Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Origin of Words and Phrases: India

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

The British ruled India for over 200 years.  During that period, the British attempted to impose British culture on India. While they were somewhat successful, especially in exporting India’s national sport of cricket, they unknowingly were influenced by India as well. It turns out that words from several languages on the subcontinents have made their way into English. Many of these words are common words you use every day, even though you might not know they have Indian origins. Learn more about English language words of Indian origin on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Newspapers.com Newspapers.com is like a time machine. Dive into their extensive online archives to explore history as it happened. With over 800 million digitized newspaper pages spanning three centuries, Newspapers.com provides an unparalleled gateway to the past, with papers from the US, UK, Canada, Australia and beyond. Use the code “EverythingEverywhere” at checkout to get 20% off a publisher extra subscription at newspapers.com.   ButcherBox ButcherBox is the perfect solution for anyone looking to eat high-quality, sustainably sourced meat without the hassle of going to the grocery store. With ButcherBox, you can enjoy a variety of grass-fed beef, heritage pork, free-range chicken, and wild-caught seafood delivered straight to your door every month. ButcherBox.com/Daily  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British ruled India for over 200 years. During that period, the British attempted to impose British culture on India. While they were somewhat successful, especially in exporting India's national sport of cricket, they unknowingly were influenced by India as well. It turns out that words from several languages on the subcontinent have made their way into English. Many of these words are common words that you use every day, even though you might not have known they had Indian origins. Learn more about the English language words of India's.

origin on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Whenever two people spend time together, you can expect some of their personal.

personalities to rub off on each other. The same is true with cultures. When the British colonized India, they brought with them elements of their culture, such as the game of cricket, which is now the national sport of India. However, the culture transfer wasn't a one-way street. India also influenced the British. One of the most popular dishes in the UK today is chicken tika marsala. However, there was another area where India had a profound influence, the English language. English. English, is very different than most languages. It's constantly evolving and adopting words and phrases from other languages. Old and Middle English are basically incomprehensible to modern speakers of the language because of how much the language has evolved. Unlike French, for example,

there's no official academy that tries to authoritatively declare what English is. And as such, words get picked up and added to the language from other languages when they have a word that better describe something. So, it shouldn't be surprising. that the English language has been significantly influenced by India. Before I get any further, there are a few things I should note. The first of which is that when I say Indian influence, I'm mostly referring to traditional or British India, which may include modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh, not just the Republic of India.

And second, there is no single language in India. In fact, there isn't even a single language that is spoken as a native language by the majority of the population. The most widely spoken language is Hindi and Urdu, which are basically the same language. There are some differences, but I'm going to leave that for another episode. But in addition to those, you can find Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam, and many others. And on top of all of that, there's the ancient language of Sanskrit. So with those caveats, let's get started with some words that you are very familiar with. And the first word is shampoo. The use of herbs and elixirs as hair products has been practiced in India since ancient times.

There's evidence that the ancient Indus Valley civilization actually used such products. When British traders from the East India Company first arrived in India, they would often take part in a daily bath, which would include what was known as a champu in Hindi. A champu was basically a head massage that used hair products as part of the process. In the early 19th century, a Bengali doctor by the name of Dean Mahomede brought the practice of shampoo to England, which he offered as kind of a mix of a Turkish steam bath and a scalp massage. As more hair care products were developed, they used the term shampoo to describe the products, not just the experience. If you shampoo your hair at night, you might slip into something

which is another word that came from India, pajamas. The word pajama comes from the Urdu word Pijama, which roughly translates to leg clothing or leg garment. The Urdu word most probably came from a Persian word that meant the same thing. These garments were simply loose-fitting pants that were mourned by many different people in different segments of society. They were originally called mogul's breaches in the early 17th century, but they were a fad that fell out of favor. It was probably the Portuguese who developed the habit of sleeping in these garments, and that was adapted in Britain in the late 19th century. The word than evolved to describe any sleeping clothing, including shirts.

Several other clothing-related words originated in India. Dongaree is a very thick fabric originally made out of calico. Today, it's often synonymous with denim. The term is also used to describe bib overhauls. The word actually comes from the type of cloth used by workers who hailed from the village of Dongri outside of Mumbai. Likewise, Calico gets its name from the city of Calicut in the state of Caracut, in the state of Kerala, where the fabric hails from.

Kashmir, spelled with a sea, comes from the Kashmir region of India spelled with a K, and in particular from Kashmir goats. The word bandana comes from the Hindi-U-Rdu word Banhani, which is a brightly covered handkerchief, and that comes from the Sanskrit root word Bandha, which means to tie or bind. The word khaki refers to a color, and it was a direct loan word from Urdu for soil-colored. The name of the color, of course, was later used to describe a style of pants with that color. And finally, shawl is a very common garment worn over the shoulders in much of India. The word came from India, but it was probably originally based on the Persian word,

Shal. If you live in a tropical area, you might have something next to you, which is another word that comes from India. Jungle. Jungle comes from Hindi via the Sanskrit word jangala, which means rough and arid. Oddly enough, the original Sanskrit word means almost the opposite of the current meaning of jungle in English. How the word for a rough, arid region came to describe a wet forested region isn't really known. One theory is that the tangled aspect of the word was emphasized as the word became anglicized. Another theory is that the word was originally Persian, and it actually referred to a forested area.

Either way, the term came into use into English in the 18th century. One word that you might be surprised has an Indian origin is the word orange. Prior to the 13th century, there was no word for the color orange in the English language. It was referred to as red yellow or yellow-red. The word entered Middle English via the old French word, orange. The word initially only referred to the fruit and not the color. The place in France, known as orange, has a totally different history. The French word came from Italian, which in turn.

got it from the Sanskrit word, Nauranga, which means an orange tree. The Sanskrit word probably came from a Dravidian language in South India, possibly Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalam. Another two closely related words that also originate in India are Thug and Mugger. Thug derives from the Urdu Hindi word, Thug, which means thief or conman. It's also the basis for Thug-e, which was the type of Indian organized crime that existed from the civil civilized. 17th to the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the British called members of the thugie thugs. While they sound similar, the word mugger actually derives from a totally different word. The Hindi and Urdu word magar comes from the Sanskrit word makara, which refers to a crocodile.

And today there's a species of crocodile in India known as mugger crocodiles. They're known for sneaking up in their prey, which is how the connection was made with thieves. A mugger or thug might walk away from their crime with some loot. The word loot comes directly from Hindi, and the word means pretty much the exact same thing. Lute is the basis for the English words looting and looter. There are a surprising number of words that deal with homes and buildings that are all of Indian origin. Bungalow, veranda, and pagoda all come from India. Veranda comes from the Hindi Urdu word baramada.

How it got into English isn't quite known, as it may have come directly from Hindi-U-U-U-Rdu, or the Portuguese may have first adopted it and then imported it into English. Bungalo comes from the Urdu Hindi word bungla, which refers to a house made in the Bengali style. Finally, the word pagoda might surprise some people as being Indian in origin, because pagodas are usually associated with countries in East Asia, such as Japan and China. Nonetheless, Pagoda is believed to come from the Tamil word, word Pagavadi, which means how it's belonging to a deity. There are several sweet words that most people probably don't realize have Indian origins as well. Candy, sugar, and punch. The word

sugar took a very circuitous route to get into English. It didn't come from British contact with India. Rather, it came from the French word Suk, which in and of itself came from the Arab Sukhar, which came from the Sanskrit word Shakhar. Kain Shur, which came from the Sanskrit word Shaka. Kain originated in South and Southeast Asia and traveled west due to Arab traders. The word candy also took the long way to get into the English language. In ancient India, sugar cane was boiled to produce a substance known in Sanskrit as Kanda. In Persian, it became known as Kand, in Arabic it became known as Kandi, and finally in Old French it was called Sukrakhandi. The word candy began being used in English in the late 13th century.

The punch, the beverage, comes from the Hindi Urdu word for five. It comes from a drink originally made with five ingredients, alcohol, sugar, lemon, water, and tea. And the drink was originally known as Punch. The words I've gone through are words that most people probably don't realize have Indian origins. And this doesn't even begin to list all the words that are commonly used that have more obvious Indian origins, such as yoga, yogi, curry, chutney, karma, guru, sari, and Swami. It should be noted that the influence of India and Pakistan on the English language is by no means over. Believe it or not, India is the second largest English-speaking country after the United States. Only about 10% of the population in India speaks English, but that's 10%

of an enormous number, which roughly translates to about 180 million English speakers. Likewise, Pakistan is the third largest English-speaking country with about 108 million speakers. The population is smaller than India, but the percentage of the population that speaks English is larger, a bit under 50%. In both countries, almost all English speakers do not speak it as their first language, but it is an enormous number of people who can have a profound effect on the language. I'll give you a recent example of India's influence on English that I've observed from my travels. the use of the word kindly in replacing the word please. For example, I've seen signs, not just in India, but in other countries with a sizable Indian population that said something like,

Kindly shut the door. In researching the Indian use of Kindly, I discovered that it might not have actually originated in India, but rather was an older use of British English that somehow survived in India and is now being propagated by Indian English. I've also noticed the use of the word pleasure in lieu of thank you. There's a good chance that many of you listening to this have never encountered this example, but it's just a short form of saying, my pleasure, which is more of a British than American expression. However, I've only personally noticed this in India or places with a sizable Indian community. India and other large English-speaking countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines

will probably only have greater influence over the English language, in the years and decades to come. And that really isn't surprising because they've already been doing it for hundreds of years. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever.

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