Indish

Indian English.

In a fascinating article in The Deccan Herald, Pravin Kumar discussed the growth in Indish words and phrases, and speculated as to whether the sheer size of the English-speaking Indian population means that “this brand of English is likely to eclipse the other regional variants like American English and Australian English.” According to Kumar:

Indish now includes arbitrary plurals such as ‘furnitures.’ ‘You people,’ is often used to mean ‘more than one person’ (a translation ofaap log) but can carry racial or belittling overtones. Commonly used translations of Hindi phrases are ‘Close the light’ (for ‘switch off the light’) and ‘Will you take tea?’ (for ‘will you have tea?’).

A mixture of English and Hindi results in such expressions as ek minute [one minute], maskafy (verb formation from maska or butter); and ‘Masaala-movie’ (hotchpotch movie). ‘Pass the time’ has resulted in a compound adjective, as in ‘time-pass movie.’