[Music]
hello everyone
and welcome back to english with lucy
today i've got a very special guest
it is anbu from conquer british english
hello everyone it's a pleasure to be
here
so this is the first part of a two-part
video
the second part of the lesson is on
anbu's channel
the link is in the description box today
we're going to be looking at the
differences
between british english and indian
english
i grew up in bedfordshire in england but
i live in cambridgeshire
and i speak with a modern rp accent
sometimes with a bit of estuary as well
and yeah i actually speak with a similar
accent to lucy's
um but during the course of this video
i'm sure you'll be able to hear the
differences there because i actually
grew up in london
and i also have hints of multicultural
london english
and shortened down to emily in my in my
in my accent too
and um just to let you know i'm of tamil
ethnicity
and we just wanted to also mention you
know india is such a
diverse country and the population is
huge there's over one billion people
living in india
and just to put that in perspective if
you kind of compare india to europe
um just the number of nations in europe
and the languages that they speak
you will notice some differences in in
the indian
english that you use um so we'd love to
hear
um whether you use any words slightly
differently and we'd love to hear your
thoughts on that in the comments section
yes definitely this is all about
learning and sharing so please do
use that comment section to tell us how
you speak and the words that you use
what i'd love to do is um give you a
taste of what one form of the indian
accent sounds like in when we're
discussing these words so yes
please do so if you give some of the
examples
yeah i'd love to do that that'd be
really cool cool another important thing
to note
is that ambu has created a pdf for this
lesson
with all of the vocabulary differences
and some extra quizzes and interesting
things
so you can click on the link in the
description box to download that for
both
videos okay so the first one is
this one it's a vegetable yeah
i would call this okra we would call it
ladyfingers that's so funny because
ladyfingers
is actually the name of a spongy biscuit
oh really
yes it's kind of the bottom layer of a
tiramisu
sometimes do you like do you like the
taste of lady fingers in touring the
soup
i mean the vegetable yeah yeah i love it
um
honestly i think it's quite a boring
biscuit yeah
um i think that's really funny i mean
you can see why it's called that can't
you
but i've um grown up eating okra lady
fingers and it's got a very slimy
texture to it
but yeah it's using a lot of our dishes
yeah it's not something
that we cook with a lot here but we
absolutely love curries
um i think we've actually named the
chicken tikka masala as our national
dish
it was voted as the british national
dish really that's how much we love it
yeah so the next word we've got for you
is this one
brinjal you call it brinjal brinjal
that's so funny i wonder where that
comes from
we call this aubergine but this is quite
a controversial world
yes that too yes
no this is quite a controversial word
because in american english they call it
eggplant and that's it because eggplant
eggplant eggplant
because the flower bud looks like an egg
have you ever oh i didn't i've never
seen it no no
is that one okay we call it aubergine
brinjal
and brinjal i'm going to start calling
it brinjal i just like calling it
eggplant
eggplant i love the accent all right the
next one
is this it's the ingredient that makes
up a lot of curries and
i eat it for breakfast a lot um we call
it
yoghurt in indian english it's often
called curd
which is really interesting because kurd
actually has a different meaning i guess
in british english when we imagine curd
yeah do we imagine different consistency
yeah isn't curd like the creamy part of
milk
exactly yeah in indian english you would
often hear phrases like
could you add some curd to my dish or
i'm just going to pop out and buy some
curd
and not pop out because i guess pop out
is
saying i'm going to go to the shops and
buy some curd interesting
but like a dessert yogurt so
strawberry-flavored yogurt you wouldn't
say a pot of curd
no i don't think he would know okay yeah
interesting the next one we've got is a
really interesting one because i've
grown up hearing it all the time and
it's often been a source of
argument in the household this one is
luck or lack okay yeah
so we don't have a picture for this one
because i need to guess what it is
lark luck like a lark but it's not it's
not spelled with a
r it's spelled l a k h okay
something to do with luck nope something
to do with the bird
it kind of sounds like it right so one
lakh is
a unit in the indian numbering system it
actually represents a hundred thousand
in conversation you might hear someone
say i bought that house
for 10 lakhs so that would be a million
pounds yeah exactly because 10 times 100
000 is 1 million right i just think also
it's amazing the way you can switch
between those two acts
thank you so does that is that maybe
because
rupees are a smaller value
so you're more likely to have something
perhaps because we would
a hundred thousand pounds a lot
absolutely
yeah that could be that could be a
viable um
reason i think there might be a
difference in the numbering systems as
well
across across the different nations so
that will
influence how we think about numbers
and then the term that we attribute to a
particular sum of
money or a particular number amazing
because i just would have no idea
if someone yeah told me ten luck in my
household when we're talking about
numbers
um my parents always use blacks
and my siblings and i we use a hundred
thousand or a million
and we often have miscommunication when
we're when we're talking about numbers
it leads to a lot of confusion in the
household
even within your own household yeah all
right this next one
i wonder if you can tell what it is from
the picture
in british english we would refer to
this as marriage
now you would often hear this being
referred to as an alliance
um sounds really formal doesn't it
forming in an artist yes
um but yeah that's often a term that
would you also use marriage as well yeah
for sure
um but in terms of an example sentence
uh someone could say
that these two people are seeking an
alliance or they're looking for an
alliance
that's so funny because i would think
that would be a business person
looking to join forces with someone else
when actually it describes an emotional
connection and an official one as well
let us know if
marriage is often referred to in a
different way
from the part of india that you're from
so uh the next one
is you know when it's a rainy day and
you just want to catch that bus you're
going to be waiting at
a bus how would you say it a bus stop
bus stop
in indian english you often hear it as
bus
stand or a bus halt it makes sense
yeah holt is kind of a more formal word
yeah
like a more old-fashioned word for stop
in
british english and then a stand well
you stand there don't you
so yeah and i guess they're maybe
referring to the actual stand of the
the pole of the bus signs on the top
right the signage if i heard bus stand
i'd know exactly what is meant by it
absolutely
but we definitely tend to say bus stop
yeah okay
this next one is the word we use to
address
a man in a position of authority for
example a teacher
or your boss i mean in british english
we would just say first name terms for
boss
or mr and then their surname for a
teacher
i remember mr purdum was my favorite
teacher at school so i would
just call him mr purdum or mr yeah
that's absolutely right
in london i've you know grown up calling
my teachers mr
mr smith for example in india you would
refer to your male teacher as
sir and that's quite common place and
your boss as sir as well
um so with the accent it sounds
something like this
sar so you would hear an indian person
saying saar can you please help me with
the homework please
sorry i was just so in love with what
you were saying i really
really like the accent it is just so
gentle isn't it like
it's almost like caressing the r sound
we do use the word sir
we do don't we but i would say for a
boss it's too formal that's always
showing too much inequality i would
think
um but in some schools it depends on the
school's regulations
maybe some private schools places like
that would insist on a more formal code
yeah that's true but i never had to call
my teachers sir at school
um what about female teachers females um
so we so in british english we would say
madden wouldn't in a really formal
setting i'm just wondering whether sir
madam is used in india because in an
email you would say dear sir madam
in indian english we would refer to a
male teacher as
sir how do you guys refer to your female
teachers at school or your female boss
yeah that would be really interesting to
know because we say miss or mrs
depending if they're depending on if
they're married or not
yeah i'd like to know that the next one
is all about how you refer to members of
our family
so lucy if i was to say that i met up
with my brother
yesterday what how would you understand
that that you met up with your male
sibling
my male sibling who is my immediate my
immediate sibling right yes has the same
parents
in indian english brother could also
mean
my male cousin interesting so you do you
use the word cousin still
no so this is why when we speak to
a person who's speaking with british
english we would have to clarify that
and say cousin brother
even though it means cousin you would
often hear
in indian english someone referring to
their cousin as their cousin brother
interesting well we would just say
cousin
yeah or cousin sister if it was a female
okay yeah yeah it's just the same for us
cousin
okay the next one is this
in british english we say boot or car
boot
yeah in indian english we say dickie
so could you put the luggage in the diki
or could you
could you lend me a hand and put the
luggage in there dicky please
awesome and we've also seen a couple of
other spellings for it like
digi as well i guess it just depends on
the pronunciation i guess so as we
mentioned earlier lots of different
indian accents so i guess that's what
influences the spelling there
yeah and um again this is another word
that is also different in american
english
they call it a trunk they do don't they
i've always imagined an elephant
trunk when i write drunk so they don't
want to put any luggage up there yeah
oh god that's not the first trick ever
so the next one that i wanted to
introduce you to is how we use the word
current
in our day-to-day life okay if i said
current what would you understand that
tyson
current is in in the moment that is a
good homophone isn't it um
yes the current for it it is
in the current moment in the current
moment lucy and i are filming
but this version of current is used in
day-to-day life
for something else do you want to take
and take a guess
current as in like an ocean current or
electricity current
yes so we use the word current to
replace
electricity i could advise you be
careful of the current lucy
when you are plugging in the plug into
the the socket be careful of the
electricity yes perfect
awesome i never knew that the next one
is a word used to describe
an illness yeah in british english we
say
diabetes and in indian english you could
hear this being referred to as
sugar and this is commonly used in the
state of tamil nadu
interesting and is this because diabetes
or some forms of diabetes are brought on
by
excess consumption absolutely absolutely
very interesting and how do you
pronounce it again
so i would pronounce this as sugar so um
do not eat too many sweets because you
could develop sugar
interesting the next one we've got on
the screen in
indian english it could be referred to
as the washroom
but it could also be referred to as the
toilet too
but what about british english well we
also say toilet um i know that's
something that in american english they
find a bit disgusting because it's too
specific to the actual toilet
but we say the toilet or the loo that's
slang
i always say the lou i think i heard you
call it
yeah yes i don't think washroom is that
common but that's not to say it's never
used in british english
that's right yeah the next one is this
one
in british english we call it crisps
i know that's quite a hard sound that's
sound crisps
what's what do you call it in indian
english chips it's commonly referred to
as chips chips
and what about fried potatoes that are
served
warm ah also chips
yeah i guess everything's yeah so the
next one we've got here
is referred to as capsicum
now how would you refer to it we would
call this peppers or
red pepper green pepper yellow pepper
but then surely that gets confusing the
kind of the pepper that you put on
your fish and chips yes but then the
pepper we put on
like as a seasoning is an uncountable
noun
so i'd say can i have some pepper okay
that would be the
the spice or it's not necessarily a
spice the seasoning
if i ask for a pepper i'm asking for a
capsicum that is a fantastic tip
so that's the end of the first part of
this video we have got the next part
which is so
interesting over on anvoo's channel you
can click the link in the description
box
or just go straight to his channel again
please share
any other differences that you know of
down below in the comments section
and also if you are from another
english-speaking country
and you would like to see another
episode please tell us
which variation of english you'd like us
to feature next
don't forget to download your free pdf
the link is in the description box
and you can find us on our social media
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and my instagram and my mailing list i'm
also active on my instagram
conquer british english we will see you
soon for another lesson
you