Madras Bashai (Tamil: மெட்ராஸ் பாஷை, lit.'Madras Language') was the variety of the Tamil language spoken by native people in the city of Chennai (then known as Madras) in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.[1] It was sometimes considered a pidgin, as its vocabulary was heavily influenced by Hindustani, Indian English, Telugu, Malayalam, and Burmese; it is not mutually intelligible with any of those except for Tamil, to a certain extent.
Since the advent of urbanization of the city especially since the Indian Independence, due to large immigrations into the city from different parts of Tamil Nadu, the Madras Bashai variety has become closer to normalized standard spoken Tamil. Today, the transformed variety is majorly called as Chennai Tamil.
Madras Bashai evolved largely during the past three centuries. It grew in parallel with the growth of cosmopolitan Madras. After Madras Bashai became somewhat common in Madras, it became a source of satire for early Tamil films from the 1950s, in the form of puns and double entendres. Subsequent generations in Chennai identified with it and absorbed English constructs into the dialect, making it what it is today's Chennai Tamil.
Etymology
The word Madras Bhashai is a compound word, where Madrās is derived from the classical name of the city Madrāsapaṭnam, and bhāṣā is the Sanskrit word for "language", nativized as bāṣai.
Evolution
Madras Bashai evolved largely during the past three centuries. With its emergence as an important city in British India when they recovered it from the French and as the capital of Madras Presidency, the contact with western world increased and a number of English words crept into the vocabulary. Many of these words were introduced by educated, middle-class Tamil migrants to the city who borrowed freely from English for their daily usage.[2] Due to the presence of a considerable population of Telugu, Hindi–Urdu and many other language-speakers, especially, the Gujaratis, Marwaris and some Muslim communities, some Hindustani and Telugu words, too, became a part of Madras Bashai. At the turn of the 20th century, though preferences have since shifted in favor of the Central and Madurai Tamil dialects, the English words introduced during the early 20th century have been retained.[2]
From the English word dubash which, itself, is a derivative of the Hindusthani word "Do bhasha", usually, used to refer to interpreters and middlemen who worked for the British East India Company. As in the early 19th century, dubashes such as Avadhanum Paupiah were notorious for their corrupt practices, the term "dubash" gradually got to mean "fraud"[4]
Derived from the Urdu word "Galeez", meaning dirty
Kasmālam (கஸ்மாலம்)
Dirty
Derived from the Sanskrit word "Kasmalam", meaning dirty, discardable
Bējāṟŭ (பேஜாறு)
Problem
Derived from Urdu, meaning displeased
Majā (மஜா)
Excitement or fun
Derived from the Urdu word "Maza" meaning "enthusiasm"
ōsi (ஓஸி)
Free-of-cost
From English. During the East India Company rule, letters posted on behalf of the East India Company did not bear postage stamps, but had the words 'On Company's Service' or 'OC' written on them. The word "O. C." gradually got to mean something which was offered free-of-cost[3][5]
^ abVijayakrishnan, K. G. (1995). "Compound Typology in Tamil". Theoretical perspectives on word order in South Asian languages. Centre for Study of Language. pp. 263–264. ISBN9781881526490.
^ abcdPillai, M. Shanmugham. Tamil Dialectology. pp. 34–36.
