Venez-vous at 12 o’clock

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In a little restaurant on the outskirts of the industrial area of Jaysingpur, near the town of Sangli in south Maharashtra, as I was swallowing my early lunch of rice and dal – that cost me all of 17 rupees – I heard the head waiter telling a client, “/baːraː ʋaːzt̪aː bənni/” - “Come at 12 o’clock”.

Now Jaysingpur, being quite close to the Maharashtra-Karnataka border, quite explicably experienced a sort of gradual linguistic changeover from Marathi to Kannada, which is also common on the Karnataka side, in the areas of Belgaum and Hubli-Dharwad.

What struck my attention were two things -

1) The tendency to code-switch, like one does between an Indian language and English.

2) The fact that the two languages in question were from two different language families.

With regard to the first point above, it’s true that one code switches very regularly in case of, say, spoken Tamil and English, with both these languages also being of different language family origins. But English being an international language that has invaded many regional tongues around the world, a Tamil speaker changing mid-sentence to English is not a surprising or unusual phenomenon.

I wondered whether a Tamil speaker would change mid-sentence to, say, Malayalam or Telugu, given that he would be at least partially conversant with the languages in question. Doubtful, I felt. Of course, I could be wrong since I haven’t really visited a border area between regions where the above languages are spoken.

Even code-switching between Marathi and Hindi is not that common, with switching between Marathi and English or Hindi and English being more likely. I, for one, usually don’t switch to Hindi if I am speaking to someone in Marathi, even if both of us are equally fluent in both these languages. I would switch very easily to English, though, and back.

Of course, Jaysingpur isn’t a particularly urban area, nor has it been influenced by international culture for its people to have felt the effect of English.

One thing to note so far, is that all these Indian languages are socially and economically more or less equal, with Hindi probably having a slight edge over the others, but not to the extent that English has. Marathi and Kannada in my example above are definitely on an equal footing in terms of status in society and in business.

I have to say though, that, to me, switching mid-sentence between Indian languages is still a rare(r) occurrence. Can anyone prove otherwise? Please bear in mind that we are talking about switching between relatively standard forms of the two languages in question, not a border dialect of sorts which incorporates words of both languages.

Also, does anyone have any examples to illustrate code-switching between two socially and economically equal non-English languages, with the speakers also not having any, or having extremely limited English knowledge?

Coming to my second point above, are there any examples of code-switching between languages of different families? The only example that comes readily to mind is -

- Swedish and Finnish – along the Sweden-Finland border?

Both official in Finland, and Swedish in Sweden. Finnish is Uralic, while Swedish is Indo-European.

Do leave your comments to add/contradict/correct anything what I’ve written.

P.S.: Some more examples of the unique Kannada-Marathi blend which I’ve heard over the years and which come to mind -

/doːn rupəj koɽi/ “Give two rupees”

Standard Marathi /doːn rupəj djaː/

Standard Kannada /ʲerəɽɯ ruːpaːji koɽi/

/kaːn̪d̪aː ləsuːn beːɽaː/ “(I want) No onions or garlic”

Standard Marathi /kaːn̪d̪aː ləsuːn nəko/

Standard Kannada /iːruɭi beɭɭuɭɭi beːɽaː/

Our example of /baːraː ʋaːzt̪aː bənni/ above would be

Standard Marathi /baːraː ʋaːzt̪aː jaː/

Standard Kannada /ɦənnerɯɽɯ ɡʱəɳʈeɡe bənni/

Update: 2008-20-12