English as spoken in South Asia is evolving, but there is no sign it is turning into a separate dialect that English speakers from other continents might not understand, according to Joybrato Mukherjee, a top German linguistics scholar.
The University of Giessen professor uses computer analysis, based on one-million-word samples of Indian and five other South Asian varieties of English, to discover their distinctive words as well as slight regional differences in grammar.
English spread around the globe with the British Empire. Linguists say there is no authoritative standard English. All the spinoffs exist side by side and are “right” for the people who speak them. English in India functions a little differently from English in England. Take the word, “prepone,” the opposite of postpone, which most other English speakers have never heard of.
Full report here Manila Bulletin
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