ALAPPUZHA: English language contributed to the growth of Indian languages and vice versa. The commonly used English words ‘ginger’ and ‘mango’ have their roots in Malayalam and they had found a place in other world languages during the colonial period.
The transformation of words over a long period has been explained in the latest edition of ‘Hobson-Jobson,’ a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, released on June 11.
‘Hobson-Jobson,’ which is available online, was first compiled by two India enthusiasts, Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell, titled Hobson-Jobson: The Definitive Glossary of British India in 1886.
Dr Kate Teltscher, its editor, says the mother of the words ‘ginger’ and ‘mango’ is Malayalam. ‘Ginger’ travelled through Greek and Latin into old French and old English. In the 15th century, the plant was introduced into the Caribbean and Africa and later it spread across the world along with the word.
Dr Teltscher, co-director of the Literature and Culture Research Centre, Roehampton University, says that after the Portuguese came to Kerala in 1498, ‘mangai’ in Malayalam entered Portuguese as ‘manga’ and then English with an ‘o’ ending.
‘Hobson-Jobson’ also describes the journey of the words ‘chilli’ and ‘ayah’. Chilli was taken from Chile in South America, from where the plant was carried to the Indian archipelago and then to India. ‘Ayah,’ which is thought to be Indian, originated from a Portuguese word, which means governess or nurse.
A report on the glossary carried by BBC entitled “How India changed the English language” on June 21 says the flow of Indian words into English gathered momentum as a result of global trade that expanded through European invasion of the eastern nations.
“Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, Portuguese and English words got transformed around the globe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, revealing how languages have evolved over time as culture is made and remade, and people adapt to conditions around them,” it says.
