English as she is spoke

I grew up in a part of North London which the 2nd Generation Jewish families were relinquishing to 1st generation immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. My first saturday job was in the local Indian greengrocers - the smells of alien spices captured my imagination as much as the fantastic packaging on the preserved foods did. Things Indian have long held a special place in my heart.

Bollywood is bigger than Hollywood - the combination of Busby Berkeley dance routines, fabulous music, searing colours and corny old plots works viscerally on audiences from Bangalore to Bromley. And this still (above) is from Bride and Prejudice - a strange collision of Anglo and Indian story telling. Jane Austen done by Mumbai.

But today I found this fab piece http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6122072.stm on "Hinglish" - the strange mixture of English and the various indian languages which is the result of these two worlds colliding.

"Chuddies" (briefs) and "kushty" (lovely or beautiful) are just two examples of vocabulary that I grew up with but I've never really thought about how or questioned why these neologisms emerge. The historical linguistics that I picked up at university always talked about "borrowing" words or "corrupting" another language. Neologisms were always explained to me in terms of failure to understand or accept an accepted and closed code - or in rare circumstances, in terms of the witty and innovative work of a sole creative individual (Shakespeare's neologisms being one example).

But having read this piece I started to see the evolution of language more in terms of the interaction of individuals - a genuine Herd co-creation of something new from something old. While we like to comfort ourselves with the sense of continuous Herd identity that comes from codified language, what now occurs to me is how human-human interaction - the key mechanic of mass behaviour - leads us to neologisms and novel constructs. Particularly with the english language - a curiously sponge-like tongue, which soaks up other languages and vocab better than most others.

But the bigger point is not just about the words we use as much as in the ideas and things which populate our world. By interacting with each other we create the new - both valuable and not.

Feeling a bit "glassy" now, dear Reader, so goodnight.