Hinglish is themacaronic hybrid use ofcolloquial Hindi andEnglish.[1][2][3][4][5] Its name is aportmanteau of the wordsHindi andEnglish.[6] Inspoken contexts, it typically involvescode-switching ortranslanguaging between these languages whereby they are freely interchanged within a sentence or between sentences.[7]
Inwritten contexts, Hinglish colloquially refers toRomanised Hindi—Hindustani written inRoman script (i.e.,English alphabet), instead of the traditional scripts such asDevanagari orNastaliq—often with Englishlexical borrowings.[8][9]
The wordHinglish was first recorded in 1967.[10] Other colloquial portmanteau words for Hindustani-influenced English include:Hindish (recorded from 1972),Hindlish (1985),Henglish (1993) andHinlish (2013).[10]
In present-day, Hinglish has become the de-facto style of Hindustani spoken in urban areas of northern India as well as contemporaryBollywood, to the extent that even nouns and verbs that have native colloquial equivalents are often replaced with English words.
In modern day India, since English is perceived as theprestige language over Indian languages by common people, Hinglish subsequently is perceived as thehigh prestige variety (H) of spoken Hindi, whilevernacular Hindustani (without English influence) is perceived low variety (L) of spoken Hindi.
WhenHindi–Urdu is viewed as a single spoken language (Hindustani), the portmanteaus Hinglish andUrdish may mean the samecode-mixed tongue, though the latter term is commonly used in Pakistan to precisely refer to a mixture of English with the Urdusociolect.[11]
While the termHinglish is based on the prefix ofHindi, it does not refer exclusively toModern Standard Hindi, but is used in theIndian subcontinent with otherIndo-Aryan languages as well, and also by "British South Asian families to enliven standard English".[7][12]
| Language | Sentence (in roman script) | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| English | The clouds of our country shower blessings on this land. | |
| Modern Standard Hindi | Hamaare rashtra ke megh is bhumi par vardaan varshaate hain. (Devanagari: हमारे राष्ट्र के मेघ इस भूमि पर वरदान वर्षाते हैं।) | HighlySanskritised variety withtatsama loanwords, preferred for formal purposes by followers ofDharmic religions. |
| Hindustani | Hamaare des ke baadal is dharti par barkat barsaate hain. | Colloquial variety with nativetadbhava vocabulary, with moderate number of loanwords fromPersian and to a lesser extent fromArabic. |
| Hinglish/Urdish | Hamaaricountry keclouds island parblessingsshower karte hain. | Heavycode-mixing with English words and phrases. |
| Standard Urdu | Hamaare mulk ke abr is zameen par rehmat naazil karte hain. (Nastaliq: ہمارے ملک کے ابر اس زمین پر رحمت نازل کرتے ہیں۔) | HighlyArabised andPersianised variety, preferred for formal purposes by followers ofIslam. |
Hindustani has an approximatelyten-century history. In this period, it has accommodated several linguistic influences. Contact withSanskrit,Prakrit,Pali,Apabhraṃśa,Persian,Arabic andTurkic languages has led to historical 'mixes' or fusions, e.g.,Hindustani,Rekhta. Linguistic fusions were celebrated by Bhakti poets, in approximately the 15th-17th centuries as 'khichdi boli' – or amalgamated speech.[13]
At the turn of the 18th century, with the rising dominion of theEast India Company, also called 'Company Raj' (literally, 'Company Rule'), the languages of India were brought into contact with the foreign element of English. In colonized India, English became a symbol of authority and a powerful hegemonic tool to propagate British culture, including Christianity.[14] The political ascendancy of the British extended into social and professional roles; this meant that the legal proceedings, as well as the studies in medicine and science, were conducted in English.
This led to an interest in the promotion of English into the society of Indian natives. Educated Indians, or 'brown sahibs', wished to participate in academia and pursue professional careers. Raja Rammohan Roy, a social and education reformer, advocated that English be taught to Indians by certain British gentlemen for the benefit and instruction of the native Indians.[15] Charles Grant, the president of the East India Company's board of control, championed the cause of English education as a 'cure for darkness' where 'darkness' was 'Hindoo ignorance'. The Charter Act was passed in 1813. This legalized missionary work by the Company, including the introduction of English education.[16] By the beginning of the twentieth century, English had become the unifying language in the Indian struggle for independence against the British.
Meanwhile, English was on its way to becoming the first global lingua franca. By the end of the twentieth century, it had special status in seventy countries, including India.[17] Worldwide, English began to represent modernization and internationalization, with more and more jobs requiring basic fluency in it.[18] In India especially, the language came to acquire a social prestige, 'a class apart of education', which prompted native Indian or South Asian speakers to turn bilingual, speaking their mother tongue at home or in a local context, but English in academic or work environments.[19]
In the late 19th century,Bharatendu Harishchandra, often considered the father of modern Hindi, wrote poems in Hinglish, combining languages and scripts.[20]
The contact of'South Asian' languages, which is a category that refers inclusively to Hindi and Indian languages, with English, led to the emergence of the linguistic phenomenon now known as Hinglish. Many common Indic words such as 'pyjamas', 'karma', 'guru' and 'yoga' were incorporated into English usage, and vice versa ('road', 'sweater', and 'plate'). This is in parallel with several other similar hybrids around the world, likeSpanglish (Spanish + English) andTaglish (Tagalog + English). A fair share of the words borrowed into English from Indian languages were themselves borrowed fromPersian orArabic. An example of this is the widely usedEnglish word 'pyjamas' which originates from Persianpaejamah, literally "leg clothing," frompae "leg" (from PIE root *ped- "foot") +jamah "clothing, garment."[21]
In recent years, due to an increase in literacy and connectivity, the interchange of languages has reached new heights, especially due to increasing online immersion. English is the most widely used language on the internet, and this is a further impetus to the use of Hinglish online by native Hindi speakers, especially among the youth. Google's Gboard mobile keyboard app gives an option of Hinglish as a typing language where one can type a Hindi sentence in the Roman script and suggestions will be Hindi words but in the Roman script. In 2021, Google rolled out support for Romanized Hindi on its search engine and on theGoogle Pay app. Phrases such as "Naya Payment" for "New Payment" and "Transaction History Dekhein" for "See Transaction History" are used.[22][23][24]
While Hinglish has arisen from the presence of English in India, it is not merely Hindi and English spoken side by side, but a language type in itself, like all linguistic fusions.[25] Aside from the borrowing of vocabulary, there is the phenomenon of switching between languages, calledcode-switching andcode-mixing, direct translations, adapting certain words, and infusing the flavours of each language into each other.[26][27]
The Indian English variety, or simply Hinglish, is the Indian adaption of English in a veryendocentric manner, which is why it is popular among the youth. Like other dynamic language mixes, Hinglish is now thought to 'have a life of its own'.[28]
Hinglish used to be limited to informal contexts and ads, but it is now also used in university classrooms.[29][30]
With its widespread use in social media such as blogs, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), the analysis of Hinglish using computers has become important in a number ofnatural language processing applications likemachine translation (MT) and speech-to-speech translation.[31][32]
Hinglish is more commonly heard in urban and semi-urban centers ofnorthern India.[33] It is also spoken to some extent as an easier-to-learn variant of Hindi bySouth Indians and members of theSouth Asian diaspora who are more comfortable with English.[34][35][36] Research into the linguistic dynamics of India shows that while the use of English is on the rise, there are more people fluent in Hinglish than in pure English.[37]David Crystal, a British linguist at theUniversity of Wales, projected in 2004 that at about 350 million, the world's Hinglish speakers may soon outnumbernative English speakers.[1]
In India, Romanised Hindi is the dominant form of expression online. In an analysis ofYouTube comments, Palakodety et al., identified that 52% of comments were in Romanised Hindi, 46% in English, and 1% inDevanagari Hindi.[9] Romanised Hindi is also used by some newspapers such asThe Times of India.[38][39] The first novel written in this format,All We Need Is Love, was published in 2015.[40] Romanised Hindi has been supported by advertisers in part because it allows a message to be conveyed in a neutral script to both Hindi and Urdu speakers.[41] Other reasons for adoption of Romanised Hindi are the prevalence of Roman-script digital keyboards and corresponding lack of Indic-script keyboards in most mobile phones.[42]
Hinglish has become increasingly accepted at the governmental level in India as an alternative toSanskritised Hindi; in 2011, the Home Ministry gave permission to officials to use English words in their Hindi notes, so long as they are written in Devanagari script.[43][44][45]
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)Within India, however, other regional forms exist, all denoting a mixing of English with indigenous languages.Bonglish (derived from the slang termBong 'a Bengali') orBenglish refers to 'a mixture of Bengali and English',Gunglish orGujlish 'Gujarati + English',Kanglish 'Kannada + English',Manglish 'Malayalam + English',Marlish 'Marathi + English',Tamlish orTanglish 'Tamil + English' andUrdish 'Urdu + English'. These terms are found in texts on regional variations of Indian English, usually in complaint-tradition discussions of failing standards of language purity.
