The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com This article first appeared on Prof. Farooq Kperogi’s column (his famous blog and the Daily Trust newspaper on Saturday) on 31st May, 2015. You may want to see it there:  Guest column: Incredible Indian English In both India and Nigeria , English is used as a second language. I couldn’t, however, resist being driven to write on Indian English— called Indianism or, more informally, “Hinglish”, which is a blend of Hindi and English—since my early days in the country some two years ago. As in other nations where English is spoken as a non-native language, English usage in both India and Nigeria differs from British and American varieties in phonetics, phonology, lexis, and structure. The distinctiveness of Indian English, though, is as incredible as the country itself. I am not here to disparage theirs and extol ours . I don’t subscribe to linguistic imperialism. But polishing our English to the level of intelligibility am...