the heart of World Englishes studies. And since I’m not writing a dissertation here, I’ll focus on the two extremes of the spectrum of variation, and leave you to imagine the variation in between.

So on the one extreme, you still have people who sound like a professor of Economics my dad had in 1954. He’d apparently come into class and make declarations like “There is no sartorial resplendency today because of the pluvial plenitude.” I don’t know if I have written about this sentence before; if I have, forgive the repetition, and enjoy it again. And as absurd as this sentence sounds, I’d wager there are plenty of people in India who still sound like this. And when I think of English in India sounding so very “proper”, a name that immediately comes to mind is Shashi Tharoor, a writer, politician, and intellectual, known very well all over India for his English prowess. It has been said that when Tharoor tweets something, all of India looks for a dictionary. Bit hyperbolic, but you get the drift. But while Tharoor’s English is replete with words like scripturient and snollygoster, he celebrates the English used in India as being a living, practical language used my millions of Indians every day. And he celebrates how it has changed to accommodate the needs of these Indians.

And there are those who are the creators and audience to the ad below, the people who aspire to “English Living.” The second page of the ad describes that this is a place for those who aim to recreate the “grandeur” of the “yesteryear”, and “relive the regal epoch.” This is an ad I found in the Deccan Herald when I was at my parents’ in April. Forgive the quality of the picture - I saw it as I was just about to leave for the airport, and this was the best I could do.

When first I came upon this ad in April, I was stupefied, to put it mildly. What, I wonder, do the creators of the ad, or their intended audience, picture the “regal epoch” to be? For Indians, I mean. Now there is a post on that waiting to be written. For now, let’s just imagine the variety of English they probably use. Or at least fancy themselves using.

And then at the other extreme, there are Englishes like these.

The proprietors of this place used whatever words they had at their disposal - the use of hotel for restaurant being something I have spoken about before - to get their message across. And in the next picture (below), these proprietors, unlike those of the first restaurant, clearly knew that porcine meat has a specific word - but given the influence from their first language, this word became Fork. Again, though, message understood.

Then there are barber signs like this one I came across somewhere in Bangalore:

In case you were wondering, “messes” translates to “massage.” But I don’t think I’ll be taking the kids to this place anytime soon.

And there are these pictures I took when driving around on one of my trips there. The first I took of a car in front of the car I was in, and…well…I can just leave it there, can’t I? The second was a sign in one of my cabs I rode in while in Bangalore.

I had to have a bit of a think when first I saw this. I decided it referred to the fact that the taxi cab driver didn’t want his customers to do their hair while in the car - don’t put a hair band in your hair while in this car - in an attempt to say “don’t leave your stray hairs messily strewn around in the taxi.”

And finally, there is this. This picture was found posted on a telephone pole somewhere in urban India, and then circulated all over social media. It was sent to me by a friend of mine a couple of years ago. It is one I have actually written about in a previous academic paper. Even I needed some “translation” with this one. The friend who sent it to me kindly obliged. It is an ad looking for “Main hero, side hero (supporting actor), main and side heroines, character roles (Corrector) for Politicians (Neta in Hindi; this is the only non-English word used in the ad), Inspectors and Villains. Male and female artists. Age 18-55. Shooting starts March 30 to April 3.

So is this English? I’d wager there are millions of people in India who would have NO problem understanding this ad. Probably a hell of a lot more who understand this than would understand the Shashi Tharoor of India. Or my father’s old Economics professor. So where do we draw the line? Do we need to?

So if we have these two extremes on a spectrum of variation, how many varieties do you think there are in between? How does one make sense of this? In a model? And perhaps more importantly, does one need to?

Much to think about for my larger paper. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks how that goes. Wish me luck.

Onto food, then.

Now as much as India has changed English to suit its needs, it has also changed the culinary world - made various world cuisines more Indian. I have spoken before about Indo-Chinese food, but today, let me give you a glimpse into Indo-Japanese food, originating, I’m proud to say, in my home. I don’t eat any seafood (I know, I know…) but my husband loves it, and I frequently cook it for him and the kids. So about a year ago, in an attempt to expand their growing palates, we introduced the littles to sushi. They weren’t big fans of raw fish yet, so my husband tried with smoked salmon. They loved it. And then my son came up with this great idea: Fried chicken sushi. Now I am positive that this exists somewhere else, but the specific idea he came up with is this: Curry leaf fried chicken sushi. I kid you not. I make a fried chicken that has been a favorite of his for a couple of years. The curry leaf flavor is intense – both because it is an important part of a brine (can’t really call it a marinade) that I create to soak the chicken in for 24-48 hours, and because along with the chicken, I fry many sprigs of curry leaves which flavor both the oil and the chicken. The result? Incredible fried chicken.

So my son asked why we couldn’t put pieces of the fried chicken into a sushi roll. No reason whatsoever, we replied, and we tried. Fabulous result.

Last week he turned 10, and had an entire week of meals (homemade) he requested. This has become a tradition for both kids, and one I am absolutely thrilled about. For his actual birthday meal, he asked for sushi. This time, not fried chicken sushi, but chicken curry sushi. Again, I kid you not. I make the kids a very simple chicken curry with lots of curry leaves and a couple of simple spices. Not much sauce. So this time, he wanted to experiment, he said, with putting small pieces of the chicken from the curry into the sushi roll. The result? So good that the kids wanted it for school the next day. And the day after.

Talk about breaking boundaries.

So am I giving you a recipe for one of these sushi-filling chicken dishes? Not yet. Simply because I haven’t had a chance to measure and write out proper recipes yet. One of these days.

So today, I go back to another very South Indian recipe, again, one that uses the sambaar powder from a few weeks ago as a spice blend. This time, a curry of potatoes and eggplant with sambaar powder. While the kids won’t eat the eggplant, they love the potato part. And as I mentioned with my last post, if you’d rather have a version of this without sambaar powder, let me know in the comments, and I’ll put together a spice blend you could use.

The picture below shows the variety of eggplant I like best for this dish. If, however, you don’t have access to this variety, by all means, use any variety you can find. When I lived in the US, I’d make dishes like this with the large eggplant typically found in American grocery stores. I found that that variety took a bit less cooking (more full of water), and so I reduced the cooking time a wee bit. Also, for this recipe, I choose to peel the potatoes simply because they are more palatable for the kids that way. If I were making it for just me and the husband, I wouldn’t peel them.

Chandri's Kitchen

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