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London: Going doolally? Getting too filmi? Being a bit of a bevakoof?
Welcome to the wonderful world of Hinglish, a rich linguistic curry that stirs together English with Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi.
And now novelist and teacher Baljinder Mahal has provided readers with a guide to this lively hybrid language — a new dictionary entitled The Queen’s Hinglish: How To Speak Pukka.
For British Asian families, it is the perfect way to enliven English. On the Indian sub-continent it is a fast-developing lingua franca.
“I had so much fun compiling it,” Mahal said of the dictionary that stretches from words dating back to the British Raj right up to today’s hip advertising slogans.
“Doolally is my favourite word, meaning crazy. It was military slang named after a town near Mumbai called Deolali, which was the location for a sanatorium,” she told Reuters in an interview to mark publication.
She scoffs at academic linguists who fret over the purity of the English language. “Language is not set in stone. It is fluid and organic. Chaucer’s English is not the same as Shakespeare’s English," she said.
She is fascinated by the different ways Hinglish has been adopted as one of the fastest growing hybrid languages in the world.
“In India it has become quite trendy. The elite speak it, Bollywood speaks it in its films, Corporate India speaks it in its advertising slogans,” she said.
Children, as linguistic magpies, love to pick it up in the playground as a kind of secret banter that is incomprehensible to adults.
“In Britain it has become fashionable, particularly among the young,” she said.
The dictionary unveils how this quirky clash of tongues has such choice words as filmi meaning melodramatic or bevakoof, Hinglish for a fool.
She said that Hinglish, like the Spanglish spreading across the melting pot that is America, is also a language that underlines the globalisation of India, one of the world's fastest growing economies.
Satellite television, the internet and movies effortlessly spread Hinglish around the world. Mahal, rejoicing in its rapid evolution, said "Language is never static — just like identity."
Glossary
-Doolally: crazy.
-Filmi: melodramatic
-Bevakoof: fool.
-Glassy: in need of a drink.
-Badmash: hooligan
Your comments
This is yet another step towards human languages growing into one. Here we have Singlish . Good!
Nanda Wickremasinghe
colombo,sri lanka
The Westerners who use Hinglish, in its many forms, are those with significant contact with Indians. The Indian cultures are not part of youthful "cool" and the use of such words are, in reality, making fun of Indians' methods of speaking. Besides, it is mostly Indians using this "language", and particularly in India. It has little to do with natural changes in the language, since it is infrequent in English-speaking countries. Doesn't it reflect more on India, anyway, since it is an English-based hodge-podge, understood by the speakers of various languages in India?
Trenab
Vancouver,Canada
This is crazy! I thought I needed to polish my British accent. Well, now I found out that I may not have to. That's great news!
Chris
,Africa
Evolution is a part of all aspects in life and so is culture. But as an Indian what are we trying to be, Indian or English? Who are we trying to be? It is fun doing this and learning this, but people are laughing at us too, do not forget that.
Wrang
Dubai,UAE
Sometimes Hinglish can be hilarious to hear. Many authors attempted in bringing Lingua-Franca to the world readers and have been successful. I hope these new found words find their entry into the next edition of the dictionaries.
Shuaib
Sharjah,UAE
I do believe that the Hinglish Culture has become a trend not only among Mumbaites, but also Westerners. I believe that it would have an adverse affect on the ongoing generation or perhaps youngesters would move away from speaking fluently their mother tongue or particularly English, a universal language. So in that case one should try and avoid it .
Zeenat
Ajman,,UAE
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