Some months ago, a friend told me about his “co-brother” who’d come from New York. That NRI had praised a new Bollywood film called English-Vinglish starring Sridevi. The story featured an Indian woman who had gone to that global metropolis and seen the lifestyles she could never aspire to, being ignorant of English. She had attended a language course. Gradually she acquired some knowledge of a lingo she called Vinglish.
As a reader who has spent decades savouring the nuances of Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Wodehouse and many others, like our native greats such as Nehru, Naipaul and Vikram Seth, I favour our own dialects, if they can enlarge the riches of English with colloquial expressions. Examples: “The CM has air-dashed to Delhi.”
Vinglish has gained ground in India’s native garrulity. The woman who helps with our kitchen chores is familiar with words like diagnosis, allergy, clinic and dosage. “Problem” has been absorbed here, as in Russian. Our cook is a romantic who identifies with characters in TV serials, even shedding tears when a home-maker or a damsel is unjustly victimised by society, in-laws or fate. Idioms like “love maaduttale” (makes love) come from her lips unsullied by ribaldry or coquetry. Villains are rogues, rascals and loafers. Years ago, the police ensured security in notoriously unsafe areas by keeping a watchful eye on fellows who were termed rowdy-sheeters.
I learn from the omniscient Search Engine that linguists esteem lexicons and glossaries of neologisms. They chart the change of colloquial idioms in many tongues, including Indian English, with its “Hobson-Johnson”. They hail words like selfie. Our readers could make a compilation of Vinglish that may become famous one day.
In our languages, we convey emphasis by adding a particle like “thaan” in Tamil, “aay” or “athay” in Kannada. Doubt becomes doubt-oo; problem-u has become common speech. Primary school kids say, “Teacher only told” or “Radha got that puppy yesterday itself”.
Typical is our resort to hyperbole, as in the remark: “Romba over-a paysathe” (Don’t talk too much). “Cool” is a handy approbation which India has taken over from America. “Super” can be conveniently used for praise and blame.
Here are some Vinglish expressions culled from TV newscasts and captions. The author is the great “Anon”, since nobody will claim intellectual property rights over solecisms. “Everybody is pushing the ball in everybody else’s court.” “They should sit down on the table and discuss things.”
I wonder if this linguistic morphology is an unconscious revenge on Macaulay, though I admire him both as a writer and as a conservative who predicted that India’s independence would be the proudest moment in British history.