The Indian English

English is a language of the historical conquerors – The British. The language came to India for the first time in the sixteenth century along with the British East India Company. With the arrival of the Brits in the form of merchants, there was an influx of other Britishers as well. Most of these were the Christian missionaries, who had landed in this land to pay off what they called the “white man’s burden”. These missionaries built and established schools, colleges and universities in the country where British English was the primary language taught. The main idea behind all this was not however to educate the Indians. British administrators desired to come up with a class of Indian people who could be fluent in their language as well as the local languages, and serve as able moderators between the locals as well as the British. These groups of Indian people who learnt the English language constituted the real founders of what we today call the Indian English.

Indian English is basically a local dialect of the original British English language that is spoken widely in India. The Indian English has developed into an effective language spoken by almost the entire white color class in the country. It is a means to show the acceptability of the western culture and means in India and how the people of India are adapting to it as well as the need of the time. The Indian English is basically a result of the recent upsurge and ever growing influence of the American as well as the British culture on India. It combines in itself, various words from the American English slang, apart from the basic English language structure, characteristic to the British. And on top of all this, the language is spoken in the Indian way. In the written form of the language, Indian English involves spellings of both American as well as British form, but predominantly the former. As an example, the word “colour “in British English is written according to the American English slang: ‘color’ in Indian English. Another interesting feature regarding the use of Indian English is the way idioms are spoken in it. Indian English involve the idioms related to local places in India, spoken by the people using the language. These idioms reflect the Indian way of thought, expressed using a foreign language.Thus, it represents the essence of the Indian English in the true form.

The use and prevalence of the Indian English is so rampant, that it has emerged as one of the most widely used and spoken language. It is due to the immense industrialization and the arrival of more and more foreign companies and delegates, that the use of this dialect of English has become inevitable for the Indian public. This is seen as the new criterion for professional acceptance and proficiency. There has been a lot of debate about the dialect taking over the local languages and thus making the Indians forget about their glorious cultural history.But one thing is for sure, the level of industrial as well as professional use enjoyed by this language beats any other in India.