Sanskritisation is the process of introducing features from Sanskrit, such as vocabulary and grammar, into other languages. [1] It is sometimes associated with the "Hinduisation" of a linguistic community, or less commonly, with introducing a more upper-caste status into a community. [2] [3] Many languages throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia were greatly influenced by Sanskrit (or its descendant languages, the Prakrits and modern-day Indo-Aryan languages) historically. [4] [5] [6]
Sanskritisation often stands in opposition to the Persianisation or Englishisation of a language within South Asia, [7] [8] as occurs with the Hindustani language, which in its Sanskritised, Persianised, and English-influenced registers becomes Hindi, Urdu, and Hinglish/Urdish respectively. [9] [10] [11] [12] Support for Sanskritisation in South Asia runs highest among Hindu nationalists. [13]
Sanskritization of the names of people and places is also commonplace in India. [14] [15] [16]
During the medieval era, the Indian languages had taken in a lot of Perso-Arabic influences as a result of Muslim invasions, particularly in the northwestern subcontinent; [20] colonial-era education policies, religious nationalism, and the influence of some of the more Sanskritised Indian languages played a role in Hindus and Muslims increasingly separating in terms of their linguistic influences, [21] with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and the Brahmic Devanagari script for writing Hindi & Muslims opting for a more Perso-Arabic vocabulary & Nastaliq Arabic script for writing Urdu. [22] [23] [24]
Since the 1947 Partition of India, the Indian government, which at one point considered making Sanskrit the national language, instead has sought to further Sanskritise Hindi, [25] considering it to be easier for Indians to learn, [26] and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan (though Urdu continues to have official status in several Indian states, such as Uttar Pradesh). [27] [28] Sanskrit has been used to form new words to describe modern concepts and technologies in several South Asian languages by forming calques based on English words. [29] [23] [30] In addition, Sanskrit words that have been nativised into other languages have been mixed with words from other language families, such as the Dravidian languages, to form new words. [31]
Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be, [32] [33] with Hindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi, [34] opposing Urdu in part because of its association with Islam, [35] and some boycotting the Hindi-language Bollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English vocabulary in its movies. [36] [37]
The de-Sanskritisation of Tamil started during the 1950s by followers of Dravidianism. [38] These attempts at "de-sanskritization" came to see the language having altered to remove a lot of the Sanskrit borrowing. [39]
The Hela Havula movement advocated de-Sanskritisation of the Sinhala language. [40]Within India, however, other regional forms exist, all denoting a mixing of English with indigenous languages. Bonglish (derived from the slang term Bong 'a Bengali') or Benglish refers to 'a mixture of Bengali and English', Gunglish or Gujlish 'Gujarati + English', Kanglish 'Kannada + English', Manglish 'Malayalam + English', Marlish 'Marathi + English', Tamlish or Tanglish 'Tamil + English' and Urdish 'Urdu + English'. These terms are found in texts on regional variations of Indian English, usually in complaint-tradition discussions of failing standards of language purity.