What is Hinglish?

Doolally! Filmi! Bevakoof!
This is Hinglish, English with Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi.
And now novelist and teacher Baljinder Mahal has provided readers with a guide to this lively hybrid language - a new dictionary entitled "The Queen's Hinglish: How To Speak Pukka."




For British Asian families, it is the perfect way to enliven English. On the Indian sub-continent it is a fast-developing lingua franca.

Mahal said - "I had so much fun compiling it."
"Doolally is my favourite word, meaning crazy. It was military slang named after a town near Mumbai called Deolali, which was the location for a sanatorium."

She scoffs at academic linguists who fret over the purity of the English language. "Language is not set in stone. It is fluid and organic. Chaucer's English is not the same as Shakespeare's English."

She is fascinated by the different ways Hinglish has been adopted as one of the fastest growing hybrid languages in the world. "In India it has become quite trendy. The elite speak it, Bollywood speaks it in its films, Corporate India speaks it in its advertising slogans."
Children, as linguistic magpies, love to pick it up in the playground as a kind of secret banter that is incomprehensible to adults. "In Britain it has become fashionable, particularly among the young."

Dictionary unveils how this quirky clash of tongues has such choice words as "filmi" meaning melodramatic or "bevakoof", Hinglish for a fool.

Anyone feeling "glassy" is in need of a drink. A hooligan is a "badmash" and if you need to bring that office meeting forward, it is time to "prepone", as opposed to postpone, it.
She said that Hinglish, like the Spanglish spreading across the melting pot that is America, is also a language that underlines the globalisation of India, one of the world's fastest growing economies.

Satellite television, the Internet and movies effortlessly spread Hinglish around the world. Mahal, rejoicing in its rapid evolution, said "Language is never static - just like identity."

Other examples:

air-dash - to travel by air at short notice

chamcha - 1. a spoon 2. a lackey; an obsequious person; a sycophant. Thought to derive from the charge that native south Asians using cutlery were trying to ingratiate themselves with westerners

desi - authentically south Asian, eg, "Most desis had either black, blue or silver Beemers"

doosra - 1. second, eg, "You need to take the doosra turn on the left." 2. (cricket) a delivery bowled by an off-spinner that turns the opposite way from an off-break

eve-teasing - the sexual harassment of women, especially in public

filmi - melodramatic; reminiscent of a typical Indian film, eg, "You should have seen cousin Bela's wedding. It was very filmi"

ganja - having no hair on head; bald, eg, "Dad's gone all ganja since he's started working at the bank"

javaani or jawani youth, eg, "My mum used to wear tight clothes in her javaani"

kitty party - a gathering of women who meet regularly to host sweepstakes and exchange gossip

ladoo - 1. a golfball-sized sweet. 2. affectionate term for plump child

Ranjha - a male lover; a Romeo. Heer Ranjha is an epic Punjabi tale of two ill-starred lovers

stepney - a spare wheel for a car; a spare of anything; a mistress. The Stepney was originally a type of spare tyre manufactured in Wales. The term died out in Britain but expanded its meaning in south Asia and Malta

yaar - a friend, eg, Where's The Party, Yaar?