Author: Nigel Hankin
Publisher: India Research Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 576
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187943041
Description
A stranger's rumble-tumble guide to some words customs and guiddities Indian and Indo-British. Mr. Hankin has gone about collecting words for his glossary with the same inspired eccentricity as Hobson-Jobson's original authors.
Each new edition of the English Oxford Dictionary (OED) indicates a greater number of words in English usage with a connection to the subcontinent, but the real number with a link is even larger than any figure quoted. Those mentioned in the workaday dictionaries as having an Indian background are mostly relatively recent accessions: many, commercial imports by the young East India Company, such words arrived as dengaree, chintz, lac, lacquer and the pigment, lake were received in this way. More arrived as part of the vocabulary of returning travelers, particularly that of soldiers and administrators,. A smaller number came via Portuguese and French. The process is a continuing one and no doubt the large resident Indian community in Britain will be adding their quota.
COMMENTS:
Hanklin pays generous tribute to his forebears..But in all innocence. Hankin may have dealt his bedside companion (Hobson-Jobson) a mortal blow. Hanklyn-Janklin has all its precursor's qualities, but it is more precise, more up to date (in definition, and often in spelling), subtler and more explicit.
=David Spiller, Times Literary Supplement
Hankin crams it like a curiosity shop, an indophile Disneyland.
=Sunil Sethi, India Today
An old Raj recipe of mother tongue served up as spice..Mr Hankin has gone about collecting words for this glossary with the same inspired eccentricity as Hobson-Jobson's original authors. Reading Hanklyn-Janklin you have the impression that some time ago at the turn of the century the English language in India sprouted off in a different luxuriant direction.
=The Independent on Sunday.