English the lingua Franca of The World

Due to the dominance of The East India Company as a multi national trading company between 1600 and 1873 English has become the lingua franca of The World.  As The Company traded commodities such as tea, coffee, sugar, spice, chocolate and cloth, it adopted the language of those it traded with, many terms and phrases have entered the English language directly via The Company’s activities.

Posh

Origin is “Port Outward Starboard Home”. Originated in the days of The East India Company’s ships departing from the UK for the Indian Ocean southward along the coast of Africa and around the horn of Africa and returning the same way. The Port or left side of the ship’s cabins faced east and received the AM sun (plus the coastal view). The opposite was true on the return trip.

Bungalow

The word Bungalow, comes from the Indian “bangla” meaning house.  A dwelling built in a style developed from that of a form of rural house in India. The original bungalow typically has one story, few rooms, and a maximum of cross drafts, with high ceilings, unusually large window and door openings, and verandas on all sides to shade the rooms from the intense light and tropical heat.

Later the name was adopted and used to describe the homes or official lodgings of officials of The Company staff.  Bungalow was exported into the vernacular of Britain and later America, where it initially had high status and exotic connotations, and began to be used in the late 19th century for large country or suburban houses.

Chintz

There are many other Indian words still in English usage which reflect this period of massive trade in textiles. For example, calico, dungarees, gingham, khaki, pajama, sash, seersucker and shawl. ‘Chintz’, related to a Sanskrit word meaning coloured or spotted, now means cotton or linen furnishing fabric of floral pattern stained with fast colours and made anywhere, but it originally referred only to colour-fast, light, cotton fabrics made in India for the English market. Chintz production was a very complex process involving painting, mandating (fixing a dye), resisting and dyeing depending on the colour being used. Different colours required different processes. The original chintz designs were hand-painted and resist-dyed but block-printed designs were incorporated later.