Indian English

Introduction

India’s rich linguistic culture has influenced the Indian English Dialect in many ways. This dialect has incorporated features from multiple Indian languages, including phonological, grammatical, and lexical elements. In pronunciation, one will be able to hear things like retroflex sounds (consonant sounds made by curling the tip of your tongue backward to your hard palate). In grammar, Indian English exhibits certain tenses and the lexicon demonstrates the unique borrowings from the other Indian languages.

Background

English first arrived in India with Father Thomas Stephens, a missionary, in 1579.1 It was further cemented with the East India Company arriving in the early 1600s. Today, India makes up to ten percent of the global Anglophone population,2 which is considered by many to be a conservative prediction. According to a Lok Foundation survey, conducted in collaboration with Oxford University, twelve percent of urban citizens, forty-one percent of wealthier Indians, and only three percent of rural respondents all speak English.3 Their diverse culture adds to the unique aspects of Indian English which will be discussed in the following sections.

Pronunciation

  • Unaspirated /p/, /t/, and /k/. While aspirated sounds are accompanied by a puff of air, like the /p/ in the pot, unaspirated sounds are not, like the /p/ in split. In Indian English, the consonants /p/, /t/, and /k/ are pronounced aspiration, even in situations where they would be aspirated in other varieties of English.
    • India 1 | IDEA (0:25): “There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end.”
    • India 1 | IDEA (0:44): “Studying in the American University, I often come across people mocking about the Indian accent.”
    • India 1 | IDEA (0:52): “…but which is actually not the typical Indian accent, only because we have different languages and accents.”
    • India 9 | IDEA (1:25): “Before long, that itchy goose began to strut around the office like a lunatic, which made an unsanitary mess.”
  • Not a lot of R-dropping, but some from British influence.
  • Diphthongs make two distinct sounds (Diphthong vowel sounds like the vowel sounds in FACE, PRICE, and CHOICE).5
    • You Can Do It Speech (4:00): “And I stand here today promising the same that I will do everything in my power to make enough of an effect…”
    • You Can Do It Speech (1:19): “I know I shouldn’t be advising you, but I studied really hard.”
  • The FACE, GOAT, and GOOSE vowel sounds are monophthongs—they have a single, distinct sound instead of the two sounds that other varieties of English have.
    • You Can Do It Speech (3:58): “And I stand here today promising the same that I will do everything in my power to make enough of an effect…”
    • You Can Do It Speech (1:48): “So what I’m trying to say is I know that…”
    • You Can Do It Speech (1:42): “I had no dream, no future, nothing.”
  • Short, stressed, and high KIT vowels often sound like the FLEECE vowel.
  • /f/ in of pronounced as [f] rather than [v]
  • /l/ is always light even after back vowels. (The /l/ in words like mental sound the same as the /l/ in words like light.)
    • Mental Health Speech (1:00): “…and people with mental health face severe human rights violations…”
    • Mental Health Speech (11:03): “Why is it that I was seeking professional help privately?”

Grammar

A prominent feature in IE (Indian English) is the extended use of the progressive tense with stative verbs, as seen in phrases like “I am having three books with me” or “I am believing you,” where Standard American English would use “I have three books” or “I believe you.”6 However, research shows this usage occurs with limited verbs and specific contexts. Another divergence is IE’s preference for the present perfect tense over the simple past, exemplified by “I have bought the book yesterday” instead of “I bought the book yesterday.”7 Additionally, past tense markers may be omitted, with temporal adverbs compensating, as in “She like the book yesterday” instead of “She liked the book.”

Verb usage in IE also features the conversion of transitive verbs into intransitives, where the direct object is implied rather than stated explicitly, as in “We enjoyed very much” for “We enjoyed ourselves very much.” Subject-verb agreement may deviate from SAE norms, resulting in phrases like “Your father send you love” instead of “Your father sends you love.” IE’s frequent use of “would” to indicate future actions—e.g., “The next step would be to identify the features” instead of “The next step will be to identify the features”—is attributed to cultural preferences for politeness.

Lexicon

The following are all words or phrases found on the webpage Indian English 101. This site includes many lexical terms that may help someone translate the Indian English dialect; however, these are some that may be important to note.8

Indian English LexiconEnglish Gloss
passed out‘graduated’
Got fired‘got yelled at’
good name‘first name’, ‘given name’
crib‘complain’
flick‘steal’
petrol bunk‘gas station’
prepone‘reschedule for an earlier date’
sitting on my head‘stressing me out’

Reference

  1. Daly, Rory. “Indian English: Origins and Features.” LinkedIn. 2018, March 9. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/indian-english-origins-features-rory-daly.
  2. Ploscaru, “How Many People in India Speak English.” The History of English. 2024, May 24. https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/how-many-people-in-india-speak-english
  3. “Why Public Schools Must Shore up English Teaching.” 2019. Financialexpress. 2019, May 17. https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/english-speaking-correlated-to-caste-class-and-education/1580684/
  4. Deepika Padukone, “Mental Health,” English Speech. YouTube video. (2020, April 17). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFsLcVYbWg
  5. Samantha R. Prabhu, “You Can Do It,” English Speech. YouTube video. (2022, January 21). https://youtu.be/s5BMcaQsjbM?si=s6pNaHhQME9yLmzz
  6. Costa, Daniel. “Indian English – A National Model.” Journal of English as an International Language 14, no. 2 (2019): 16–30. Accessed November 21, 2024. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1244241.pdf
  7. Khan, Sharmin. “Guide for Multilingual Student Writing World Englishes in US Classrooms: Working with Indian English Speakers.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.sjsu.edu/wac/docs/Guide%20Indian-English%20Variations.pdf
  8. “Indian English 101.” Morningside, May 17, 2017. https://www.morningtrans.com/indian-english-101/