World Language Communications Blog

Hinglish: A Case of Reverse Colonization?

BY PATRICK COX



A sign in Wagah, India, near the Pakistani border (Photo: PP Yoonus/Wikimedia)

English is something of an open-source language: the people who speak it shape it, and add to it. No one has the authority to exclude words.

That affects how English is spoken by its hundreds of millions of native speakers; also, how it’s spoken by those who come to it as a second or third language.

Those speakers are having a profound influence on English. Especially in country as large as India.

Many young Indians mash up English with Hindi, Punjabi or Bengali. The result is known as Hinglish.

Hinglish comes in many forms. Sometimes, you conjugate a Hindi word with an English conjugation. Sometimes you put together a 50-50 sentence—half Hindi, half English. And sometimes you “throw a choice Hindi word into a sentence that without it would lack the right amount of masala,” says Anand Giridharadas, author of India Calling.

If you’ve seen a Bollywood film, you’ve probably heard some Hinglish. Giridharadas believes that Hinglish, in this modern form, reflects India’s new-found confidence.

But what about when English first rubbed shoulders with Hindi and India’s other languages? The British ruled India for nearly 200 years. In 1886, at the height of British power, a dictionary called Hobson-Jobson was published. It was subtitled: “A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms etymological, historical, geographical and discursive.”

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