ENGLISH IN SOUTH ASIA

Abstract

The profile of English in the subcontinent is different from that in 1947 when the colonial period came to an end and the country was divided into India and Pakistan. In linguistic terms there are four major language families: Indo-Aryan, used by the majority of the population, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Munda. The formal introduction of English in South Asia has passed through several stages. What started as an educational debate in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries culminated in Lord Macaulay's much-maligned Minute of 1835, which initiated planned activity for introducing the English language into South Asian education. The major features which contribute to the distinctiveness of South Asian English are varied and complex. First, English is an additional language in South Asia; this means that in the total linguistic repertoire of the users of English, English may be a second, third, or n-th language. In grammar, British English continues to provide a yardstick for standardisation of South Asian English.

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