Happy New Year everyone! I am now back in Japan after my trip to India. Overall, it was a good trip with some amazing sights. So in honor of my trip, I am going to have three mini-lessons on:
Indian English
Indian English is an English dialect spoken in India. It is a mix of English and other Indian languages with some local grammatical structures which sound wrong or strange to speakers of standard English. I learned about it from Lonely Planets, Indian English: Language & Culture which is a fun little book.
I am going to start today's lesson with the different uses of the word black in Indian English.
black = a dark complexion
Complexion means: skin color/texture/appearance, especially of the face.
blacker = darker
A bit strange but understandable in standard English.
blackened = reputation dragged through the mud
It is more natural for me to say you tarnished my reputation. Tarnish means to lose luster, to discolor. It is most often used with metals like brass which slowly turn black if they aren't polished regularly.
black-black = jet black, 漆黒 (しっこく)
It's a very deep rich black.
black heart = having wicked thoughts
This is old English meaning someone is evil/mean. He has a black heart.
black deeds = cruelty
In old English it means a bad action.
Redbeard the pirate's black deeds were infamous.
black face = ashamed
In standard English, black face is when a white actor would use black make-up to paint himself to pretend to be a black person. This is considered racist these days but was quite common in early cinema/TV.
blackout = power failure or fainting
This is pretty much the same in standard English:
There was a blackout yesterday.
She drank so much she blacked out.
Notice in standard English when using blackout to mean fainting it is the phrasal verb black out NOT the noun blackout.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this lesson I will try and post 6 times this month. Wish me luck~!
Phil
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