How good is your Indian English?

The English language, as spoken around the world, has several borrowings from languages native to India, including Hindi (‘dinghy’), Gujarati (‘bungalow’), Sanskrit (‘jungle’), among many other examples. Indian English, obviously, has even more of these types of terms. It also includes many formations of English words, as opposed to these loanwords. That means that Indian English offers different senses for some familiar words and combinations of words.

For example, if you fired someone in India, you wouldn’t necessarily be putting them out of work; in India, the verb fire can mean ‘to shout at (someone)’. There are also formations like unmotorable, which refers to a road that isn’t suitable for use by a motor vehicle, a word that, while perfectly sensible to most English speakers, simply isn’t in use in American or British English.

So let’s see how well you know your Indian English!