General Indian English

General Indian English:-

Most Indians who learn English learn their own Indian Language before they are exposed to English. In other words, they have in them very strongly formal linguistic habits when they attempt to learn English and these linguistic habits are bound to interfere with their learning English. Many Indians use Voiced labio-dental approximant [v] in place of /v/ and /w/ which occur in English. Apart from these features, there are strong regional features in the English spoken by Indians and these are a direct influence of the Tamilian often pronounces ‘egg’ as /jeg/ instead of /eg/, a Bihari pronounces ‘school’ as /isku;l/ and stamp as /istemp/. The result is that these and other such gross regional features render the English speech of Indians unintelligible even to fellow Indian. There are indeed, many varieties of English spoken in India. Such as Tamil English, Telugu English, Kannada English, Urdu English, Punjabi English etc.

If we analyze some of the varieties of Indian English listed above, we will no doubt find certain common phonological features. If we put the common phonological features of several varieties of Indian English and remove from each variety certain gross regional features, a variety of English will emerge which can be called General Indian English.

General Indian English is meat a certain variety of English spoken by educated Indians. General Indian English is free from regional features. This mode if acquired will at least make it Telugu English, Punjabi English or any one particular variety of Indian English.