Indian English Loanwords from Hindi and Urdu with Persian Roots

AbstractHistorical presence and influence of Persian language in the Indian subcontinent wasonce profound for a long time. Persian even served as the administrative andbureaucratic language in India during the era of Mughal Empire and shortly before thecolonization era, and was an important language of literature and creation of literaryworks, to the extent that there is a significant poetry style and epoch known as “Indianstyle” in history and stylistics of Persian poetry. As Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and Persianbelong to related language families and Indian English has been impacted by Hindi andUrdu in many ways, including the entry of lexemes, lexical items, words and idiomsfrom Hindi and Urdu into Indian English, and due to the prominent presence andsubstantial influence of Persian language in India for a long period, as well as thecultural relations between Iran and the Indian subcontinent, there are loanwords inIndian English with Persian etymological origins and roots entered from Hindi and Urdu.Some of these loanwords surveyed in this paper, selected based on categorization atWiktionary (the free online dictionary) and inclusion in contemporary Persiandictionaries, are yaar (friend), shabash (well done), bandh (closure, shutdown, strike),zamindar (land owner and tax collector), zamindari (social system of land ownershipand tax collection), and davakhana (clinic), as only a few examples. Existence of theseloanwords can be considered as evidence and testament to common cultural bonds androots between Persian, Hindi and Urdu. Further systematic and holistic investigationwith contribution of related fields, such as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics,lexicography, ethnographical studies, and anthropology is recommended.Keywords: English in India, etymology, Hindi, Urdu, Indian English, loanwords, Persian