Indian English refers to the
dialects or varieties of
English spoken primarily in
India, and/or by first generation
Indian diaspora elsewhere in the world. This dialect evolved due to
British colonial rule of India for nearly two hundred years. The British rulers were more interested in administering and making money from Indian labour than teaching the Queen's English to Indians. English is the
co-official language of India, which has the world's
largest English-speaking population.
Variations in the pronunciation of several
phonemes are affected by the regional tongues (see
Languages of India) across the
Indian subcontinent, the greatest distinction being that between
South India,
Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh; and the region of
North India and
Pakistan. Several idiomatic forms crossing over from Indian literary and vernacular language also have made their way into the English used by the masses. Given India's diversity, however, there is indeed a general homogeneity in syntax and vocabulary that can be found among speakers across South Asia. In
upper-class families, English is typically very close to
Received Pronunciation, while still retaining hints of a uniquely Indian flavour.
Indian English literature Formal British English is preferred over the layman's Indian English in educated Indian circles and higher Indian writing. Middle and upper-class Indians, especially those with greater and wider exposure to the West through books,
Electronic Media (such as television or movies) and travel, tend to speak grammatically-standard English. English is an
official language of central and some state governments in India. What is characterised as Indian English is not considered "correct usage" by either government-related institutions (such as offices and schools) or educated Indians who prize 'proper' English. Indian schools still teach grammar from (frequently older) British textbooks like
Wren & Martin or J. C. Nesfield (1898): the grammar of higher
British English is considered the only correct one. Efforts by the
Oxford University Press to publish a dictionary of Indian English resulted in abject failure since customers in India preferred the 'proper' British dictionary.
The distinct evolution of regional variations in contemporary usage has led to terms such as
Hinglish (
Hindi + English) ,
Tanglish (
Tamil + English) and Minglish (
Marathi + English). These terminologies are often referred to in a humorous way, but at times they also have a derogatory connotation, with each region or stratum of society having fun at the expense of others.
Hinglish,
Tanglish,
Bonglish (
Bengali + English) and other unnamed variations are particularly capitalised and made popular in the field of advertising. Here, the aim of reaching a large cross-section of society is fulfilled by such double-coding. There are thus many borrowed words from Indian languages that do find their way into popular writing, advertisements and newspapers, not to mention TV spots and shows.
"An Indian English Grammar" In spite of the great stress on "good" English in
higher circles, the layman's spoken variety, Indian English, is widespread and well-known for its many eccentricities. For this reason, "grammar of Indian English" must be taken with a
grain of salt. Indian accents vary greatly from those leaning more towards a purist British to those leaning more towards a more 'vernacular' (Indian language) -tinted speech (one of the reasons for this is that in Indian schools, almost no attention is given to the "Received Pronunciation", but rather to written English). The most ubiquitous instance of modified sounds is the morphing of
alveolar English
/d/,
/t/, and
/ɹ/ sounds to more
retroflex variants (
[ɖ],
[ʈ], and
[ɻ] respectively). South Indians tend to curl the tongue more for
/l/ and
/n/, while
Bengalis (from both India and Bangladesh) and Biharis often substitute
[dʒ] for
/z/(as in 'jero' instead of 'zero'). Subcontinentals, especially those from the
Sindh (of both India and Pakistan), have the habit of changing
/w/ to
/v/ (as in 'ven' instead of 'when') or vice versa ("I will pay with Weeza" for "...Visa"). Both may also become
[ʋ].
The important features of phonological differences between Indian English and
Received Pronunciation (RP) of the
London region (and even with most other dialects of Standard English) include:
In total, such discrepancies exist in General Indian English because, first, Indians tend to look up to their own phonologies for the nearest approximations of
English phonemes, and second, because they by and large tend to follow
English spelling. By comparison to English, all Indian scripts are highly
phonemic alpha-syllabic scripts, and English (in
Roman script).
Reference: Varshney, R.L., "An Introductory Textbook of Linguistics and Phonetics", 15th Ed. (2005), Student Store, Bareilly. Many native languages of India (including Hindi itself) lack the
voiced postalveolar fricative (
/ʒ/). Typically,
/z/ or
/dʒ/ is substituted, e.g.
treasure /trɛ.zəːr/, and in the south Indian variants, with
/ʃ/ as in '
shore', e.g.
treasure /trɛ.ʃər/.
Standard Hindi and most other vernaculars do not differentiate between
/v/ (
voiced labiodental fricative) and
/w/ (
voiced labiovelar approximant). Instead, most Indians use a frictionless
labio-dental approximant for words with either sound. So
wine is pronounced like
vine.
All consonants are distinctly doubled in General Indian English wherever the spelling suggests so. e.g.,
drilling /dril.liŋg/.
Inability to pronounce certain (especially word-initial)
consonant clusters by people of rural backgrounds. This is usually dealt with by epenthesis. e.g.,
school /is.kuːl/.
All major native languages of India lack interdental fricatives (
/θ/ and
/ð/; spelled with
th). Usually, the
aspirated voiceless dental plosive /tʰ/ is substituted for
/θ/ and the unaspirated
voiced dental plosive /d/ is substituted for
/ð/. This can create confusions like
themselves being heard by native
English speakers as
damsels.
In RP, word-initial and
syllable initial /p/ /t/ /k/ have aspirated and unaspirated allophones, but in native Indian languages (except Tamil), the distinction between aspirated and unaspirated plosives is and phonemic. Generally, Indian English speakers use the unaspirated voiceless plosives
/p/,
/t/, and
/k/ although they may deal with the allophones as separate phonemes, which is not as apparent to native speakers.
A common feature of General Indian English is the use of retroflex
plosives [ʈ] and
[ɖ] instead of the corresponding alveolar plosives of English
[t] and
[d]. In Indian languages there are two entirely distinct sets of coronal plosives: one
dental and the other retroflex. To the Indian ears, the English alveolar plosives sound more retroflex than dental. In
devanagari script of Hindi, all alveolar plosives of English are transcribed as their retroflex counterparts. One good reason for this is that unlike most other native Indian languages, Hindi does not have
true retroflex plosives (Tiwari, [1955] 2001). The so-called retroflexes in Hindi are actually articulated as apical
post-alveolar plosives, sometimes even with a tendency to come down to the alveolar region. So a Hindi speaker normally cannot distinguish the difference between their own apical post-alveolar plosives and English's alveolar plosives. However, languages such as Tamil have
true retroflex plosives, wherein the articulation is done with the tongue curved upwards and backwards at the
roof of the mouth. This also causes (in parts of
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar) the
/s/ preceding alveolar
/t/ to allophonically change to
[ʃ] (
/stɒp/ →
/ʃʈop/). Mostly in south India, some speakers allophonically further change the voiced retroflex plosive to voiced
retroflex flap, and the nasal
/n/ to a nasalised retroflex flap.
RP English is a
stress-timed language, and word
stress is an important feature of Received Pronunciation. Indian-English speakers regularly put the stress accents at the wrong syllables, or accentuate all the syllables of a long English word, since stress is not considered an essential part of pronunciation by them (Indian native languages are actually
syllable-timed languages like Latin and French). Also, Indian English speakers speak English with a pitch-accent, which makes Indian-English sound like a
sing-song voice to non-Indian English speakers. Indians also have problems with other supra-segmental features of English.
Sometimes, Indian speakers interchange
/s/ and
/z/, especially when plurals are being formed. It suffices to note that in Hindi (but not Urdu) and Sanskrit,
/z/ is not a phoneme (as also any other voiced sibilant). So
/z/ may even be pronounced as
/dʒ/ by people of rural backgrounds. Again, in dialects like
Bhojpuri, all instances of
/ʃ/ are spoken like
[s], a phenomenon which is also apparent in their English. Exactly the opposite is seen for many
Bengalis.
In case of the postalveolar affricates
/tʃ/ /dʒ/, the native languages like Hindi have corresponding affrictaes articulated from the palatal region, rather than postalveolar, and they have more of a stop component than fricative; this is reflected in their English.
While retaining
/ŋ/ in the final position, Indian speakers usually add a
[g] after it. Hence
/riŋ.iŋ/ →
/riŋ.giŋg/ (
ringing).
Syllabic /l/,
/m/ and
/n/ are usually replaced by the VC clusters
[əl],
[əm] and
[ən] (as in
button /buʈ.ʈən/), or if a
high vowel precedes, by
[il] (as in
little /liʈ.ʈil/). Syllable nuclei in words with the spelling
er (a
schwa in RP and an r-colored schwa in
GA) are also replaced VC clusters. e.g.,
meter,
/miːtə(ɹ)/ →
/miːʈər/.
General Indian English has long
monophthongs /eː/ and
/oː/ instead of R.P. glided
diphthongs /eɪ/ and
/əʊ/; this variation is quite valid in General American English.
Many Indian English speakers do not make a clear distinction between
/ɛ/ and
/æ/ nor between
/ɒ/ and
/ɔː/. (
cot-caught merger).
The RP vowels
/ʌ/,
/ə/ and
/ɜː/ are all realized as
/ə/ in Indian English.
In RP,
/r/ occurs only before a vowel. But much of General Indian English uses some sort of
/r/ in almost all positions in words as dictated by the spellings. Indian speakers do not typically use the
retroflex approximant /ɻ/ for
r, which is common for American English speakers.
Indian speakers convert
gh digraphs to aspirated
voiced velar plosive /gʰ/. eg.,
ghost /gʰoːst/. But
rough,
dough, etc. are pronounced as in RP.
English words borrowed from
French are pronounced in RP with a proper
French pronunciation, but in India, such words are sometimes pronounced according to the rules of
English pronunciation. e.g.,
bouquet /bu.kɛt/ or
/bau kwɛt/.
Many Indian speakers always pronounce
the as
/ðiː/, irrespective of the fact whether the
definite article comes before a vowel or a consonant, or whether it is stressed or not. Similarly, they pronounce
a as
/eː/ (always) and never as
/ə/.
Phonology of Indian English Grammar, idioms and usage in Indian English John Lawler of the
University of Michigan observes the following anomalies in the
grammar of Indian English:
The
progressive tense in stative verbs:
I am understanding it. She is knowing the answer.; an influence of traditional
Hindi grammar, it is more common in northern states.
Variations in noun number and determiners:
He performed many charities. She loves to pull your legs. Prepositions:
pay attention on, discuss about, convey him my greetings. Most prepositions of English are direct mental translations of the approximate postpositions of Hindi, but the Hindi-speakers fail to note that there isn't always a
one-to-one correspondence.
Tag questions: The use of
"isn't it?" and
"no?" as general
question tags, as in
You're going, isn't it? instead of
You're going, aren't you?, and
He's here, no? ('na' often replaces 'no': another influence of Hindi, this time colloquial, common all across the North, West, and East--the South replaces it with the 'ah' sound, as in
Ready, ah?, an influence of colloquial
Tamil and
Kannada.)
Word order:
They're late always. My all friends are waiting. Yes and
no agreeing to the form of a question, not just its content -- A:
You didn't come on the bus? B:
Yes, I didn't."
Use of the indefinite article
a before words starting with vowels (usually a
slip of the tongue). In addition to Lawler's observations, other unique patterns are also standard and will frequently be encountered in Indian English:
The past
perfect tense used in verbs where
International English speakers would use the past simple.
I had gone for
I went. Use of
would instead of
will as in "I would be going to New York this weekend".
Use of the words
but or
only as intensifiers such as in: "
I was just joking but." or "
It was she only who cooked this rice." Or even "
I didn't go only" to mean "I didn't end up going after all." (Influenced by
Hindi syntax.)
Anglicisation of Indian words especially in
Chennai by adding "ify" to a local
Tamil word.
Use of yaar, machaa, abey, arey in an English conversation between Indians, mainly by people of native Hindi-speaking origin; 'da', 'machaa' is more frequently used in the South.
Use of the word
ki (
Hindi and
Marathi) to mean, loosely,
that, such as in "What I mean is
ki we should adopt this plan instead." (Seen mainly in North and West India.)
Idiomatic English for quantification in use of preposition "of", as in "
There is so much of happiness in being honest."
Use of the plural
ladies for a single lady or a woman of respect, as in "There was a
ladies at the phone."
Use of "open" and "close" instead of switch/turn on/off, as in "Open the air conditioner" instead of "Turn on the air conditioner", and "Open your shirt" for "Take off your shirt." This construction is also found in
Quebec English.
Use of "hope" where there is no implication of desire but merely expectation: "We don't want rain today but I hope it will rain." (Used mainly by people from the South Indian state of
Andhra Pradesh)
Use of "off it" and "on it" instead of "switch it off" and "switch it on."
Use of "current went" and "current came" for "The power went out" and "The power came back"
Use of "y'all" for "you all" or "all of you", as used in
Southern American English, especially by
Anglo-Indians.
Swapping around the meanings of "slow" and "soft" as in "I shall speak slower for you" (actually means I will speak softly) or "make the fan softer" (actually means make the fan go slower/ reduce its speed)
Creation of nonsensical, rhyming double-words to denote generality of idea or act, a 'totality' of the word's denotation, as in "No more ice-cream-fice-cream for you!", "Let's go have some chai-vai (tea, "tea and stuff")." or "There's a lot of this fighting-witing going on in the neighbourhood." (Prevalent mainly in Hindi- and Punjabi-speaking states.) This usage is not unknown in other
English-speaking countries, e.g., Fran Drescher's autobiography "Cancer Schmancer".
Use of "
baazi"/"
baaji" or "-
giri" for the same purpose, as in "business-baazi" or "cheating-giri." (Also prevalent mainly in Hindi-speaking states.)
Use of word "
wallah" to denote occupation or 'doing of/involvement in doing' something, as in "The taxi-wallah overcharged me.", "The grocery-wallah sells fresh fruit." or "He's a real music-wallah: his CD collection is huge."
Use of the word
maane (
Bengali) , "Yani" (Urdu) and
matlab (
Hindi/
Urdu) to mean, loosely, "meaning" ("What I mean is..."), as in "
The problem with your idea, maane
, what I feel is missing, is ki
it does not address the problem of overstaffing." or "
Your explanation, matlab
, your feeble attempt at one, was sorely lacking in cohesiveness."
Overuse of the words "Generally"/"Actually"/"Obviously"/"Basically" in the beginning of a sentence.e.g "Actually I am not feeling well."
Use of the word "
since" instead of "
for" in conjunction with periods of time, as in "
I have been working since four years" instead of "
I have been working for four years" or "
I have been working since four years ago". This usage is more common among speakers of North Indian languages such as
Hindi where the words for both "
since" and "
for" are the same.
Confusion, especially among North Indians, between the use of
till and
as long as, as in "Till you haven't finished your homework, you will not get dinner." This is again directly traceable to
Hindi grammar.
Use of the word "
gift" as a verb : You are gifting me a new cell phone?
Use of "I can able to cook" instead of "I can cook" - a widespread grammatical
error in India.
Use of "Can you drop me?" and "We will drop her first" instead of "Can you drop me off?" and "We will drop her off first"
Omission of the definite article: e.g. "Let's go to city" instead of "Let's go to the city"
Usage of "out of hundred" instead of per cent: "He got hundred out of hundred" instead of "He got a hundred" or "He got one hundred per cent".
Pronunciation of "
h" as "hech" in South India.
Use of the Latin word "
cum", meaning "with", as in "Welcome to the gymnasium
cum swimming pool building." This was common in the past in British English.
In South India, phrases such as "that and all", or "this and all" are used roughly to convey the meaning "all of that (stuff)" or "regarding that". e.g: A: "Can I pay you back later? I don't have my wallet." B: "That and all I don't know. I need the money now."
Use of "the same" instead of "it", as in "I heard that you have written a document on .... Could you send me the same?" (this again used to be standard British English but now appears old-fashioned).
Use of "kindly" instead of "please" - although grammatically correct in British English, it sounds formal or pompous in spoken English.
Use of "right?", a translation of Hindi
kya, at the end of a sentence.
Kya is also encountered in Indian English.
Grammar tweaks Mast meaning great. "
Mast hai" meaning "It's great"
"
Your good
name please?": "What is your name?", carryover from
Hindi expression "Shubh-naam", literally meaning "auspicious name". This is similar to the way Japanese refer to the other person's name with an honorific "O-" prefix, as in "O-namae" instead of the simple "namae" when referring to their own name. It is also an indication that the questioner wants to know the person's formal or
legal given name, as opposed to the pet name s/he would be called by close friends and family.
"
Out of station" to mean "out of town". This phrase has its origins in the posting of army officers to particular 'stations' during the days of the East India Company.
"
Join duty" to mean "reporting to work for the first time". "
Rejoin duty" is to come back to work after a vacation.
"
Hello, What do you want?": used by some when answering a
phone call, not perceived as impolite by most Indians
"
Tell me": used when answering the phone, meaning "How can I help you?"
"
send it across" instead of "send it over", as in "send the bill across to me" instead of "send the bill over to me".
"
order for food" instead of "order food", as in "Let's order for sandwiches".
"
What a nonsense
/silly
you are!" or "
Don't be doing such nonsense any more.": occasional - idiomatic use of nonsense/silly as nouns (although this use of nonsense is not uncommon in British English).
"
back" replacing "
ago" when talking about elapsed time, as in "
I met him five years back" rather than "
I met him five years ago." (Though this too is not uncommon in British English)
"
freak out" is meant to have fun, as in "
let's go to the party and freak out."
"
make out" instead of "
figure out", as in "
Did you make out what he was saying?."
"
pass out" is meant to graduate, as in "
I passed out of the university in 1995."
"
go for a toss" is meant to go haywire or to flop, as in "
my plans went for a toss when it started raining heavily."
"funny" is meant to replace not only "odd"/"strange" but "rude"/"precocious"/"impolite" as well. "That man was acting really funny with me, so I gave him a piece of my mind"
"
on the anvil" is used often in the Indian press to mean something is about to appear or happen. For example, a headline might read "New roads on the anvil".
"
tight slap" to mean "hard slap".
Idioms and popular phrases Referring to elders, strangers or anyone meriting respect as "'jee'"/"'ji'" (suffix) as in "
Please call a taxi for Gupta-ji" (North, West and East India)
Use of prefixes "
Shree"/"
Shri" (Mr) or "
Shreemati"/"
Shrimati" (Ms/Mrs): Shri
Ravi Shankar or Shreemati Das Gupta.
As with Shree/Shreemati, use of suffixes "
Saahib/Sāhab" (Mr) and "
Begum" (Mrs)(Urdu) as in "Welcome to
India, Smith-saahib." or "Begum Sahib would like some tea."
Use of "Mr" and "Mrs" as common nouns. For example, "Jyoti's Mr stopped by yesterday" or "My Mrs is not feeling well".
Use of "Mr" with
first name. For example,
Ashok Kumar might be addressed as "Mr Ashok" instead of "Mr Kumar". This is logical and perhaps the only possible correct usage in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu, where most people don't use a surname.
Use of the English words 'uncle' and 'aunty' as
suffixes when addressing people such as distant relatives, neighbours, acquaintances, even total strangers (like shopkeepers) who are significantly older than oneself. E.g., "Hello, Vimala aunty!" In fact, in
Indian culture, children or teenagers addressing their friend's parents as
Mr Patel or
Mrs Patel (etc.) is considered unacceptable, perhaps even offensive—a substitution of
Sir/Ma'am is also not suitable except for teachers. On the contrary, if a person is
really one's uncle or aunt, he/she will usually not be addressed as "uncle"/"auntie", but with the name of the relation in the vernacular Indian language, even while conversing in English. It is interesting to observe that calling one's friends' parents auntie and uncle was also very common in Great Britain in the 1960s and 70s but has is much rarer today. For example, if a woman is one's mother's sister, she would not be addressed (by a Hindi speaker) as "auntie" but as
Mausi (Hindi: मौसी).
Use of
Respected Sir while starting a formal letter instead of
Dear Sir. Again, such letters are ended with non-standard greetings, such as "Yours respectfully", or "Yours obediently", rather than the standard "Yours sincerely/faithfully/truly".
Use of "Baba" (father) while referring to an elderly male, such as "No Baba, just try and understand, I cannot come today".
In lengthy texts, such as newspaper articles, a person is referred to with his name, position, department and company without prepositions and often without the first name spelled out, leaving just the initial: "D. Singh, manager,
department function ("tech sales"),
company name". In South India, especially in Tamil Nadu, where surnames are not used, the initial stands for one's father's first name, e.g., in M. Karthik, the initial M could stand for Mani, Karthik's father's first name.
the phrase of 'the concerned person' is widely used in oral Indian English.
'A child was born of wed lock' in Indian English has the oppositive meaning of its English origin.
Titles (of respect; formal) Casual use of words
yaar (friend, buddy, dude, man, mate),
bhai (brother) and
bhaiyya (elder brother) much as with the
American English 'man' or 'dude', as in " Arey! C'mon, yaar! Don't be such a killjoy!", "Long time no see, bhai." or "Ay, bhaiyya! Over here!" Yaar is the equivalent of mate in Australian and British English. The word
boss is also sometimes used in this way, among friends but also to male strangers, as in "How much to go to the train station, boss?", or "Good to see you, boss."
Informal and sometimes coarse assignations of familial relationships to friends. For example,
machan in Chennai and
sala in Mumbai literally mean
brother-in-law, but are informally used by the youth to refer to each other. Targeted at a stranger, such words may take a derogatory meaning (like "sleeping with your sister").
Use of interjections
Arey! and
acchha! to express a wide range of emotions, usually positive though occasionally not, as in "Arey! What a good job you did!", "Accha, so that's your plan." or "Arey, what
bad luck, yaar!"
Use of the word "chal" (Hindi for the verb "walk") to mean the interjection "Ok", as in "Chal, I gotta go now" at the end of a phone call
Use of
T-K in place of O.K. when answering a question, as in "Would you like to come to the movie?" -- "T-K, I'll meet you there later." ("theek hai", literally "fine is", meaning "okay")
Use of
oof! to show distress or frustration, as in "Oof! The baby's crying again!"
Along with "oof!", there is also "oof oaf!" which is in a more whining voice which kind of means "oh, no!". Not many Indians will say this, but it is used widely in Hindi movies or
soap operas. The South Indian equivalent is "Aiyo!", expanded to "Aiyaiyo!" in proportion to the provocation. The latter phrase is the trademark of the South Indian, as caricatured in Hindi movies.
Use of "Wah" to express admiration, especially in musical settings, as in "Wah! Wah! You play the
sitar so well!"
Use of "just" and "simply" in a seemingly arbitrary manner in southern India, especially Kerala. e.g. Q:"Why did you do it?" A:"Simply!" or "Just I was telling to [sic] him.
"Lady's finger" means "Okra" (as in some other English-speaking countries). "Brinjal" means eggplant or aubergine.
"Hotel" means "restaurant" (as well as specifically "big hotel") in India: "I ate in the hotel". "Lodge" is used to refer to small hotels. Sometimes "Lodge" refers to a place where you stay (in rooms) and "Hotel" refers to a place where you eat.
"stepney" or "stepaney" refers to a car's spare tyre. It is also used to refer to a mistress (i.e., a "spare" wife!)
"specs" means spectacles (as in colloquial UK English).
"Dhap" means lie or
terminological inexactitude).
"cent per cent" means "100 per cent" as in "He got cent per cent in maths."
"centum" is also frequently used to refer to 100.
Overuse of the word "Please" as an interjection, often over-stressing the vowel. This could stem from "please" being implied within the
verb conjugation in Hindi, causing speakers to overcompensate for its absence in English.
Use of the verb "sit" in place of "live., e.g. "Where are you sitting?" for "Where do you live? (about one's location in a school or office but not home)"
High-End : (Supposedly) of very high quality (used sarcastically for work and people).
Anomalous usage Main articles: List of English words of Hindi origin, List of English words of Tamil origin, List of English words of Sanskrit origin, List of English words of Urdu origin, and List of English words of Malayalam origin Indians frequently inject words from Indian languages, such as
Marathi,
Bengali,
Kannada,
Hindi,
Punjabi,
Tamil, and
Urdu into English. While the currency of such words usually remains restricted to Indians and other
Indian subcontinentals, there are many which have been regularly entered into the
Oxford English Dictionary as their popularity extended into worldwide mainstream English. Some of the more common examples are "
jungle", "
bungalow", "
bandana", "
pyjamas"; others were introduced via the transmission of Indian culture, examples of which are "
mantra", "
karma", "
avatar", "
pundit" and "
guru". The lead character in the pop sitcom "
Dharma and Greg" has an Indian name "
Dharma".
Words unique to (i.e. not generally well-known outside
South Asia) and/or popular in India include those in the following by no means exhaustive list:
The book
Hobson-Jobson by
Henry Yule and
A. C. Burnell, first published in
1886, gives a glossary of colloquial
Anglo-Indian words.
batchmate or
batch-mate (Not classmate, but a schoolmate of the same grade)
cousin-brother (male
first cousin) &
cousin-sister (female first cousin); used conversely is
one's own brother/sister (of one's parent, as opposed to uncle or aunt; English brother/sister): most Indians live in
extended families and many do not differentiate even nominally between cousins and direct siblings.
crore (ten million) and
lakh (one hundred thousand)
Dicky/dickey the boot of a car
Double-confirm for re-confirm or just confirm.
eve teasing (catcalling - harassment of women)
foot overbridge (bridge meant for pedestrians)
godown (warehouse)
godman somewhat pejorative word for a person who claims to be divine or who claims to have supernatural powers
gully to mean a narrow lane or alley (from the Hindi word "gali" meaning the same).
Himalayan blunder (grave mistake)
mugging to mean studying hard or swotting, and having nothing to do with street crime
nose-screw or
nose-ring (woman's nose ornament)
opticals (eyeglasses)
pass-out to graduate from college
to
prepone (to advance, literally the opposite of 'postpone').
Ragging for fagging(UK)/hazing(US).
In tension for being concerned or nervous
time pass or
timepass to mean something that is good enough for killing time. For example, "The movie was not great, but timepass".
updation (used in out-sourcing to mean to update something, as in "I've completed the updation".)
upgradation (commonly used in
business communication instead of 'upgrade')
uptil used for or "up until".
upto (a shortening of "up to")
villi used for villainess, especially in South India.
would-be (fiancé/fiancée)
Colloquial and slang words used in Indian English Indian English literature India Regional Differences and Dialects in Indian English Indian subcontinent South Asia Pakistan Bangladesh Sri Lanka English language Indian films
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