The Impact of Hinglish in Indian Commercial Advertisements on Standard Hindi in Indian Society

Abstract

Hindi is the official language of India which is spoken by about 350 million people in Indian society. Hindi and English have had a reciprocal relationship ever since India become colonized. Since colonialism, Hindi started to mix with English and become famous as ‘Hinglish’ in Indian society. The ‘British-Raj’ is considered to be the first Hinglish word which was used during the colonial period, and now Hinglish is commonly practiced in Indian commercial advertisements. Hinglish is considered as the most appropriate language in the marketing and advertising fields in India. It is clear that Hinglish is gaining a wide success not only in the field of advertisements but also in media, entertainment and politics etc. This paper examines the impact of using Hinglish in TV commercials on Standard Hindi Indian society. Indian commercial advertisements have been utilized as primary sources and magazine and journal articles have been used as secondary resources. This paper argues that Hinglish has acquired a mass demand in Indian commercials and now it is hard to eliminate this trend which has deeply affected India’s day-to-day communication. This paper also emphasizes that the wide use of Hinglish in commercial advertisements have become a huge challenge to Standard Hindi in Indian society.