Search citation statements
Paper Sections
Citation Types
Year Published
Publication Types
Relationship
Authors
Journals
The speech of native speakers of Indian English has generally been neglected in studies of English in South Asia. This article describes a variety of Indian English used by a section of the Anglo-Indian community in Madras, South India. A comparison of this variety to available descriptions of "General" or "Educated" Indian English shows that the two are substantially similar, but that the Anglo-Indian variety differs in two features: deletion of/h/ (/i-dropping) and the distribution of r-lessness. The community shows classbased variation in the phonological feature of /i-dropping and in one syntactic feature: auxiliary movement in questions. Sources for features of AngloIndian English are discussed, including possible inheritance from both standard and non-standard BrE dialects as well as transfer from Tamil, the likely substrate Indian language for this section of the Anglo-Indian community. (South Asia, Indian English, language variation)* Discussions of English in South Asia focus almost exclusively on second-language (L2) users of this language, with no more than passing reference to the existence of native speakers (cf. ' Although writers like Kachru refer to the existence of at least two South Asian communities that have the reputation of being native speakers of English -the Anglo-Indians in India, and speakers of Burgher English in Sri Lanka (see e.g. Kachru 1994 for a brief reference) -very little empirical research has been carried out on the structure and use of English by these communities. Thus there are only five existing publications on the speech of the Anglo-Indian community, which maintains English as its "mother tongue" or community language, and which has undergone a process of shift to English dating back at least to the 18th century. These publications - Spencer 1966, Valentine 1969, 1978, Bayer 1979, 1986 -contain interesting sociolinguistic observations on the community, but are inadequate as linguistic descriptions of Anglo-Indian English. 2 Further, no empirical research has been carried out on the extent to which English is actually
The speech of native speakers of Indian English has generally been neglected in studies of English in South Asia. This article describes a variety of Indian English used by a section of the Anglo-Indian community in Madras, South India. A comparison of this variety to available descriptions of "General" or "Educated" Indian English shows that the two are substantially similar, but that the Anglo-Indian variety differs in two features: deletion of/h/ (/i-dropping) and the distribution of r-lessness. The community shows classbased variation in the phonological feature of /i-dropping and in one syntactic feature: auxiliary movement in questions. Sources for features of AngloIndian English are discussed, including possible inheritance from both standard and non-standard BrE dialects as well as transfer from Tamil, the likely substrate Indian language for this section of the Anglo-Indian community. (South Asia, Indian English, language variation)* Discussions of English in South Asia focus almost exclusively on second-language (L2) users of this language, with no more than passing reference to the existence of native speakers (cf. ' Although writers like Kachru refer to the existence of at least two South Asian communities that have the reputation of being native speakers of English -the Anglo-Indians in India, and speakers of Burgher English in Sri Lanka (see e.g. Kachru 1994 for a brief reference) -very little empirical research has been carried out on the structure and use of English by these communities. Thus there are only five existing publications on the speech of the Anglo-Indian community, which maintains English as its "mother tongue" or community language, and which has undergone a process of shift to English dating back at least to the 18th century. These publications - Spencer 1966, Valentine 1969, 1978, Bayer 1979, 1986 -contain interesting sociolinguistic observations on the community, but are inadequate as linguistic descriptions of Anglo-Indian English. 2 Further, no empirical research has been carried out on the extent to which English is actually
Kachru (1965, 1966) has presented a detailed analysis of the idiosyncratic vocabulary items of Indian English (hereafter IE). He observes that “in India an idiom of English has developed which is Indian in the sense that there are formal and contextual exponents of Indianness in such writing, and the defining-context of such idiom is Indian setting” (1965:396). To illustrate how IE has become culture bound in India, he mentions many formations, such as confusion of caste, dung wash, saltgiver, rape-sister, etc., drawn from IE fiction, and calls them Indianisms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.