2019-06-23 04:52
Himadri Roy on 'Farsi', a lost gay argot used in Delhi:
Nouns like panthi, koti, niharan, dhurani, jogta, danga were used with simplicity to mean the ‘man’ in a gay relationship… Read More
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Notes on Indian English,
Hinglish, slang & pop culture
2018-11-27 06:52
2017-07-09 11:42
In 'Word of the Day', a daily column that ran in the Bangalore Mirror through the latter half of 2015, writer Sriram Aravamudan, who describes himself as a 'gardener, baker, comedian and all… Read More
2017-07-06 05:34
In a land where rainfall is scarce, the act of reading the skies and attempting to name the unattainable becomes unbearably poignant. Arati-Kumar Rao on the language of the Thar:
The act of… Read More
2017-07-04 05:17
On the night of 22nd September 1914, a lone German cruiser slipped unnoticed into the waters off Chennai. Once the ship was in range, its commander Karl von Müller gave his crew the ord… Read More
2017-06-18 10:19
Aditya Sinha's amusing New York Times piece on the Indian bureaucracy's love of euphemism:
If the “War on Terror” had been undertaken by the government of India, it probably wou… Read More
2017-06-18 09:52
Via the city guide Mumbai Boss, now defunct:
Gaysi, the chaps behind LGBT open mic night Dirty Talk, return this Sunday, April 6 with 2×2 Talkies, a series of film screenings that bor… Read More
2017-06-18 09:41
This was described to me as a slang term for testicles, used at St Andrew's School in Bandra, Mumbai. 'Bugger, I'll kick you in your downtwo, you'll go crying for your mama' Read More
2017-06-18 09:23
I'm not too sure where I came first across this line of Kabir's, which describes his views on language in a pithy epigrammatic style, contrasting the dead Sanskrit of the ancient religious t… Read More
2017-04-25 21:59
A poem by Afzal Ahmed Syed - the original in a Devanagari transliteration, folowed by my English translation.
एक ज़बान से मुत……Read More
2017-04-16 07:32
For those who haven't come across the word, prepone means to move something to an earlier date or time: quite simply, it is the opposite of postpone. Prepone is widely regarded as an Indian… Read More
2017-04-11 22:46
“I am glad, sir” said a lady to Dr. Johnson, “that you have omitted all improper words from your dictionary.” “I hope I have, madam,” answered the surly s… Read More
2017-04-11 20:45
Hi-hello friend Colloquial term for a casual acquaintance, fairly common in online forums. Most of the citations I've found seem to confirm my hunch this is primarily an Indian English expre… Read More
2017-04-02 08:16
S W Fallon’s A New Hindustani-English Dictionary (1879) is regarded as one of the most remarkable works of Indian lexicography. With its illustrations from folklore, proverbs, songs, a… Read More
2017-03-26 08:37
Anyone who's observed or participated in a political discussion in recent times is probably familiar with the word libtard, a derogatory term for anyone with liberal or left-wing political v… Read More
2017-03-19 04:25
The South China Morning Post runs a language column titled Language Matters by Lisa Lim, which occasionally picks up Indian words that have been adopted in Hong Kong English. Many of these w… Read More
2017-03-12 04:16
Since I haven’t posted here in a while, I have a backlog of links to share. For starters, here’s a Caravan essay by Chitralekha Basu on how English turns Bengali in Kolkata. The… Read More
2017-03-02 04:57
Parsi Bol 2 is an updated edition of Sooni Taraporevala and Meher Marfatia's very entertaining book on Parsi insults, endearments and other Parsi Gujarati phrases (see below). This one adds… Read More
2014-01-27 05:12
Parsi Bol, a Gujarati-English phrasebook which catalogues the caustic insults and salty lingo of the Parsi community. From Time Out :
Photographer-filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala a… Read More
2013-05-23 14:17
The current issue of Time Out Mumbai has a glossary of "city slang, lingo and khali pili faltu giri". A few random selections that range from old favourites (ghanta) to recent coin… Read More
2013-05-05 05:12
2013-05-05 05:00
A Mumbai Mirror report on street vendors of mobile phone porn includes some of their jargon. Read about kaand videos, staged to resemble amateur MMS scandal clips, and c… Read More
2013-01-12 06:03
A crash course in the Bandra dialect from Jose Covaco Read More
2012-02-26 05:21
Unique words and phrases used by Anglo-Indians, via Dialect Blog Read More
2012-02-13 04:33
Some day I'll write an essay about misnaming in Indian English: the many tangled reasons which lead people in this country to use the word swan for a goose, autumn for the rainy season, and… Read More
2012-02-11 05:09
With assembly elections coming up, the newspapers are full of the jargon of India's electoral politics. 'Vote Bank' is one such phrase, which refers to a bloc of voters from a social group… Read More
2011-08-08 03:23
The Indian Express on the codes used by Kashmiri separatist leaders and militants in illegal cross-border financial transactions ('NIA decodes: Chini is hawala money, Re 1 is Rs 1 lakh', The… Read More
2011-07-09 06:04
Singer Shubha Mudgal records the jargon of Mumbai's sessions musicians in a pre-digital era (Musical Shorthand, Mint Lounge, July 9, 2011):
...what would you do if you were asked to play a r… Read More
2011-02-27 09:50
Sohini Chattopadhyay reports in OPEN Magazine (26 February, 2011) that the records of India’s first and only Linguistic Survey, conducted by the British Raj over 1914-29, are now avail… Read More
2011-02-27 09:09
Save the Words is a website from the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary, dedicated to saving underused words from extinction: words such as graviloquence and pigritude and squirife… Read More
2010-12-31 05:16
The Hindustan Times provides useful tips for the party season:
"A packet of Aishwarya.” That’s what a gram of cocaine is being called by those looking for a stash for their New Y… Read More
2010-12-20 04:18
Anubha Sawhney Joshi defines the quintessential bling word in this ode to upward mobility in Delhi:
Your friends from South Delhi (GK-sheekay, Jorbagh-shorbagh) might use it as a jibe to de… Read More
2010-11-01 14:43
Linguist Hugo Cardoso on the last speaker of a unique language formed through contact between Malayalam and Portuguese (OPEN Magazine, October 2010).
William Rozario passed away on 20 Augus… Read More
2010-08-19 08:54
'A commendable hot-chase, 007! But it was wasted as we lost the film!'
James Bond, licensed to mutilate the English language. Weird Crime Theater's post “Let me taste fish” and… Read More
2010-08-03 06:59
Anuvab Pal compiles a few current Indian English expressions (Mid-Day, August 1, 2010):
Rajeev this side: Usually said on the phone. It literally means the person saying it is on that side… Read More
2010-05-29 06:32
Mumbai underworld slang for a police informer, also known as a khabri or 'goodman'.
The code name Zero refers to an informer in Dawood Ibrahim's stronghold Dongri and adjoining areas. Goodm… Read More
2010-05-07 07:00
Just figured out that Google Books allows you to clip and embed passages from out-of-print books. Here's a curious piece of Anglo-Indian slang I found in A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant a… Read More
2010-05-07 06:40
Via मराठी शब्द, this plausible explanation for the origin of the word mosambi, from Firminger's Manual Of Gardening For India:
..a tight… Read More
2010-03-18 07:01
Via Mint: Sailaja Pingali, author of Indian English (Dialects of English) on the characteristics of Indian English. (Download the podcast here) Read More
2010-03-14 10:23
Some notes on betting jargon, just in time for the IPL season. These are compiled from stray mentions in newspaper articles - if you can add to this list, or suggest a comprehensive guide, l… Read More
2010-03-14 09:43
The Times of India summarizes recently released census data on bilingualism in India.
More Indians speak English than any other language, with the sole exception of Hindi. What's more, Eng… Read More
2009-09-04 10:12
Observe a traffic jam on an Indian street, and you will find that it tends to follow a complex process of re-alignment over time. It all begins with vehicles lined up bumper-to-bumper. But a… Read More
2009-06-05 17:56
Another example of eccentric South Indian English, this one found in Green Well Years, an autobigraphical novel by the artist Manohar Devadoss about growing up in Madurai.She had a 'gun-thro… Read More
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