Youth Incorporated Magazine

If you’ve ever been reprimanded for ‘Indianising’ your English language, let the Oxford Dictionary handle your woes because words like ‘jugaad’, ‘dadagiri’, ‘accha’ and more are officially a part of the dictionary. 70 new Indian words from Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati languages have been added to the dictionary.

Words like ‘abba’ (father), anna (elder brother), chamcha, chup, badmash, churidar, haba, didi, ganja, yaar, puri, bapu, bada din, achcha, surya namaskar, pukka, natak and timepass are among the 70 Indian words that have made their way to the dictionary. Indian delicacies like gulab jamun, mirch masala, keema, bhelpuri, chutney, ghee and papad can also be found in the Oxford lexicon. The words were added to the dictionary as Indians have ‘a highly specific vocabulary with no direct equivalents in English’, read the OED.

According to a report in the Hindu, Danica Salazar, OED World English Editor said, “Indian speech etiquette features a complex system of kinship terms and terms of address, in which age, gender, status, and family relationships are marked by a highly specific vocabulary with no direct equivalents in English”. She also marked, that the seventy words newly added to the OED reflect not only the history of the country, but also the many and diverse cultural and linguistic influences which have shaped and changed the English language in India.

The words are identified in the OED as ‘distinctive to Indian English’. The OED publishes four updates in a year in March, June, September and December respectively.