Geographic Locations

India, but also Indian diaspora.

English in India

English has been with India since the early 1600's, when the East India Company started trading and English missionaries first began their efforts. A large number of Christian schools imparting an English education were set up by the early 1800's. The process of producing English-knowing bilinguals in India began with the Minute of 1835, which officially endorsed T.B. Macaulay's goal of forming "a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons, Indians in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect." English became the official and academic language of India by the early twentieth century. The rising of the nationalist movement in the 1920's brought some anti-English sentiment with it, even though the movement itself used English as its medium.

Population

The second largest populous country, India is home to around 16 per cent of world’s population. The country, however, accounts for 2.42 per cent of the total world area. The 10 heavily populated districts of the country are Calcutta, Chennai, Greater Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chandigarh, Mahe, Howrah, Kanpur City and Bangalore. All of them have density of above 2,000 persons per square kilometre and 5.01 per cent of the country’s population lives in these districts.

Languages

India has two National languages (Central administrative). They are English (associate official) and Hindi (in the Devanagiri script). The Indian Constitution also officially recognizes 22 regional languages. In terms of numbers of English speakers, the Indian subcontinent ranks third in the world, after the USA and UK. An estimated 4% of the Indian population use English; although the number might seem small, out of the total population that is about 35 million people.

Ethnic groups

Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3% (2000)

Major Religions Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism

Religions: Hindu 81.8%, Muslim 12.1%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, Others ther groups including Buddhist, Jain, Parsi1.9% (2001)

Features of Pronunciation

Variations in the pronunciation of several phonemes are affected by the regional tongues across the Indian subcontinent, the greatest distinction being that between South India and Sri Lanka on the one hand, which is closer to the traditional British English, and the north of the subcontinent (including North India and Pakistan) on the other. In upper-class families, English is typically very close to ''Received Procunciation '', or BBC English. However, it still retains hints of Indian flavour.

Words unique to and/or popular in India include:

-arbit is a slang term and short for arbitrary. Can be used to mean "vague", "random" or "bad". e.g.: "What an arbit ending that movie had!" Used primarily by college students in Delhi and Mumbai. It is pronouced either as "arbitt" or "arbid", usuall with equal stress on both syllables

-Dicky/dickey the boot of a car

-eve teasing (catcalling - harassment of women)

-godown means a warehouse

-Himalayan blunder means a grave mistake

-pass-out to graduate from college

-prepone means to advance

Distinguishing Lexical/Grammatical Features

The Indian subcontinent is the largest English-speaking popoulation. Phrases such as "Please do the neddful," and "You will be intimated shortly" are included in official letters.

Social function of the Dialect in Surrounding Groups

The form of English that Indians are taught in school is British English, especially Scottish English. Indian spelling typically follow British conventions.

Works of Literature in Dialect

Sake Dean Mahomet, ''Travels to Dean Mahomet, ''Rajo Rao, ''Kanthapura'', Salman Rushdie, ''Midnight's Children''

The literary tradition in India is primarily oral literature in vernacular languages. This is passed on from generation to generation without manuscript generally sung or recited. It was in the16th century that an extensive written literature appeared. The reason for this changes were the literary predominance of Sanskrit and the emergence of Hindu pietistic movements that sought to reach the people in their spoken languages.

The earlier forms of Indian literature was religious. They include the Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Aryankas, the Upanishads, the Sanskrit Epics- Ramayana and Mahabharatha, the Brahmashastras, the mythological writings known as Puranas. The literature of this period are in Sanskrit Pali Prakrit.

Sanskrit literature has a special place in our civilization. It extended from about 1400 BC to AD 1200 and reached its height in the period from the 1st to the 7th centuries AD. The two major epics Ramayana and Mahabharatha, Abhigyanashakuntalam, Meghadutam by Kalidasa, are the best examples.

Later in the 14th century, Kabir Das, Surdas and Tulasidas, a poet of the common people were popular. Tulasidas's 'Rama-charita-manas' (1575) is considered as an immortal classic by all Hindus.

It is interesting to note that Tamil Literature is supposed to be the least sanskritised among all Indian languages because, it had a classical tradition of its own. Urdu and Sindhi are other exceptions, having arisen out of an Islamic background. Mirza Ghalib's couplets, written around mid-19th century, Ghazals written by Amir Khusro etc are popular even today.

The era of Indian modern literature began in the late nineteenth century. With the establishment of vernacular schools and the importation of the printing press, a great impetus was given to popular prose, with Bengali writers perhaps taking the lead. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand etc rank among the world's best literary figures. Tagore's own translation of 'Gitanjali' into English brought him international fame when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913. His 'Gora' is considered to be a very outstanding novel in Indian literature .

Some of the prominent modern writers in Indian languages include Premchand, Ageyeya in Hindi; Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay in Bengali; Amrita Pritam in Punjabi; Kaifi Azmi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Firaq Gorakhpuri and Josh Malihabadi in Urdu; Shiv Shankar Pillai, M.T.Vasudevan Nair, Malayattor Ramakrishnan in Malayalam; Subramaniya Bharati in Tamil; Gobind Triumbak Deshpande in Marathi; and Tara Shankar Joshi in Gujarati.

"Satanic Verses" is Salman Rushdie's most famous, or infamous, book. This is the one that earned him the ire of orthodox Muslims the world over and laid a price on his head. Satanic Verses was banned in India in 1988 as a result of protest from some members of the Indian Muslim community, more information on the ban is available at the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago's File Room. Since Ayatollah Khomeini's declaration of a "fatwah" against Rushdie in 1989, he has been in hiding and his whereabouts are unknown.

Salman Rushdie was awarded the Whitbread Prize and was named Germany's Author of the Year for Satanic Verses.

Original Cover For "Satanic Verses":

Indian writers have also made a mark on the international literary scene. Arundhati Roy, who won the Booker Prize for 'The God of Small Things', Salman Rushdie who was awarded the 'Booker of Bookers' for Midnight's Children, Raj Kamal Jha, whose book 'The Blue Bedspread', commanded the largest advance ever paid to a first-time Indian writer; Vikram Seth whose novel 'A Suitable Boy' won the W.H.Smith prize in 1993 and Anita Desai whose 'Fasting, Feasting' was a finalist for the 1999 Booker Prize. etc are a few amongst them.

Foods

Indians take their food very seriously. Cooking is considered an art and mothers usually begin to teach their daughters and pass down family recipes by show-and-tell, fairly young in life. Mealtimes are important occasions for family to get together. Most meals comprise of several dishes ranging from staples like rice and breads to meat and vegetables and rounded off with a dessert. In a lot of Indian homes, foods are made from scratch with fresh ingredients. For example, some families buy their favorite type of wheat, wash it, dry it in the sun and then take it in to a flourmill to have it ground into flour exactly the way they like, as opposed to buying flour from a store! This is changing in bigger cities where people have increasingly hectic lives and are happy to use ready-to-eat, pre-made ingredients.

To eat (meat) or not to eat?

To the western mind, India is perceived as largely vegetarian. This is not necessarily true. To a larger extent, religious beliefs (as compared to personal preference) dictate what a person cannot eat. For example, Islam forbids its followers from eating pork while a lot of Hindus do not eat beef. Followers of the Jain faith abstain from all meats and even avoid onions and garlic!

Example of Indian Breakfast

Chappathi- Measure and sieve whole wheat flour and salt into a vessel. Slowly add three-fourths cup of water. Mix well. Knead into medium soft dough. Add more water if required. Cover the vessel and leave it for fifteen minutes. Divide into 14 equal portions. Make them into balls. Roll them out into six-inch rounds on a board by adding flour occasionally (So that they do not stick to the board). Cook on a griddle or a non - stick pan for about half a minute. Turn and cook on the other side for fifteen seconds. Cook till puffed and cooked on both sides. Turn over and press gently with a spatula or a cloth to puff up the chappathi/roti. Serve hot, topped with cooking oil or ghee (optional).

Bibliography

answers.com

webindia123.com

http://www.languageinindia.com/may2003/annika.html

http://www.subir.com/rushdie/sv.html

http://indianfood.about.com