When speaking Hindi (I assume that was the language spoken in the movie), do most Indians normally insert phrases in English here and there in the middle of their talking? I noticed quite a bit of this in the movie. Maybe a legacy from the colonial days.
shareNot a Hindi speaker here but I would say that the English phrases are more of a current occurrence rather than a holdover three generations ago from the Raj.
Most urban Indians speak English and Hindi and a few other languages. (I recommend you see the Aishwarya Rai appearance on David Letterman on youtube, a hoot!). Like any other dual (or more) speakers, some sentiments or points are best spoken in one language or the other. Or, habit. Or, ??? Who knows?
In USA, many first-language Spanish speakers speak plenty of English, the result being the birth of the word Spanglish. On the Indian cinema board I've seen some Hindi speakers use the phrase Hinglish.
Last, just today, I was reading about Danes and Swedes. Apparently, their languages are quite different so when they speak together, they speak English.
Only over here in USA, do we lazily speak only one language, for the most part, including me. Grrrrrr. (If only I was younger).
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Life's too short to be pissed off all the time.
This movie depicts three types of Indians.
1) affluent folks (bollywood movie stars living in posh pent-house flats)
2 ) middle class indians (police officers living in average apartments)
3) the poor in their slums.
In this movie english is used a lot by the rich, a bit less by the middle class and hardly at all by the poor.
So, the use of english in this film is definitely a social class giveaway.
Am Indian, and yes, English is commonly mixed in the culture. Like some English words r so common, ppl don't know the native word. Being ruled by britian for a long time does bring the influence, kinda like Arabs also ruled India for a long time, and there's a lot of Arab influence too. Many Arab words are apart of Hindi/Urdu as well.
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