Book Review: INDLISH: The Book for Every English-Speaking Indian

by Sri Kumari

Sri Kumari is a technical writer with Tektronix Engineering and Development India (Pvt) Ltd.

INDLISH: The Book for Every English-Speaking Indian

by Jyoti Sanyal
edited by Martin Cutts
cartoons by Sarbajit Sen

Available through Viva Group or from Amazon.

At Last, a Book on What Ails English in India!

Why do we speak the way we do?

Why do we switch to the passive voice in English, although we keep to the active in our mother tongues?

Why are our letters long and wordy and yet can't get the point across?

Why are our textbooks so wordy and yet so vacuous?

Why do we dread reading and filling up official or commercial documents?

The list of such questions is endless. You'll find the answers to many of them in INDLISH: The Book for Every English-Speaking Indian, written by Jyoti Sanyal, a veteran journalist and former Dean of Asian College of Journalism, Bangalore.

INDLISH traces the history of English in India from the time of the British merchants of the East India Company-and the strange khichri (or hodge-podge, in American English) it became with officialese, commercialese, and legalese as its main ingredients, garnished with mistranslated idioms from our regional languages.

I have been a technical writer for eight years, and I think everyone in the technical communication profession should own a copy of INDLISH as a guide to clarity and precision in writing.

How the Book Addresses Common Language Mistakes

INDLISH identifies and addresses most common mistakes. Replete with everyday examples and clever cartoons, this collection of articles initially published in The Statesman newspaper makes interesting reading. You can open the book at any chapter and start reading.

The book emphasizes clear and concise writing by shunning needless words, using familiar words instead of the Latinate, using the active voice, and conjuring pictures with lively verbs, instead of dragging in strings of nouns and prepositions.

This book is an excellent guide and reference for all forms of communication-written or spoken-for amateurs or professionals. The articles are grouped into seven chapters:

Chapter 1: Making a Botch of Writing

This chapter discusses how to avoid clutter in writing. Here is one example:

If in our country, we are to undertake programmes designed for the protection of forests and thus improve our wood resources, the basic need is to make available to scientists, industrialists, educationists and environmentalists involved in activities related to wood and wood-products, information on scientific techniques for rational and economic utilisation of timber resource . . . It is hoped that this publication will meet the long-felt need toward achieving this objective.

Chapter 2: The letters we write

This chapter cites conventional openings. Sanyal asks: Can't we do better than start a letter with what no addressee needs to be told?

Dear Sir — We have your letter of July 21 and note that it is your intention to include in your book on modern English prose style, to be published by . . . under the title . . . a few brief passages from our . . .

Chapter 3: John Company Baboo as hack

The author quotes numerous news reports and editorials to show how journalists use certain words like a mantra. Here's how they misuse the word involve:

As the political scenario gets murkier, several ministers, senior party leaders and their kins[sic] are getting more and more involved in the cable war and other shady deals . Mr. P--'s son's involvement in several land deals in Saurashtra is well known.

Mr. S--, a known underworld don and an independent municipal councillor then, was indicted by the Srikrishna Commission for his involvement in the 1992-93 Mumbai riots.

For each sample, INDLISH offers a simpler version that sparkles with clarity and precision.

Chapter 4: Usage Indlish style

How often have we heard the following expressions?

I am having a headache.

Why don't you give them one piece of cake?

Tell me no? / say no?

INDLISH traces the origins of such expressions, and explains why they are wrong.

Chapter 5: Those troublesome midgets

This chapter deals with the misuse of tiny words such as also, both, even, and only. The book shows how misplacing them can alter meaning.

He is an only child.

He is only a child.

There is a garage on both sides of the street.

Chapter 6: Mother tongue, other tongue

This chapter presents the author's altogether original and insightful explanation about where and how English behaves unlike Indian languages. Indian languages, he cautions us, are extremely flexible in syntax-unlike English, which has a rigid syntax. We are therefore prone to errors of syntax:

Wanted: a piano for a lady with mahogany legs.

Chapter 7: Your reader deserves better

The author discusses good and bad writing, and suggests how we can make writing lively by importing literary devices-chiefly dialogue. He argues the case for measured but detailed description, and pleads for using words to paint pictures.