How we got pukka

To understand India's influence on English, you need a Hobson-Jobson

by Josephine Livingstone / June 28, 2013 / Leave a comment

What can a Victorian glossary of Anglo-Indian slang tell us about the British empire? (Image by Josephine Livingstone)

Pyjamas did not exist until the 19th century. I’m not sure what people wore to bed in the 1700s, but it wasn’t pyjamas. Pyjamas by any other name may well have been as snug, but the fact remains: without the English in India, there would be no India in English. The best way to understand this story is to get your hands on a Hobson-Jobson.

As its subtitle says, Hobson-Jobson is “A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, And of Kindred Terms; Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive.” The first edition was published in 1886. And now Kate Teltscher, a scholar at Roehampton University, has heroically abridged the 1903 2^nd edition for our reading pleasure (Oxford University Press, £14.99). She has halved its size to a very manageable 570 pages, without cutting any good bits.

The glossary was the brainchild of two men, each representative of their age. The first was born in 1820, in East Lothian, Scotland. He was named Henry, after his aunt. The aunt named Henry is a good metaphor for the life and career of Colonel Sir Henry Yule—Bengal Engineer, editor of medieval texts, historical geographer—perfectly normal for 19th-century Britain; utterly strange to us, looking back.

Yule lived a classic Victorian life. His father, himself a fine Persian and Arabic Orientalist, was in the Bengal army and Henry followed him to India, picking up his interest in languages. As part of the Bengal Engineers, Henry was involved in the expansion of the Indian canal system and railway network. He also received the Royal Geographical Society’s gold medal for his English edition of Marco Polo’s travels.

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Comments

"Consumable Past"
June 29, 2013 at 04:27
Many thanks for bringing this work -- along with your judicious commentary -- to our attention. I'm drinking an excellent (Lagunitas) IPA as I'm reading. As for any anti-Indian snobbery: well, that cuts no ice with me. :<)
Sam Bharr
June 29, 2013 at 13:18
I wonder if the Glossary contains "tickety boo," recently revived in Call the Midwife. Pronounced "theek hey baaboo" in Hindi, it literally means "very good sir," or "all's well, sir." An interesting etymology -- although it brings a smile, it was usually an acknowledgement from an Indian in servitude..
tony in san diego
June 29, 2013 at 14:14
"But it is also a pretty disrespectful bastardisation of a real religious practice." Somthing like 'hocus pocus" or "abra cadabra"
Rob T.
June 29, 2013 at 14:49
This piece combines the innocent arrogance of youth with one of the worst aspects of history as a discipline: the tendency to sit in judgment over persons whom the writer did not know, based upon inevitably incomplete information. This sort of thing works with the likes of Hitler, but not so well with those who inhabit the grey area of the moral spectrum--that is, almost everyone else. Fortunately for the historians, most of them needn't fear being treated by posterity the same way they treat the Henry Yules of the world, precisely because most historians are inconsequential alongside their subjects. Perhaps this fact helps to explain historians' need to moralize critically from their ostensibly more enlightened perspective? In any case, it brings to mind the old saw that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach. I would add that those who can't teach, preach.
Word Nerd
June 29, 2013 at 15:27
My most exciting find in Hobson-Jobson was the origin of the phrase "I don't give a damn!" Look up "dam".
Karen Myers
June 29, 2013 at 16:45
Here's an online version of the unabridged version: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson/
Michael Feld
June 29, 2013 at 21:07
What a coincidence! I just yesterday loaned my pb copy of this classic to a scholar of South Asian literature. Great read. (And as to "a book by a chap", do a title-search for _Book_ on the catalog of your local library.
sapera
June 29, 2013 at 22:27
yeah, the salient point surely, is the "tone and charm" of orientalists who were appropriating words from the language of a people being subjugated under the iron boot of british imperialism.
Albert
June 30, 2013 at 00:06
When I read this tone, so half idiotic of many contemporaneous political correct people, I always remember this thing, which should be a compulsory watching for all of then, as the author of this article. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSELOCMmw4A
Amalin Ferguson
June 30, 2013 at 07:42
Why so harsh? She's a young pip. Give her a break. Go read the papers you wrote at her age and tell me that they don't make your cheeks warm.
Annie Morgan
June 30, 2013 at 17:16
Oh it's at the top of my Christmas list!! Wonderful review, too, which I will stick in the book when I get it. My cousin, whom I met in the 1950s when he was in his 80s or so, worked for the British in India in 1885-1900 - I wish he were alive to enjoy it. He missed being there terribly.
Robert Beard
July 1, 2013 at 04:03
I have no recollection of ever seeing or hearing this word in North America, but I have a sound file for it in the Good Word database (my daily words since 2000). I don't know how it got there. I confess to suffering from a mild stroke two years ago, maybe that explains it. I can now remember words I'd forgotten and can't remember those I remembered/
Robert Beard
July 1, 2013 at 04:04
By the way, tomorrow's Good Word is 'pukka' with a link back to this page.
fabisho
July 1, 2013 at 05:30
Cracking review. What's with all the ad hominem comment? Refute the woman or get off your high horse.
David Lloyd-Jones
July 1, 2013 at 13:31
".. but the fact remains: without the English in India, there would be no India in English," the Prospect tells us, but like many Well Known Facts, this is hooey. It may be true that in the most recent centuries English imperialism brought the vocabulary of bureaucrats and military rulers from the many Indian languages into English, but to say this is the whole thing is to ignore both the power and the long term reach of Sanskrit. The age of the English language is less than that of the European use of gunpowder. Sanskrit, by contrast, has been informing and enriching all the languages of Eurasia for five or seven thousand years. On the assumption that this is a family paper, I shall leave out the most popular and obvious example in daily use everywhere. -dlj.
K. Iyer
July 1, 2013 at 15:34
I learn something every day. Today, I learned, for the hundredth time that folks of "manifest destiny" benevolently disciplined the natives. When and where will I learn, in English language, about why the natives were not all that crazy about giving their "hearts and minds" to the murderous plunderer except, of course, for a few sycophants? Who will tell me, in English language, that a whole lot from the tiny islands were lured to the faraway land with the promise of unlimited supply of smooth-skinned boys? How will I ever come to know in English language that "mlecha" was the most common epithet for the "saviors" especially in the Bengal of the old? I have so much more to learn and not too many sources in English language.
Annie Morgan
July 1, 2013 at 16:22
Gracious me - am I so innocent I don't see all that angst and guilt that most everyone seemed to see? The review is one thing, but the book itself is surely another, so I shall have to read more reviews. Maybe being politically incorrect in my thinking (if not in my speech - I am fairly tactful out loud) keeps me from those aforementioned emotions.
Nick
July 1, 2013 at 17:05
[let me fix that link ...] A few days ago the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on the same subject, highlighting the work of a doctoral student at Indiana University: http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/06/25/hobson-jobson-definitively/
Fern Heidrick
July 1, 2013 at 17:32
What does she think "meet cute" means?
mark
July 3, 2013 at 02:27
such a promising idea! - but running amok is malay not indian - pass the smelling salts..!
Annie Morgan
July 3, 2013 at 14:28
Thank you for the link, Nick - it's full of interest. I'm looking forward even more to my Christmas present!
Macaulite
July 3, 2013 at 21:45
Interestingly, the word "pukka" becomes a loan-word from "Hindi and Urdu". But the root is actually "pakka" - pure sanskrit, literally meaning well-ripened-matured/well-digested. Hence it is used in several large dialects of the north and centre outside of Hindi and Urdu - and also in Bengali - which the Brits would encounter more widely than Hindi or Urdu in the expansion of their empire. But that root cannot be noted - as usual - because it goes beyond the cultural aspects India should be associated with. Its a Mughal-sherwani past that the English must think - it borrowed from, not the Sanskrit-ik one.
Tim Entwisle
July 8, 2013 at 07:08
Enjoyed reading the review and the comments. I do understand the responses to the little lecture at the end. I judge it badly for its judging.
BobK99
September 27, 2013 at 14:30
The contretemps that seems to have started with David Lloyd-Jones's '“.. but the fact remains: without the English in India, there would be no India in English,” the Prospect tells us, but like many Well Known Facts, this is hooey.' But this argument is giving off more heat than light; stuff happens, and the history of it depends on who stops the clock and when. For another discussion of Hobson-Jobson and what came first, see my posts http://harmlessdrudgery.blogspot.com/2013/04/chronophagy.html and its sequel. b
Ram
November 9, 2013 at 01:44
As I read this, a million tidbits of thoughts floated across my mind but as I set to comment, the wine has taken over. The best I can do, under the circumstances, is throw a few links - and a few random thoughts - at the more curious readers who chance by this blog. Hobson-Jobson is a very clever title. The writer missed that Yule and Burnell sententiously picked up a very Indian onomatopoeic tradition. This is common across the Indo-European or Dravidian or other linguistic trees .Examples in "Hinglish" abound. YouTube has an entertaining if foul-mouthed act by Russell Peters, Canadian-Indian stand-up comedian that goes into this bit. "English-Vinglish" is a 2012 movie comedy in the usual shallow, gaudy, melodramatic Bollywood style. The Economist review of Jobson-Hobson is here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/08/indian-english A hilarious excerpt on NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6575473 Googling for this comment, I came across many interesting hits but will post just this curious one from Amazon (curious because the provenance seems to be the USA!): "On some alleged specimens of Indian onomatopoeia (Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences) Unknown Binding – January 1, 1871 by J. Hammond Trumbul"

How we got pukka

To understand India's influence on English, you need a Hobson-Jobson

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Comments

"Consumable Past"

Sam Bharr

tony in san diego

Rob T.

Word Nerd

Karen Myers

Michael Feld

sapera

Albert

Amalin Ferguson

Annie Morgan

Robert Beard

Robert Beard

fabisho

David Lloyd-Jones

K. Iyer

Annie Morgan

Nick

Fern Heidrick

mark

Annie Morgan

Macaulite

Tim Entwisle

BobK99

Ram

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