A Hindi-English jumble, spoken by 350 million

The turning point that made Hinglish hip, say cultural observers, was the introduction of cable television in the mid-1990s. Eagerly anticipated music channels like MTV and its competitor, Channel V, originally provided only English music, presented by foreign-born Indian video jockeys who spoke only in English. Outside metro areas, the response was not encouraging.

Then Channel V started a new campaign that included comic spoofs on the way Indians speak English. By 1996, Channel V's penetration of the Indian market went from under 10 percent to over 60 percent.

"There are two trends going on here," says Vikram Chandra, a TV newscaster for NDTV news channel in New Delhi. "One is that [businesses] have to Indianize in order to survive in this market.... At the same time, most Indians recognize that to succeed and do well, English is where it's at." In effect, Indians are trying to have it both ways.

English coaching institutes are now burgeoning nationwide. Yet what Indians speak at work is not necessarily what they speak at home, with their friends, or on the bus.

Indeed, David Crystal, a British linguist at the University of Wales, recently projected that at about 350 million, the world's Hinglish speakers may soon outnumber native English speakers.

While most of the Indians who come to the West to work in the information-technology sector speak English, the sheer numbers of Hinglishmen in IT makes it almost inevitable that some Hinglish words will get globalized.

The subcontinental tug of Hinglish is already being felt abroad. In Britain, the No. 1 favorite meal is an Anglo-Indian invention called Chicken Tikka Masala. And last week, Microsoft announced the company's decision to launch local versions of Windows and Office software in all 14 of India's major languages, including Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu.

Indians have always had a way with English words. Sexual harassment, for instance, is known as "Eve-teasing." Mourners don't give condolences, they "condole." And then there's "pre-pone," the logical but nonexistent opposite of "post-pone": "I'm busy for dinner. Can we pre-pone for lunch instead?"

Different Indian cities have their own Hinglish words. In Bombay, men who have a bald spot with a fringe of hair all around are called "stadiums," as in "Hey stadium, you're standing on my foot."

For the vast majority of Indians who have never studied English, and indeed, who may be barely literate, Hinglish is a foreign language that allows them to connect with their immediate world.

"In Bombay, everybody knows the word 'tension,' " says Shaziya Khan, a young advertising whiz in Bombay. "My maid one day told me, 'Aajkul humko bahut tension hain.'" (Translation: These days, I feel a lot of tension.) "She understands, and I understand. It really works."

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