The Socio-Cognitive Dynamics of Hindi/Urdu Lexemes in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary

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Abstract

If we look at the 1990 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (English), we will not see the Urdu/Hindi words as Bhindi, Paratha but we can see those words in the 1999 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD). Living languages go through a changing process due to many social, economic and political circumstances. Those factors have also played a pivotal role to extend the circles of the New Englishes or World English. The Colonial period is one of the major factors that paved the way to spread English at an international level (Kachru, 2001:519). The process of the internationalization of English is going through constant change due to many reasons. As Baumgardner (1993:154) concludes "languages are in a constant state of change. The direction of change and development in newer varieties of English depends, according to the authors, not only on government language and education policies, but also on the attitudes of speakers of New Englishes. As might be expected, a variety of attitudes exists among Pakistanis towards the borrowing that is taking place in English from Urdu." (...)