What is Indian English? Is it the kind of English spoken and used in India? Or is there a regional variety of English language found only in certain regions of India? The mere mention of it can lead to umpteen questions on the matter.
Given the country’s colonial past, Indians tend to lean more towards the British version of English rather than its US counterpart, though with the onset of the online world, the American version is rapidly gaining traction among the younger generations. Though Indians in general stick to the prescribed grammar, in the broader sense of the term, one can easily come across regional variants of the same in India.
These are mere reflections of the prevalent socio-cultural conditions in a given region. The spoken version, with its dialectic influences, are what imparts its own uniqueness to Indian English, thereby carving out its own niche in the echelons of the English language.
Oxford & Cambridge dictionaries too have acknowledged the wide impact of Indian English, opening its haloed corridors to various terms and phrases accrued from speakers of the Indian variant. ‘Ayyo’ has hence become an ode to a South Indian’s innate tendency to blurt it out with varying force and modulation, so as to capture the emotional undercurrents of any conversation.
Ironically, academically brilliant Indian students have often proved themselves stronger in their rendering of the English tongue, as compared to the native speakers of the language. It is usually in the arena of Pronunciation, Enunciation and Diction that most Indian speakers of the language tend to trip. Their colloquial accent often tends to leave Western speakers flummoxed, but that has never been a deterrent to our very own fearless linguistic warriors.
But all those IELTS aspirants who wish to make it big abroad, never tire to pick up just the right accent by tuning into English news channels, watching English movies, and listening to sports’ commentaries and the like. To each his/her/their own.