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STATUS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN INDIA
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Hello, I am María Elena Aparicio and in this essay I am going to talk about English in India.

Many years ago, English was only spoken in England, but it expanded and became the main

language of the British colonies in different places around the word. Nowadays, this

language has become one of the most prominent languages all around the world. As it was
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the case of many countries, English arrived in South Asia as a consequence of colonisation.

Regarding India, English has always coexisted with all the local languages which were spoken

there. Therefore, English is not considered a second language in India, but it is considered

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the ‘Official Language of the Union of India’ together with Hindi and along with eighteen

‘National Languages’, such as Bengali, Gujurati and Urdu.

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The British colonizers first arrived in India in the early 1600s and there they established

trading posts under the control of The East India Company. Little by little the British

controlled almost all the country until the Indian Independence in 1947. Unlike in other

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countries this
of the document
world, English was notuseful?
compulsory in India, but it was taught to locals by

Christian missionaries. However, as English was established in the country, it became the

language of administration, of the higher classes, the media and the government, and after

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the independence period, it was given a great importance in the whole country. Therefore,

as English was integrated in India, the Indian variety of English emerged, being useful for

several functions in this country and also a factor which helped many people to construct

their identities. In fact, as Mukherjee argues, "even according to conservative estimates the
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educated varietyinappropriate? Report
of Standard Indian English this Document
is used competently and regularly by c. 35 to 50

million Indians today – which makes Indian English the third largest variety of English world-

wide in terms of numbers of speakers, outnumbered only by British and American English"

(Mukherjee, 2010: 167).

After having briefly reviewed the Indian English history, I would like to do an overview of its

use. As it happens with English in many other postcolonial contexts, little part of the

population (mainly middle and upper classes) have access to education so that means that

only those people have access to the standard English used in India, what is known as Indian

English. Therefore, this ‘high’ class English could be referred to as acrolect whereas the

English variety used by lower classes, who are less proficient in this language, is known as

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mesolect. Finally, in the lowest place we find basilects, containing pidginized forms of

English , also known as Baboo English or Kitchen English (Mukherjee, 2010: 174). Moreover,

as Indian English is not a native variety of the country, people might have it as a second or

third language so this leads to transfers to the mother tongue and also wide difference

between English speakers in India, with different vocabulary and, most noticeably, different

pronunciations. However, the Standard Indian English shares the same features and patters

regarding phonology, lexis, syntax and vocabulary.

Starting with phonology, as mentioned before, English is spoken in many regions of India so

its pronunciation may vary from one place to another. Nevertheless, the Standard Indian

English is rothic, /r/ is pronounced in post-vocalic environments, so the /r/ in words such as

part or poor will be sounded. There is a very strong general tendency in Indian English to

monophthongize diphthongs like /eɪ/ and /əʋ/ (e.g. late, home), to merge the two sounds

EZH and ESH into ESH (e.g. casual, division), and to replace the dental fricatives THETA and

ETH with /t/ and /d/ (e.g. think, this). Moreover, the RP dipthongs in ‘coat’ and ‘day’ are

pronounced as monopthongs in Standard Indian English to give /ko:t/ and /de:/ respectively

and the RP central vowels LONG E, SCHWA and SHORT A are all pronounced / ə/ in Standard

Indian English. Finally, the RP vowel sounds in ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ are pronounced /kɒ t/ and

/kɑ:t/ respectively in Standard Indian English.

Regarding lexis, Indian English is different from native varieties at the morphological level,

for instance by extending the use of the suffix -ee as in the words affectee, awardee, or

recruitee, the prefix de-, as in de-confirm, de-friend, de-recognize, and the zero-derivation of

new verbs such as airline, public, slogan. Moreover, lexical items that belong to the lexicon

shared by Indian English and other varieties of English may be used in different ways in

Indian English, both grammatically and semantically. For instance, both can be used with the

negative form of the verb in Indian English, and the word boy is used for the British English

word butler). Some lexical items that have an archaic flavour in British English, such as

thrice, are still used much more frequently in Indian English.

Now, regarding syntax, there are some aspects in which Indian English Speakers differ from

British English grammar. The first one is the distinctive use or non-use of articles, whereas in

British English you would say a piece of chalk, in Indian English it is possible to say a chalk.

The second feature is the use of invariant tag questions and question tags, while a British

English speaker would say He has left, hasn’t he? , an Indian English speaker would say He

has left, isn’t it? or He has left, no?. Then, there is also a difference in the use of progressive

forms with stative verbs, for example, a speaker of British English would say I simply don’t

understand, but an Indian English speaker would also say I am simply not understanding.

Finally, the last of these features is the distinction in the position of adverbs, in Indian

English the adverb is placed in the beginning of the sentence, as in Always I drink coffee

whereas in British English the adverb is placed before the verb, as in I always drink coffee .

Finally, although Indian English is practically an stable language, it still undergoes some

changes due nativization. Moreover, many Indian people consider that English is a powerful

tool to access to international job markets and they also consider it to be a fundamental

factor in social status in India.

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