Language, Aaj and Kal

Is Hinglish ufffd that curious mix of English, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi ufffd fast becoming the language of choice in urban India? A recent book release, the intriguingly named Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish, proves that the hybrid is very, very, hip

Is Hinglish -- that curious mix of English, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi-- fast becoming the language of choice in urban India? A recent book release, the intriguingly named Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish, proves that the hybrid is very, very, hipu00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0

At least two men, both named Salman, would agree. The first, last name Rushdie, once claimed it was his linguistic agenda and practice to 'chutnefy English.' The second, last name Khan, used the line, 'Tu kya mujhe henpecked samajhta hai?' with much sincerity in a film titled, Biwi No 1. Both were born and brought up in what was once called Bombay, before people with an unusual concern for language and its subversive power went on a renaming spree.

Dialect
Today, in Mumbai and other Indian metros, the hybrid dialect called 'Hinglish' -- as a sub-form of languages mutually comprehensible by their speakers -- is now favoured by a significant number of people.
These numbers have propelled it into everything from advertisement tag-lines (hungry kya?) to cinema (Dil Maange More), music (rain is falling chamacham cham) and the colloquial language of youth (where's the party, yaar?). It also explains the ubiquitous presence of massive campaigns like Coke's 'Life ho toh aisi' and McDonald's 'What your bahana is?'

Television
History, geography and economics can all be blamed for why and how this has come to be. Thanks to the once powerful British Empire, Hindi and English have long been forced to occupy the same space. Given the nature of language, the eventual emergence of Indian English (and words like pre-pone, air dash, eve-teasing) was inevitable. The move towards its mainstream acceptance, however, was sparked by the arrival of satellite television.

Asset
Suddenly, new worlds of English-language content opened, unleashing a flurry of indigenous programming that borrowed concepts and catchphrases liberally from the West. With better connectivity, new markets for this content (along with a whole range of other products) began to emerge. For sellers, the need to adapt slowly superseded the need to speak the Queen's English. Soon, the ability to introduce Hindi into an English sentence became an asset, rather than the liability it was once regarded as. Today, being understood continues to be more important than being correct.

Discussions
A few years ago, a teacher from the English city of Derby called Baljinder K Mahal put out a dictionary titled The Queen's Hinglish: How to Speak Pukka. In January 2009, the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad organised a two-day international conference --the first of its kind, apparently -- on Hinglish. The discussions held over those 48 hours have now made their way into a book titled Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. It sounded intriguing enough for me to get in touch with the editors: Dr Rita Kothari, Professor, Communications and Media, MICA and Dr Rupert Snell, Director, Hindi Urdu Flagship, University of Texas at Austin.

Shift
I asked both how Hinglish had, in recent memory, moved from something with negative connotations to a term bandied about proudly by marketing heads of TV channels. In her reply, Dr Kothari pointed out that there was still a degree of jocularity about the term today, its ascendancy in marketing notwithstanding. "Perhaps an appropriate word to describe it in the contexts of advertising and other media would be 'hip'," she said, "which does make it a serious subject of study as far as academics are concerned. The shift has to do with the accessibility of Hinglish, so that even a smattering of either language will serve the purpose without making too much of a demand on the speaker. It is the language of campuses, and the youth that speaks it the most. Given the size and influence of youth in all media messages, the shift has a demographic and economic explanation."

Mixture
Another expert I got in touch with was Devyani Sharma, lecturer in linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London, and currently completing a book on the emergence of new English dialects out of bilingual continua. In her opinion, 'mixed codes' like Hinglish are not taken seriously because they are not seen as a 'pure' form of either language, and therefore are erroneously labelled lazy, degenerate or frivolous. But, she added, "all languages have developed through contact and mixing with other languages. Hindi and English are themselves examples of languages that have grown out of massive admixture through contact. The English sentence 'Their piano is gorgeous' is composed of words from Norse, Italian, German, and French."

Contribution
Chutnefying English asks a number of questions that yield interesting responses from its contributors. Tej Bhatia, Professor of Linguistics at Syracuse University, points out that given the long history of language contact in India, mixing is not just inevitable but natural. Daya Kishan Thussu, Professor of International Communication at the University of Westminster, highlights the role played by television. According to him, the greatest contribution has been that of Rupert Murdoch, whose pan-Asian Star network launched in 1991 gave India her first music channel, 24/7 news channel, adapted game show and reality TV series. Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt sounds a word of caution. 'I do believe English can be alienating, as can Hinglish,' he says. 'Look at the way rural India is not responding to mainstream Hindi cinema because it is too upper class, its language alien to rural audiences. What explains the rise of Bhojpuri cinema?'

Diversity
In 2004, renowned British linguist David Crystal published a book titled The Stories of English. It described the value of linguistic diversity and the according of respect to varieties of English generally considered 'non-standard.' Crystal also projected at the time that, at about 350 million, speakers of Hinglish could soon outnumber native English speakers. I asked Rupert Snell if he could foresee Hinglish becoming the popular mode of communication in India. After rightly pointing out that the question was too simplistic, he said, "Languages have different registers and styles for different contexts, and even a 'popular mode of communication' will always have enormous internal variety. But is Hinglish likely to spread into new territories and contexts? It is inevitable."

Range
The most startling discovery made by Rita Kothari while editing the book was "the strength and range of different contestations regarding Hinglish! Its 'happy' appearance in the media belies the strong emotions that generally attached themselves to the subject of Hindi and English, two languages in India that have historically been positioned as adversaries. The traces of this relationship were quite evident. What we also discovered was how irrelevant this was to parts of North-East, or how in Tamil Nadu Hinglish needs to be understood in the context of Tamil and its relationship with Hindi as well as English. There is no one Hinglish; it is a construction involving different kinds and moments of hybridisation."

Influence
For Dr Snell, another surprise was to discover how many people still talk in terms of 'purity' (as in 'shuddh Hindi') in the context of language, whereas in fact probably no language has such a characteristic. "I also find it surprising," he added, "that people see the influence of English on Hindi as being only a matter of loanwords (words borrowed from one language and incorporated into another), whereas far more pernicious influences are also at work under the surface."

Variation
As with all dialects, Hinglish doesn't have the same connotations for all. Harish Trivedi, professor of English at the University of Delhi, points out in his foreword to Chutnefying English that the effect of Rushdie's Hinglish has been different from that achieved by, say, Shobhaa De. While the latter writes for people in India, using Hindi words to reconnect with her subject matter and reader, the former uses it to exoticize not just his subject matter but Indian languages as well. Trivedi also suggests that Rushdie uses a smattering of Hindi words to authenticate himself in the eyes of readers in the West.

Evolve
Languages evolve constantly, so there may be no real point in trying to understand whether or not Hinglish will thrive. As the poet Derek Walcott once mentioned, 'The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.' Keeping this in mind, I asked Kothari and Snell why the study of language continued to matter. Given the preponderance of MBA courses that have scant regard for the humanities in India, how could they convince more students to take up the study of linguistics? In Kothari's opinion, "Management schools seldom feel the need to know anything in humanities, leave alone linguistics, which is even more distant than sociology, literature and anthropology."

Dr Snell added that the study of linguistics, like the study of languages, "leads to a subtler understanding of the ways in which we humans view the universe, and hence of the ways in which we create and inhabit worlds to live in."

Colourful
There are now more people speaking English in South Asia than in Great Britain and North America combined. Will Hinglish survive in the form we currently recognise it as? Will it morph into a more complicated dialect? It's impossible to say. It will continue to make our lives more colourful though, so the best we can do is accept it and move on. As they say in these parts, kindly adjust kijiye.

- Lindsay Pereira is Editor,
MiD DAY Online (twitter.com/lindsaypereira)

In Other Words
"I grew up as an English-speaking boy and rejected Urdu, the language of my Muslim mother. However, it is only when I spoke my mother's tongue and understood the poetry of Kaifi Azmi and Faiz, Iqbal, and Ghalib that I came into my own."