Butler English, also known as Bearer English or Kitchen English, is a dialect of English that first developed as an occupational dialect in the years of the Madras Presidency in India, but that has developed over time and is now associated mainly with social class rather than occupation.[1] It is still spoken in major metropolitan cities.
The name derives from its origins with butlers, the head servants of British colonial households, and is the English that they used to communicate with their masters.
Butler English persisted into the second half of the 20th century, beyond the independence of India, and was subject to southern influence in its phonology, in particular the substitution of [je] for [e] and [wo] for [o], leading to distinctive pronunciations of words such as "exit" and "only".
Examples
The following is an example of Butler English as given by writers Priya Hosali and J. Aitchinson:
One master call for come India ... eh England. I say not coming. That master very liking me. I not come. That is like for India — that hot and cold. That England for very cold.
Another example, now famous amongst Indian English linguists, is the one given by Hugo Schuchardt, in which a nurse (ayah) describes the butler's practice of secretly taking small amounts of milk for himself from his master's household:
Butler's yevery day taking one ollock for own-self, and giving servants all half half ollock; when I telling that shame for him, he is telling, Master's strictly order all servants for the little milk give it — what can I say ma'am, I poor ayah woman?
Features
Structurally, Butler English is akin to a pidgin, with a subject–verb–object word order, deletion of verb inflections, and deletion of prepositions. It has been called a "marginal pidgin" and a "rudimentary pidgin", although Hosali and Aitchinson, listed in Further reading, point out several problems with these classifications. Its major syntactic characteristics are the deletion of auxiliary verbs, the frequent use of "-ing" forms for things other than participles, and the reporting of indirect speech directly. For examples:
the use of "done" as an auxiliary instead of "have": I done come rather than "I have come", and I done tell rather than "I have told"
The lexical characteristics of Butler English are that its vocabulary is limited and employs specialised jargon. family substitutes for "wife", for example.
Mesthrie notes several "striking similarities" between Butler English and South African Indian English, raising for him the question of whether there was a historical relationship between the two. These include:
use of "-ing" forms for things other than participles
the use of "got" as an auxiliary verb instead of "have" (Mesthrie questions the accuracy of the reports by Yule and Burnell that were the original source of the information that "done" was an auxiliary verb, observing that the 20th century reports by Hosali and others state that this is not a characteristic of 20th century Butler English.)
various lexical similarities including "died" being used instead of "dead"
He notes various dissimilarities, however:
Butler English uses "been" as an auxiliary verb whereas SAIE does not.
Because of pronoun deletion, "is" can begin a sentence in Butler English, whereas such pronoun deletion is less common in SAIE.
Butler English has no clear examples of "-s" as a possessive, whereas in SAIE that have a 15/17 occurrence rate.
Butler English does not share SAIE's use of "only" as a focus marker
Butler English does not share SAIE's use of "got" as an existential
Butler English does not share SAIE's occasional subject–object–verb word order (e.g. four children got for "I have four children.", after pronoun deletion), although he observes that the famous quotation reported by Schuchardt contains one object–verb example: little milk give it
Butler English does have various lexical forms found in SAIE, such as look-attering, no fadder, hawa, and dawa
Further reading
Hugo Schuchardt (1891). "Beiträge zur Kenntnis des englischen Kroelisch III, Das Indo-Englishe". Englishe Studien. 15: 286–305., which can be found translated and edited in:
Hugo Schuchardt (1980). "Beiträge zur Kenntnis des englischen Kroelisch III, Das Indo-Englishe". In Glen G. Gilbert (ed.). Pidgin and Creole languages: selected essays by Hugo Schuchardt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.38–64. ISBN0-521-22789-5.
Priya Hosali (1982). Butler English: form and function. Hyderabad: Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages., also published as:
Priya Hosali (2000). Butler English: form and function. B.R. Pub. Corp. ISBN9788176461337.
Priya Hosali and J. Aitchinson (1986). "Butler English: A minimal pidgin?". Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 1 (11): 51–79. doi:10.1075/jpcl.1.1.05hos.
Priya Hosali (1997). English in India: What the Butler Really Said. Centre for Communication Studies, Indus Education Foundation.
Priya Hosali (2004). "Butler English: morphology and syntax". In Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (ed.). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Walter de Gruyter. pp.1031–1044. ISBN9783110175325.
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