Wednesday, February 22, 2012

"Only in India". Or "In India only" ?

I’ve been finding it truly interesting to observe how the English language is spoken in India. It is an official language here (one of 30 or 40!), and it’s widely spoken, specially in bigger cities. As a matter of fact, it’s quite funny to notice Indians speaking in English amongst each other. Happens a lot in trains, as the different states have different languages, and English seems to unite them. The language issue is such in India, that many Indians would rather learn English than Hindi, in order not to surrender to Hindi (Why not make Tamil, or Punjabi the language taught in school, they seem to ask).
I could go on and on about many of the funny things that come out of their mouth. Hinglish. It’s rather funny. There are some terms only really used here (how about calling someone that eats meat a “non veg”? Gotta love it!) and some little terms added to words we use a lot (“What is your good name?”), but my very favorites are the ways that they use also and only.
They don’t seem to use “as well” or “too” too much at all. Their word of choice is constantly “also”, and it’s ALWAYS used in the end of a sentence. Same thing with the word “only”. And they use these two words a lot.
If I ask someone a question as such as “Is Puri only available until 10AM?”, I will struggle to make myself understood. The way to ask should be: “Is puri available until 10AM only?”. I’m not joking. It’s the way their logic seems to operate. It has to come in the end of the sentence. Probably once again to emphasize the idea, just like saying things twice. Interesting isn’t it? They don’t seem to use the word “just” almost at all. I kidn of want to say “They only use only”, but the Indian way of expressing such thought would be better put as “They use only only.”
Check out this image, from a road in Darjeeling, West Bengal. “One vehicle at a time only”, rather than “Only one vehicle at a time”. Only in India or in India only? :)

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