Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) on Saturday, January 10 organized an international conference called ‘Chutnefying English’ in Mumbai to analyse the economics, culture and linguistics behind the usage of Hinglish in India. Rita Kothari, professor at MICA and co-convenor of the conference who introduced the conferenceas theme of ‘Hindi in English ya English mein Hindi’ said, aUrdu is a language which emerged from army camps and Hinglish appears to have similarly spun from youth campuses. At this conference we would like to analyse whether Hinglish will eventually become as rich as Urdu or similarly allow for expression of complex thoughts.a
Professor Harish Trivedi a faculty at Delhi University and visiting professor at the University of Chicago and University of London explained some of the reasons behind Hinglish coming to be, aAt times the use of Hinglish is a valid necessity. For instance, if the object for an idea comes in a certain language then it may be best to communicate in that same language.a Executive Chairman, McCaan Erickson and lyricist a Prasoon Joshi raised an interesting issue when he said, aHinglish is of two kinds: There is an Hinglish of experimentation with words like chutnefying and rakhoed which has Hindi words twisted for effect and this Hinglish is practiced by English medium educated speakers. And, there is a Hinglish of survival in which people do not have a choice but to use English words while talking.a aWhen a driver tells me, aSahab yeh gaadi comfortable haina then he is using the word acomfortablea because he simply doesnat know the Hindi word to express that thought,a he explained.
Professor Trivedi also said, aHinglish is used in some cases because of the convenience that certain English words offer as compared to their Hindi counterparts.a Rupert Snell, renowned expert on Hindi expressed his concern regarding this issue, aConvenience is the root of the lowest common denominator. I am worried what future generations may use in the name of convenience. I regret the demise of classical Hindi and not the arrival of Hinglish. The fact that people are not worried about how they speak Hinglish is worryinga.
Gurcharan Das, author of aIndia Unbounda and noted literary figure moderated a panel discussion which he kicked off by saying, aWhen a 100 million middle class Indians who consume in the global economy speak a certain language then the entire world will speak that language soon.a The panel included prominent media professionals such as Prasoon Joshi, Prashant Pandey a CEO, Radio Mirchi and Cyrus Broacha, MTV VJ who asserted that the primary purpose of language is to communicate and Hinglish achieved this very well. Further, Hinglish was freely used in the media only because the audience had accepted it as a means of communication. Rahul Dev, senior journalist and Editor-in-Chief of Hindi news channel – CNEB was the lone purist and voice of dissent in the discussion. He quoted from an article on Hinglish which had appeared in the mainstream media and said, aHinglish creates linguistic cripples which translates to intellectual cripples.a aI know of villages in the Kumaon region who had ten different words for soil, a dozen words for wind and so on and now they have quite simply lost these words,a he added.
An audience member raised the issue of bilingualism and how it stands with regard to the dayas discussions. Professor Trivedi explained, aThese days, every person thinks that he or she is bilingual. A simple test for a person to check this assumption to spend all of 24 hours speaking only one language; during this time, begin every sentence in one language and make sure that you only use that language through the sentence.a Cyrus Broacha concluded the dayas panel discussion and said, aHinglish is in a sense universal. It is wonderful that at some villages there is a larger body of words to choose from but at the end of the day one has to communicate with a lot more people and that too from many kinds of placesa.