THE INDIAN STANDARD ENGLISH

Student Name
INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION(S)
LIN215X
SOCIOLINGUISTICS

INDIAN STANDARD ENGLISH 1
Introduction
The language spoken determines and defines people’s identity in front of the world
and cannot be considered as a set of few words. English one of the several languages which
happens to be the most widely spread and used languages throughout the globe. The language
spoken for more than four hundred years has emerged itself to be a variety of English in
diversified linguistic and socio-cultural aspects. Several regional varieties of English exist
around the world and are slowly and uniformly gaining recognition among which Indian
Standard English (IE) is one of them. It is been used as one of the most accepted languages
after Hindi in India. The present research paper proposes to discuss the Sociolinguistics of
English language in India. With time, English started developing its distinctive pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary in India.
Historical events
English came to India in between the seventeenth century with the emergence of East
India Company. Indian Standard English was formed to conduct trade and commerce in India
with other countries situated in the East. In the beginning, Britishers tried to learn IE
language to interact with Indians and thus, started special colleges to fulfil their purposes.
They even took the help of the translators and when they gained political powers, they
established Indian provinces such as Bombay, Madras and Bengal. After India got
independence from Britishers, the constitution had to decide upon its policy towards IE.
Hindi was officially decided to be the national language besides giving statuses of other
regional languages. However, few states insisted to make English as an associate official
language (Vijayalakshmi and Babu 2014:1-2)1.
1 Vijayalakshmi, M, and Manchi Sarat Babu. 2014. A Brief History of English Language Teaching in India.
International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications 4 (5): 1-4.

INDIAN STANDARD ENGLISH 2
Many schools and universities got developed in the late nineteenth century. Few
people started neglecting society and their cultural language to learn the English language.
English was not limited to elite colleges and schools and thus government appointed many
commissions to enhance the standard of IE in colleges and schools. For example, the
University Education Commission says: studying English must be continued as it is one
language that is rich in the technical, humanistic and scientific literature. In 1958, The
Central Institute of English was developed in Hyderabad along with various other regional
institutes in several cities of India. English was primarily studied for administration and
educational purposes but with the revolutionary development in the field of technology,
communication, trade and entertainment, IE got a new role as one of the international
languages for making communications. At present, all four skills: reading, speaking, writing
and listening to English has become necessary in India (Vijayalakshmi and Babu 2014:2).
Distinctive pronunciation / accent features
With regards to the pronunciation aspect of IE, it is seen that some phonological
contexts distinguish IE from other types of English used throughout the globe. For instance,
IE speakers use retro-flexes and dental instead of alveolar or inter-dental epenthesis for
consonants like r-pronunciations and use of [w] and [v]. It can also be noted that several
lexical items are accented variedly in IE from the manner they are been accented in other
English varieties. Al-wossabi (2014:77) reveals that a study on the comparison made between
American English and Indian English finds that there is a significant difference between both
the varieties particularly the accent between them2. While the IE tends to drop in frequency
between accented pronunciation, showing no improvement in amplitude, American English
speakers raise an amplitude and frequency to the accented pronunciation within the same
contexts.
2 Al-wossabi, Sami Ali Nasr. 2014. Indian English in the EFL Context: Claims and Facts. American
International Journal of Social Science 3 (4): 76-87.