Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c6.33

c6.33

As to Hindustani words adopted into the Anglo-Indian colloquial the subject is almost too wide and loose for much remark. The habit of introducing these in English conversation and writing seems to prevail more largely in the Bengal Presidency than in any other, and especially more than in Madras, where the variety of different vernaculars in use has tended to make their acquisition by the English less universal than is in the north that of Hindustani, which is so much easier to learn, and also to make the use in former days of Portuguese, and now of English, by natives in contact with foreigners, and of French about the French settlements, very much more common than it is elsewhere. It is this bad habit of interlarding English with Hindustani phrases which has so often excited the just wrath of high English officials, not accustomed to it from their youth, and which (*e.g.*) drew forth in orders the humorous indignation of Sir Charles Napier.