Author:

​

Tanya Kole.

​

Abstract:

​

This paper aims to study the plurilingualistic habits of the people living in the megalopolis of Kolkata, along with their popular media and novels centred around the region. India provides a stellar case of plurilingualism ingrained in its people, wherein almost every person is required to be able to speak at least two languages. Its code-changing and borrowing habits are prominently displayed in the songs popularised in the region, and the novels and poetry consumed by the people. This has been induced by the people’s own speaking habits, subsequently influencing the way the languages are used in day to day life. This gives birth to what is popularly, albeit often in a derogatory sense, known as ‘Hinglish’ – a mixture of Hindi and English. Coming to the mainly Bangla-speaking region of West Bengal, this Hinglish gets infused with Bangla and births a mixture of three languages. Loan shifting or loan translation has seeped into the daily speech of the people, and it is not uncommon to see sentences that use the structure of one language, but the words of another. A recurrent example would be the usage of the Bangla word ‘আছে’ (achhe) by native speakers of Hindi when they try to speak in Bangla, wherein they attempt to find a substitute for the Hindi ‘है’ (hai), but being unable to find a proper translation, settle for ‘আছে’ (achhe) — meaning ‘is’. Code-switching and borrowing are rampant in all forms of media: songs, movies, as well as in literature. We see English words being casually used in Bangla stories, and Bangla phrases being incorporated into literature written in English. Phrases from different languages work in perfect harmony to portray a vivid image of a back alley of one of India’s biggest megalopoleis in the novel Kalkatta by Kunal Basu. The very title reeks of plurilingualism: it is the name of a mainly Bangla speaking area (Kolkata), written with its Hindi pronunciation in mind, but in the Roman script in an English story. Any reader who wishes to understand the book fully needs to master the casual forms of at least three languages. Filled with colloquial expletives and the vulgar expressions of the youth, the novel paints a vibrant picture of the underside of any Indian megalopolis: the outskirts occupied by overcrowded and unsanitary slums. Just like Indian writing in English borrows words from indigenous languages, the media produced also reflects linguistic diversity, in that innumerable songs and nearly all contemporary Bangla movies have English or Hindi words inserted into them. We see many instances of English words like ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ being used quite frequently in Bangla artists’ work, while these expressions completely substitute their Bangla counterparts in daily usage in the Kolkata megalopolis. Hence, Kolkata provides an ideal example of a plurilinguialistic area.

​

This paper was presented at The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association's (PAMLA) 118th Annual Conference - 2021.