India’s Contribution to English: Mindboggling… But Unappreciated

Mirth Matters

Let me start with a riddle. What is the loot in the following sentence?

Sitting in his pyjamas on the veranda of his bungalow in the jungle, his catamaran of teak moored nearby, sipping sherbet and nibbling a mango, the English thug surveyed his loot.

You may have guessed cotton. Or jute. Or cardamom. All reasonable guesses, given the long list of commodities that the English historically acquired from India. But the answer is: all ten nouns in the sentence.

Catamaran comes from the Tamil kattumaram, denoting tied logs; mango from the Tamil mangay, meaning – as you may have guessed – mango; teak from Malayalam’s tekka; and sherbet from the Urdu sharbat, describing a sweet drink.

The remaining nouns – pyjamas, veranda, bungalow, jungle, thug and loot – originate from India’s most widely spoken language, Hindi.

And there are many, many more examples. India has rendered the world more colourful with khaki; added to its taste – both descriptively and literally – with chutney; given it flexibility and suppleness with yoga; and made eternal bliss possible with nirvana.

Yet, if asked about India’s contribution to Western culture and daily life, many will likely answer: nothing. (Perversely, even that’s true. In the seventh century, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta invented zero – arguably the most foundational contribution to mathematics ever.)

To add Worcestershire sauce to the wound, some people complain that Indians don’t speak English well, and that our accents are, well… Indian. The fact is, English is spoken in some 160 dialects across the world. In fact, in England alone – the country of its origin – you can encounter over 30 distinct accents of the language; some of them unintelligible even to locals from another region, let alone the foreigner.

In this medley of tongues, surely it’s reasonable for people from a country of a billion people to speak a foreign language with an “accent”.

But Indians are not only linguists. We’re broad-minded and generous. If embarrassed similarly, some might sulk and swear off English totally. Not Indians. In fact, we continue to contribute to the language, improving it perceptibly with each addition.

Let me share a few gems.

We bring brevity to the long-winded. Others may ‘bring something forward’, we simply ‘prepone it’ (though in reality we do the opposite more often). You may do something as “a way to provide relief from boredom”; we do it efficiently as “timepass”. Faced with a tricky issue, you may “do whatever is required to resolve it”; Indians simply “do the needful”.

We also remove ambiguity. If a westerner sends his child to look for something in the “boot”, the kid may go scurrying to the shoe cupboard, not the garage. But, if an Indian tells her child to look in the “dicky”, the child heads to the rear of the car in a straight line.

And imagine this very likely scenario. Your boss is in another city; not knowing this, you walk into her office and ask the secretary if you can meet her.

In most parts of the world, the secretary will tell you she’s “away”. Not knowing whether that means she has gone to the restroom, is running a quick errand, or is at lunch with a client, you may come back in an hour or, worse, wait outside her room.

But when the secretary in India tells you the boss is “out of station”, you know exactly where things stand.

And above all, we add elegance to the bland, insipid or unsavoury. When you say you “graduated from St John’s”, you give us a clinical description of what happened - you acquired a degree. Yawn. But when an Indian says they “passed out from St John’s”, they poetically describe the experience, suggesting survival despite exhaustion, trauma, and heartache.

An impatient elevator ascender elsewhere may snap, “move aside”, to the person blocking their way. The Indian, if in the rare mood to actually walk up the stairs, would politely say, “kindly adjust”, suggesting that the offender is not being an impediment to progress but just a mite misaligned with respect to the rest of the universe.

We even make mortality muted. Your aunt may die in another part of the world; in India she would politely “expire”.

So, the next time you meet an Indian, do the needful – acknowledge the contribution.

But if you’re an Indian, don’t hold your breath waiting for others to revert. Instead, continue to build the English language, whether out of altruistic intent or simply as timepass.

Paddy Rangappa, an ex-CEO, is a humour writer, co-host of the podcast Jest Business, and corporate coach on humour for leaders (www.jestbusiness.com)