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Tinglish and pinglish

Linguistic shenanigans

Whenever people from here went to the U.S. and came back, they put on heavy American accents, or what they thought to be an American accent, even if they had lived here all their lives and were in America for just a month or two. But at the most inopportune moments they broke into their native woodnotes wild before hurriedly pulling themselves back to the Yankee drawl.

Bogus accent

Such people, contrary to their expectations of impressing people, usually turn out to be figures of fun. When I was working in the Madras Christian College I heard someone around the corner talking in a rich British accent. When I saw the man I was surprised since he was obviously an Indian. I came to know that he had studied in England and had picked up his accent there. Later I noticed his accent slipping into his native Telugu. Thus in the midst of an impressive torrent of British English he would say `Jeero' for zero, `joo' for zoo, `inistitution' for institution, and `ischool' for school. After a few months he gave up his British accent and spoke Andhra English, excepting when foreigners were around.

Another chap called Augustus came back after a brief stay in the US, and started tossing his American accent about all over the place. "Over there I used to have haat daags (hot dogs) every day." Soon they started calling him Bogustus, and teased him so mercilessly that he dropped his American talk like a hot potato.

Many Tamils speak Tinglish which is a mixture of Tamil and English. A college mate of mine in the American College kept changing his speaking style periodically. If one day you find him mumbling monosyllabic words like "yup" and `nope' you can be sure he has just seen a Gary Cooper film. Sometimes he quoted some lines from the films like, "Tomorrow is another day"(Gone with the Wind) quite out of context and unnecessarily. But when he ran out of such lines and had to speak on his own he slid into Tinglish. One day he got angry with someone, and shouted "That all won't walk here. I will see one hand." And he couldn't understand why we were laughing. He felt that speaking such `superior' English to us was like casting pearls before swine. Wonder how he wrote his English exams. He passed though.

Stealing the thunder

I first heard Pinglish being spoken by my two young aunts who were at home doing nothing after their college education. I was in the primary school at that time. My aunts spoke Pinglish giggling all the while when they didn't want me to know what they were talking about. They used Pinglish when visitors came, and acted as though knowing Pinglish was the height of sophistication. I tried my best to decipher their patter, but failed to do so.

Later I came to know that Pinglish was just an addition of the letter'P' near every vowel. Thus "How are you?" will be "Hapow apar yupu?" My aunts spoke this kind of thing very fluently and very fast thus keeping the listeners bewildered.

One day an elderly gentleman came on a visit. And while my grandparents were chatting with him, my aunts sitting slightly away said "wopondeper ipif thepere ipis eponopogh foopood ipin thepa hopouse topu feepeed thipis fapat gupuy". (Wonder if there is enough food in the house to feed this fat guy). And to their consternation the old gent turned to them and said, "Dopont woporripy. Appi wipill jupust hapave copofipee".(Don't worry. I will just have coffee.) My aunts left the room in a hurry blushing brick red.

They were a little careful with their Pinglish after that.

J. VASANTHAN

(e-mail: jvasanthan@sancharnet.in)

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