Going global! 70 Indian words added to Oxford dictionary

HYDERABAD: Anna,' meaning elder brother in Tamil and Telugu, has finally found recognition in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In all, 70 new Indian words from Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati have been added to the dictionary in the latest update that happened a month ago.So far, Anna exists in the dictionary as a noun, which means a former monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one sixteenth of a rupee. Now, anna2 (also annan), noun, has been added. 'Anna' in Telugu and Tamil means an elder brother, often used as a respectful title or form of address.`Abba', Urdu word for father has also been added. Other words added in the latest edition of OED are Achcha, Bapu, Bada Din, Bachcha, Surya Namaskar (thanks to Yoga). Most of the Indian words added pertain to relationships, culture and food. In addition to Achha for okay that already exists, Achcha, an exclamation used to express an emotion of surprise, doubt and joy, is now in Oxford English Dictionary .According to `Release notes: Indian English' written by Danica Salazar, OED World English Editor, “Seventy words originating from Indian English have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in this latest update, alongside the 900 or so words already existing in the OED.“She writes, “Indian speech etiquette features a complex system of kinship terms and terms of address, in which age, gender, status, and family relationships are marked by a highly specific vocabulary with no direct equivalents in English.This lexical gap is filled by borrowing such words from Indian languages (abba, anna, bapu, chacha, didi, mata), or adapting existing English words (cousin brother, cousin sister).“The OED publishes four updates a year in March, June, September, and December respectively . The Oxford University Press New Words Release notes that more than 1,000 new words, senses and subentries have been added to OED in the 2017 September update, including words like worstest and fungivorous.K Venkat Reddy , professor at English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, told TOI, “Well known dictionary publishers in the world such as Oxford, Cambridge Collins constantly keep tab on the real English being used in real situations both in written and spoken forms.The Oxford University Press has made public how they go about collecting the data, called `corpus' to compile the dictionary . They keep tabs on all walks of life from sports to marketing to politics to education to gossip to social media to collect the words. The corpora available with the OUP include 10 billion words. It studies whether words are becoming more or less popular, and how they are used regionally. OUP appoints readers to read a wide variety of texts and report the changes taking place in the use of language."