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Away from India Inc. the cities and the tourist centres the quality of English diminishes and disappears rapidly. This still leaves something like 50 to 100 million English speakers (so we are told). In business circles English seems to be the ‘lingua franca’ - as the old joke goes.
Hindi does seem to be the most widely spoken language, although it is concentrated in the North and centre. However regional languages also seem to dominate. you will often hear conversations that are a mix of local language and English, people seeming to shift from one to the other in mid sentence - slightly off putting the first time you hear it.
Listen out for repetition, often Indians will repeat words to stress them e.g. lost count the number of times a visit to an office has begun ‘Come in, sit sit. The curious construct of ‘I am knowing it’ for ‘I know it’ or ‘I am understanding it’ for ‘I understand’ has been fodder for English and American comedians for years, but you will hear it commonly and sometimes find yourself doing it.
Importantly Indians you deal with will often be reluctant to say ‘No’. You have to be very careful, Indians can go to quite complex lengths to avoid saying no, and in English we might think we have a yes, when the reality is the reverse.
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