An American, lives in an “apartment”, wears a “sweater” eats “eggplant”, goes on a “vacation”, whereas their British counterpart lives in a “flat”, wears a “jumper”, eats “aubergine”, goes on a “holiday”. On the other hand, a typical South Asian is very much familiar with “brinjal “and might not have even heard of “aubergine” or “eggplant”.

The notion of “Englishes” refers to the varieties of English—such as British, American, Nigerian, South-African and South-Asian English— which differ not only in accent but in syntax, semantics, usage, and sociocultural meaning.

ENGLISH as a language, is no longer a single river; it has become a delta, branching into countless streams we now call ENGLISHES. Indian English is one such lively current—what was once perceived as “Auntie tongue” has now become our own “Angrezi”. Thus, when reading the newspaper, even the most elite Indian never raises their eyebrows while coming across terms like “The rebels were Lathi-charged by the police”, or “gheraoed” (mobbed as a mark of protest”), or bandh (strike). A native English speaker, while travelling across India, soon understands that a dhobiwala is actually a laundryman. When my students talk about visiting their “native place”, I never try to impose that they are referring to their “hometown”. Similarly, in Nigeria, you can come across a generous person “dashing” his coins to the poor (to dash-to give freely in Nigerian English).

No wonder, even the celebrated authors like Arundhati Roy, R.K. Narayan, Amitav Ghosh and others have retained local English usages in their writings to assert linguistic identity of a community and resist the idea of a single “standard” English.

Across the world, English wears different costumes: it pronounces “water” as “wah-tah,” “wodder,” or “vaa-ter”; it calls a “truck” a “lorry” and invents words like “prepone” or “jugaad” without any inhibition.

Thus, as the aftermath of colonisation, English stopped being a single empire of words and became a bustling bazaar. Today’s Englishes tell a story of resistance and creativity, turning a once-imposed language into a chorus of many tongues.

Debarati De

Head of English Department, Grades 9-12