If it's only intelligible to other speakers of "Indlish" then it's no more useful than any other language. The idea isn't to sound like Sir Ralph Richardson, but to be able to be understood by English speakers across the globe. A few "colorful" phrases are one thing, but they shouldn't ride this trend too far or they'll find themselves marginalized along with all the other Pidgins and Creoles.

By the way, I haven't seen the book, but if all the phrases are like the title, where's the Hindi? I just see English words there.

"..Receptionists ask callers, "What is your good name?" before informing them that the boss has gone "out of station" (out of town) with his "cousin-brother" (male cousin)....

I'll bet that's some transliterated Hindi.

I think the overall trend is going to be towards world-wide standardization. Of course that may mean some changes by us, too. We may end up saying "How often do you take sex?..

I won't be saying it. I was raised to speak proper English. If some foreigners don't want to speak it properly, that's their prerogative -- Indians, after all, have plenty of their own native languages to speak -- but they'll find that "cute" phraseology will only get them so far in the real world, unless they are comfortable being confined to the funny-foreign-accent corral. And indeed I do believe that most of their successful business people speak proper English when necessary. This is just white British people trying to jump on the trendy "black speak" bandwagon on their own side of the pond.

"I was raised to speak proper English..."

Naw. By traditional standards of "proper English," your speech is full of grotesque Americanisms, and your accent is risable. To a Henry Higgens you are in the "funny-foreign-accent corral," as much as our Indian friends are to us....

There is in fact no fixed point that can be called proper English. That distinction used to go with the court and the capital, but what's the capital of English now? It has escaped control....

Nonsense. Actually, the standard American English is much more like English as it was spoken in the 18th century in England. It's the English whose language has deteriorated... (I read that Somewhere, so it's authoritative.)

In any case, you're missing my point. The thing is, English is not the native language of India. So it really doesn't matter how they decide to speak it. They have their own languages, and, practical reasons for doing so aside, are under no obligation to speak ours, correctly or at all.

As for "Indlish" phrases affecting standard English (as spoken by native English speakers like the British, the Americans, and Australians), I find it highly unlikely unless one of their celebrities becomes huge over here -- and even then the effects will probably be ephemeral. (Just think of what has happened to Valley Girl Speak. Does anyone still say "totally!" and "Oh m'God!" in any other way except as a parody?)

If there was still a British Empire things might be different -- that was when English gained a lot of Indian words, such as pajamas, ketchup, and so on. But now they are simply another country, separate from us. I really don't think India can be counted as part of the "Anglosphere" except superficially.

And then again, those were just words -- the British didn't alter the English language to imitate the speech patterns of Hindi, or Gujarathi, or any of the other hundreds of languages they speak in that part of the world. And the words weren't substituted for perfectly good English words -- "ketchup" is a sort of condiment, as is "chutney," and "pajamas" were a specific sort of costume. There were no English words for these things, except "spicy sauce," or "outfit with loose pants and blouse."

This sort of thing used to be a hobby of mine, that's why I'm kind of picky about it. English being a dominant and flexible language tends to make foreign words part of its vocabulary, but the only time languages change basic grammatical patterns (instead of just seeing such things as mistakes -- "how do you take sex" for "what sex are you (male or female)?") is when the speakers of one language become dominant over those of another. English was never a "first language" anywhere in India except among the English, so all they are doing is speaking it ungrammatically. There's nothing deliberate about this, despite the "down with the whites" propaganda. I hope they aren't waiting for people over here to take up Hindi to speak to them, it's just not going to happen. What will happen is they'll get more hangup calls from irate Dell owners in Lubbock who can't understand why they are being asked what sex they take when all they want is support for their busted network cards.

I'm not actually sure myself that India is part of the Anglosphere, but it's an intriguing possibility.

And it's by no means sure that English won't become India's native language. Hindi itself was not originally anyone's native language, it was a lingua franca of Northern India. And I think English was seriously considered at Independence before Hindi was chosen.

(I'm surprised Bisaal doesn't weigh in on these discussions and tell us we know nothing about India!)

And if India continues to increase its use of English, well, there are an awful lot of them you know, and they tend to be clever chaps.....the future is wide open.

How could Hindi become lingua franca without being anybody's native language?. In fact, Hindi is as old a language as Sanskrit.
However, the way English is spreading here, it might well become native language esp with childern of mixed-language couples.

Here's a bit from the piece I had dimly in my mind, about Modern Hindi and Urdu: [link]

"...It is important to note that over the centuries, Urdu continued to develop side by side with the original Hindi dialects, and many poets have written comfortably in both. Thus the distinction between Hindi and Urdu was chiefly a question of style. A poet could draw upon Urdu's lexical richness to create an aura of elegant sophistication, or could use the simple rustic vocabulary of dialect Hindi to evoke the folk life of the village. Somewhere in the middle lay the day to day language spoken by the great majority of people. This day to day language was often referred to by the all-encompassing term "Hindustani."

Because day to day Hindustani was essentially a widespread Indian lingua franca not associated with any particular region or class, it was chosen as the basis for modern Hindi, the national language of India. Modern Hindi is essentially Hindustani with a lexicon of Sanskrit-derived vocabulary in preference to the Persian borrowings of literary Urdu. Likewise, Hindustani in its Urdu form was adopted by Pakistan as a national language because Urdu is not tied to any of the regions comprising modern Pakistan. Thus a language which is really nobody's mother tongue is today the second most spoken language in the world, understood throughout most of the populous Indian subcontinent and in many unexpected corners of the globe..."

The more I learn the more confused I get...

Saying Hindustani was chosen as a basis for modern Hindi makes it as if Hindi was created by a committee.

That's what it sounds like in the piece I quoted. Is that correct? do you disagree?

Sometimes committees, or governments, take credit for things that were just happening on their own. Or writers make a process look more oganized and orderly than it really was....

There is no great mystery. One dialect (orginally spoken around Delhi and Agra, most purely in the mechantile class) spread and spread over hundreds of years. Neither British nor Indian govt or any commiitee or writer has to do with it. It has as much mystery as the establishment of standard English dialect.
It is infact absurd to imagine a top-down language-making in a tradition-bound India with great many childern still not going to school.

Thank you, that makes more sense.

I think we are seeing what is called an "urban legend" here. I've heard the thing about India "chosing" a language before. But never with any specifics, about who chose or why. It's just one of those stories that gets passed around...

And urban legends propagate because they "make sense" to people in some way. I think many people believe that languages (and a great many other things) should be controlled and organized top-down. That surely somebody is in charge! Or we will fall into chaos.

This is similar to the way simple folk think a dictionary has authority over what words mean.