Eloquent parrots: mixed language and the examples of hinglish and rekhti

‘Hinglish’ has become the lingua franca among urban Indians today. Listen closely and you’ll hear Hindi and Urdu peppered with English words and phrases. Likewise, English sentences are spiked with Hindi or Urdu. In fact, many words that used to be well known in Hindi and Urdu have now disappeared from the vocabulary of native speakers, who have switched over to English equivalents. Ruth Vanita uncovers some of the roots of this mixed language phenomenon in the hybridised poetry of rekhti.