Butler English

Surely, you know all about British English and American English. But then, do you know about Butler English? Butler English? Yes, it is a dialect peculiar to India! It all started when the British came to India armed with the English language. They did not know the native language, whereas the Butlers, the head servants of British colonial households, picked up the English words and used it to communicate with their masters. Consequently, the broken English spoken by these non natives came to be known as Butler English. It is still spoken in major metropolitan cities.

The distinct aspect of Butler English are the absence of the copula and the tense usage, the frequent use of ‘-ing’, reporting of indirect speech directly and using the present participle for the future tense, which are all different from the Standard English. Above all, the language is cut down to its bare essentials, with emphasis only on the content.

Like for instance:

• I telling tomorrow, I want flowers.(I will you tell tomorrow whether I want flowers)
• I say not coming (I’m telling you that I’m not coming)
• I very poor lady.( I am a very poor lady)

Thus, in Butler English, how the message is conveyed is more important than how it is said.

Apart from Butler English, there is also the middle class Babu English. Babu, means a clerk or a gentleman in Bengal, the state which housed the famous East India Company and was the nerve center of trade in the British era. The Babu English is characterized by its strikingly fancy and ornate form of administrative English.The legacy of the East India Company and its tradition exists till today in the official correspondences in India. Official letters contain phrases such as ‘please do the needful,’ and ‘you will be intimated shortly’ and so on .These words were typical of the East India Company correspondence from the seventeenth century!

British English and American English have other distinguishable dialects as well. For instance, both Cockney and the Queen's English are dialects of British English and the American English dialect varies from the New York Bronx to Charleston or from Chicago to New Orleans and not to mention the Black American English and the Southern English. In the same way, in India, apart from Butler English and the Babu English, the most popular and widely used is the Indian English, which has a smattering of the local vernacular flavor. It is to be remembered that India is a land of diversity with 28 states and each state has a different language. Therefore, over decades, English in India,mixed with the colloquial ingredients has developed into a piquant flavor called Indian English. But then, English is one of the official languages of India.

Here is a taste of a few Indian English words -

British Raj- British Indian Empire (Raj means empire)

Indian-Made Foreign Liquor - traditional foreign alcoholic beverages made in India, like, whisky, brandy, beer, wine, gin, vodka, etc.

Intimate: v. inform. Eg. You will be intimated shortly.

Military hotel: a hotel that serves non-vegetarian food (it was assumed that all soldiers ate meat)

non-veg joke: an off-colour joke (Not suitable for all audiences)

iron box: pressing iron

That is not all !The latest trend is Hinglish ,a fashionable collision of Hindi and English.The popularity of Bollywood movies through out India, has made Hindi quite acceptable and mixing Hindi and English words in sentences has become so very fashionable that even the advertising world has jumped on to the bandwagon of Hinglish. Typically nowadays, mostly all the advertisements have phrases in Hinglish.

The form of English that Indians are taught in schools is essentially British English, primarily due to the historical and cultural links with Britain. Whereas in recent times, because of the internet, movies and television, the American English spellings and slang is used by most Indians, especially the younger generation. In conclusion, whatever dialect ,we are able to connect globally because of the English language.

Check out my article on 'Are Internet writers lowering the English Standard'

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