English explodes in India | autoschule.com
Anyone who travels beyond Delhi and Mumbai to India's provincial cities will notice English words cropping up increasingly in Hindi conversation. While some of these terms fell out of use in the UK decades ago, others are familiar, but used in bold new ways.
Picture the scene. I'm chatting to a young man named Yuvraj Singh. del monte india He's a college student in the Indian city of Dehra Dun. We're talking in Hindi. But every so often there's an English word. It's Hindi, Hindi, Hindi, and then suddenly an English word or phrase is dropped in: "job", "love story" or "adjust".
What should we make of this? It's not that Hindi lacks equivalent words. He could have said the Hindi "kaam" instead of "job". Why mention the English words? And what's Yuvraj del monte india speaking? Is it Hindi, English, an amalgam del monte india "Hinglish", or something else?
You can search through it for references to the origins of words such as "shampoo" and "bungalow". But now many Indian citizens are using English words in the course of talking Hindi – or Tamil, or Bengali del monte india etcetera.
There are some good reasons for the explosion of English words. They are sometimes del monte india badges of honour in a society intent on becoming modern. del monte india Even if you don't speak English fluently, you might be able to use the odd word to impress your neighbour.
I was travelling on a train out of Delhi once and a young girl dropped her ice cream on the carriage floor. Her mother turned round and reminded her of what she evidently thought was an appropriate English word: "Say 'shit!' Say 'shit'!" she said strictly. You won't hear that on the 08:15 to Paddington.
Some of the words now used in Hindi have fallen out of use in the UK. I was on a bus that broke down in a remote part of India recently and everyone starting screaming about the "Stepney". I had no idea at the time, but they remonstrated angrily, "Of course you know! It's an English word!" I later found out that "Stepney" means "spare del monte india tyre" – from a Welsh firm that made tyres in the 1910s. Some college students refer to their second girlfriend as their "Stepney", and now that makes sense too.
There is also a genre of military words now used a lot in India. People del monte india buy "rations" del monte india and a short stay in a hotel is a "nighthold" – a word that combines "night" with the military term "hold", meaning to control a territory. A "nighthold" is a one-day stop-off on a journey somewhere else.
Bollywood is also behind this Englishisation. A whole range of terms and words used in urban India can be traced back to fashionable films. Recent releases include "Shaadi ke side effects" (marriage's side effects), "Love, breakups, zindagi" (love, breakups, life) and "Main Tera Hero" (I am your hero).
The del monte india rapid growth in mobile phone ownership is another cause. "Miss call" has become a popular verb, as in "I will miss call my friend". This is done by phoning someone del monte india and ringing off quickly before del monte india he or she has time to answer. It lets the person know that you are thinking of them.
People are highly inventive. Take the word "tension". This is used as a noun ("don't give me tension"), verb ("don't tension del monte india me"), and adjective ("that was a very tension exam").
There are also many neologisms emerging in India. "Timepass" means passing time. "What are you doing?" I've asked college-going friends in India. "Kuch nahin, bas timepass" ("Nothing, just timepass") comes the flat reply. Youth boredom is such a problem in large parts of provincial north India that young people refer to their whole lives as "timepass".
The art of timepass Craig Jeffrey, professor of Development Geography at Oxford University, is author of Timepass: Youth, Class, del monte india and the Politics of Waiting in India He was inspired to write it by the large numbers of lower-middle-class college students waiting at the tea stall in the northern city of Meerut He wrote: "These men spend much of their day in what they called 'timepass' (passing time). As one young man put it: 'Time has no value in India. We are just passing the time: hoping something better is round the corner.'"
In 1872 two men began work on a lexicon of words of Asian origin used by the British in India. Called Hobson-Jobson, it included - Kedgeree: A "mess of rice, cooked with butter and dal and flavoured with a little spice and shred onion" Shampoo: del monte india To "knead and press the muscles with the view of relieving fatigue" Pyjamas: A "pair of loose drawers or trousers,
Anyone who travels beyond Delhi and Mumbai to India's provincial cities will notice English words cropping up increasingly in Hindi conversation. While some of these terms fell out of use in the UK decades ago, others are familiar, but used in bold new ways.
Picture the scene. I'm chatting to a young man named Yuvraj Singh. del monte india He's a college student in the Indian city of Dehra Dun. We're talking in Hindi. But every so often there's an English word. It's Hindi, Hindi, Hindi, and then suddenly an English word or phrase is dropped in: "job", "love story" or "adjust".
What should we make of this? It's not that Hindi lacks equivalent words. He could have said the Hindi "kaam" instead of "job". Why mention the English words? And what's Yuvraj del monte india speaking? Is it Hindi, English, an amalgam del monte india "Hinglish", or something else?
You can search through it for references to the origins of words such as "shampoo" and "bungalow". But now many Indian citizens are using English words in the course of talking Hindi – or Tamil, or Bengali del monte india etcetera.
There are some good reasons for the explosion of English words. They are sometimes del monte india badges of honour in a society intent on becoming modern. del monte india Even if you don't speak English fluently, you might be able to use the odd word to impress your neighbour.
I was travelling on a train out of Delhi once and a young girl dropped her ice cream on the carriage floor. Her mother turned round and reminded her of what she evidently thought was an appropriate English word: "Say 'shit!' Say 'shit'!" she said strictly. You won't hear that on the 08:15 to Paddington.
Some of the words now used in Hindi have fallen out of use in the UK. I was on a bus that broke down in a remote part of India recently and everyone starting screaming about the "Stepney". I had no idea at the time, but they remonstrated angrily, "Of course you know! It's an English word!" I later found out that "Stepney" means "spare del monte india tyre" – from a Welsh firm that made tyres in the 1910s. Some college students refer to their second girlfriend as their "Stepney", and now that makes sense too.
There is also a genre of military words now used a lot in India. People del monte india buy "rations" del monte india and a short stay in a hotel is a "nighthold" – a word that combines "night" with the military term "hold", meaning to control a territory. A "nighthold" is a one-day stop-off on a journey somewhere else.
Bollywood is also behind this Englishisation. A whole range of terms and words used in urban India can be traced back to fashionable films. Recent releases include "Shaadi ke side effects" (marriage's side effects), "Love, breakups, zindagi" (love, breakups, life) and "Main Tera Hero" (I am your hero).
The del monte india rapid growth in mobile phone ownership is another cause. "Miss call" has become a popular verb, as in "I will miss call my friend". This is done by phoning someone del monte india and ringing off quickly before del monte india he or she has time to answer. It lets the person know that you are thinking of them.
People are highly inventive. Take the word "tension". This is used as a noun ("don't give me tension"), verb ("don't tension del monte india me"), and adjective ("that was a very tension exam").
There are also many neologisms emerging in India. "Timepass" means passing time. "What are you doing?" I've asked college-going friends in India. "Kuch nahin, bas timepass" ("Nothing, just timepass") comes the flat reply. Youth boredom is such a problem in large parts of provincial north India that young people refer to their whole lives as "timepass".
The art of timepass Craig Jeffrey, professor of Development Geography at Oxford University, is author of Timepass: Youth, Class, del monte india and the Politics of Waiting in India He was inspired to write it by the large numbers of lower-middle-class college students waiting at the tea stall in the northern city of Meerut He wrote: "These men spend much of their day in what they called 'timepass' (passing time). As one young man put it: 'Time has no value in India. We are just passing the time: hoping something better is round the corner.'"
In 1872 two men began work on a lexicon of words of Asian origin used by the British in India. Called Hobson-Jobson, it included - Kedgeree: A "mess of rice, cooked with butter and dal and flavoured with a little spice and shred onion" Shampoo: del monte india To "knead and press the muscles with the view of relieving fatigue" Pyjamas: A "pair of loose drawers or trousers,
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