ind-lish...

This curiousity started out sometime last week while at dinner with some friends, where amongst them, was an Indian national. Since the rest were Malaysian, we had a good time giving the Indian a hard time...

English-speaking Indians, if you have never come across one before, are as articulate as they are verbose... a very lethal combination. And I believe that this is one of the reasons why I tend to be cautious about novels written by Indian writers.

Don't get me wrong, I think they have an excellent grip of the language, better than many of the English themselves. My gripe is that they tend to over-do the verbosity when simpler words should sometimes suffice.

But what is stranger is the evolution of the English language in India, as spoken by English-speaking Indians. At dinner, we had pleasure in ribbing the poor girl from Bangalore about a word that is used in everyday business language there; prepone. As opposed to postpone. As in to reschedule a meeting to earlier instead of pushing it to later.

As strange as that word may be to us Malaysians, it doesn't change the fact that it is a word used commonly in India. And that was what I started wondering; how many of these new words have evolved in this fertile language pot into phrases or words that make perfect and concise sense. And some not quite so.

And then, by sheer coincidence, I came across another two today; quakening and updation. Quakening, as in the act of the earth shaking below you in the midst of an earthquake. And I received an email asking for me to send in my latest contact information for updation to their database.

Quirky. So now, I had an itch to find more and Google is my friend:

Convented: not like Sister Enda but more like an Assuntarian
Join duty: first day at work
Tell me: how can I help you?
Pass out: graduate
Redressal: not a red dress rehearsal but a remedy or redress
Hotel: is a restaurant...????
Eggitarian: vegetarian who takes egg and milk
Long cut: erm... opposite of short cut
Paining: this one, i think we all know
On the anvil: something about to happen, on the horizon
Today morning: just like yesterday night
Cent percent: 100%
Centum: one hundred
Full shirt: long sleeves
Half shirt: half sleeves (so means sleeveless is "shirtless"??)

Well, what can I say? And that's just some of it. If you have any more to contribute, please do. I would be chumma chumma (simply) delighted.