Tongue twisters

One of the most endearing features of the Indian middle-classes is their use of language. Most of the better-educated people here seem to speak Hindi, English and usually a regional language too (in Maharashtra, it's Marathi). But the language they actually use in day to day conversation is something different again: it's Hinglish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinglish

I was vaguely aware of this phenomenon, and it confused the hell out of me in Monsoon Wedding, but it's wonderfully bizarre to hear it in action. My boat back from Elephanta Island to Mumbai the other day was shared with twenty or so art students, and in the pouring rain and choppy sea (not one of them could remember it raining in March in Mumbai before), their mixture of shock and awe at the elements was rendered in both languages in every sentence.

Similarly, i caught ten minutes of round-table TV discussion about the cricket today from a panel of hasbeens (the Gary, Alan and Mark of Indian cricket, I suppose) and every one of them used Hinglish as a matter of course. Not only do they know full well that each other understands it, they know that hundreds of millions of Indians are perfectly comfortable with it too.

I remember when I was a kid people used to go on about Franglais, but it never worked outside of Pink Panther movies, probably because fundamentally both the English and the French are too stuck-up ever to consider such a degree of cultural exchange. Indians don't seem to be quite so worried. Maybe deep down, it's because they don't need to rely on their language to provide a sense of identity: they're confident that their glory days still lie ahead. Can England or France really say the same?