Features of Indian English

Indian English referes to dialects or varieties of English spoken primarily in India and also by Indian diaspora elsewhere In the world. Due to British colonialism for over two hundered years’ as weare used more to British English than to American,Australian ir Canadian English. And due to the presence of vernacular languages in our country,English was choosen to be the co-official language of the union of India. Our obvious choice is one of the varieties of British English; which educated southern British English also called as “Received Pronounciation”

The reasons for these variations are:
•The presence of many vernacular languages
•People learn their mother Language first
•By the time they start learning English,they find it difficult to follow that pronounciation
•They have in them very strongly formed linguistic habits that interface with their learning English
•The phonological system of the mother tongue will have an influence on the phonology of their English

Because of these reasons, Indian English has emerged as another variety of English just like the American, South African,etc,with its own distinctive features.

(Diaspora: the movement of people from any nation or group away from their own country)

Since there are several languages spoken in India,there cannot strictly speaking,be something called French English or German English;instead we have a variety of English spoken in India,such as Tamil English, kannada English, Malayalam English,Telugu English, etc

Basing on these varieties,the feature of Indian English can be grouped under phonological and grammatical features.


GRAMMATICAL FEATURES:

•The progressive tense in stative verbs “I am understanding it”,”she is knowing it” instead of “I understand” “She knows”.This is influence of Hindi grammar.It is common in Northern States.

•The usage of “isnt it”, “no”, “na”, as tag questions;like “you are going,isnt it?”,”I am going,no?”,”she likes it,na?” instead of “you are going,arent you”,”I am going” and “does she like it?”

•Use of’ yaar,ma ,cha,abey,aray’, in english conversation by many of native hindi speakers. The use of the word ‘da,dai,re,ra’ are commonly found in the speakers of south India

•Use of the word ‘ki’ to mean,loosely that such as in “what I mean is ki she is going to adopt her”

•Use of ‘off it’ or ‘on it’ instead of ‘switch it on’ or ‘switch it off’

•Use of ‘current went’ and ‘current came’ instead of ‘power came back’ and ‘power went out’

•Use of the word ‘wallah’ to denote occupation as in ‘the taxi wallah over charged me’ ‘the grocery wallah sold me good grains’

•Over use of the words ‘generally’,’basically’,’actually’,’obviously’ at the beginning of the sentence,like ‘actually, I am not feeling well today’,’generally india will win the match today’

•Use of ‘he is older to me’ instead of ‘he is older than me’

•Usage of ‘out of hundred’ instead of percent,like ‘he got hundred out of hundred’ or’ sixty out of hundred’.the correct usage must be ‘he got a one hundred percent’ or ‘he got a hundred’