How to Type Hinglish Better

Languages are one of the most important inventions of humanity. They make us who we are—a social being. With language we are able to communicate with others and leverage their skills instead of doing everything all by ourselves. Written communication further extends this capability across generations. I can now read ideas of the links of Einstein and Ramanujan, and potentially build on that instead of reinventing the wheel. Civilizations have been built around scriptures that billions follow.

Modern Language Dilemma

In modern days, Texting has replaced writing. As my typing improved from 30WPM to 70WPM, my handwriting started to get worse. I write very less now as compared to how much I type on daily basis. Texting makes written communication faster and more accurate (thanks to autocorrect), but they also pose new limitations that we never had when we were writing with hands.

Present day keyboards use Roman script and were made for typing in English only. We have adapted ourselves to use them to communicate in our languages be it Hindi, Tamil, or Bhojpuri.

The scripts however have very little similarity and thus, we face problems where a Tamil speaker writes கார்த்திக் (कार्तिक) as “Karthik” while a Hindi speaker writes it as “Kartik”. We can have more variations of it such as “Kaartik” as well. None are wrong or correct as the word does not originally belong to English language.

Is Hinglish the way?

I will talk about writing Hindi using Roman script because I use Hindi for most of my communications. Hindi when written using Roman script is called Hinglish.

If you use Hinglish, you must have realized the problems that come with it. Roman script do not have enough letters for all the aksharas of Hindi language. We denote ट and त with the same letter “t” as opposed to their IAST versions such as ṭ and t respectively.

Thus, comprehending the message gets tougher and the reader has to understand the word with its relation to other words in the sentence, or context.

“Sham go gayi hai.” would be read as “शाम हो गयी है।” and not “शैम/शम हो गयी है।”.

Hinglish with English

The bigger problems arises because most of Indians while texting use both English and Hinglish. What I mean is using Hinglish words in the middle of an English sentence or using English words in the middle of a Hinglish sentence.

Main tumhe message bhej dunga, please padh lena.

I will send you the file. Jab bhi time mile, just finish it.

The issue is not that we are using multiple languages, but the fact that we are using them inconsistently. The reader does not know if the next word is English or Hinglish.

Try to find the meaning of these words if I don’t tell you which language you have to use to decipher the meaning:

  • or
  • to
  • use
  • is

If you a Hindi speaker, you can see them as Hindi words as well. They can make comprehension difficult for the reader.

Standardizing Hinglish

We can’t standardize Hinglish, but we can come up with some rules that we all follow to remove some of the ambiguity that the simultaneous use of Hinglish and English create.

Make deliberate errors to get message across.

Don’t get me wrong. Writing wrong spellings of English words easily signals it’s a Hinglish word and meant to be interpreted that way.

The next time, when you have to type “उसे”, use “usse” as opposed to “use” which can mean English word as well. A deliberate error makes it easy to comprehend.

Use use kar lena. ❌

Usse use kar lena. ✔️

Do the same with other similar words:

  • Use “usse” instead of “use” for उसे.
  • Use “iss” instead of “is” for इस.
  • Use “aur” instead of “or” for और.
  • Use “maate” instead oof “mate” for माते.
  • Use “arre” instead of “are” for

Some words are still difficult to type this way such as “to” (तो) or “do” (दो). These ambiguities can be solved by avoiding mixing English with Hinglish. But we don’t really know enough Hindi to do that. More on that in another post.