The Handbook of World Englishes, 2nd Edition

7South Asian Englishes

RAVINDER GARGESH

1 Introduction

“South Asian English” (SAE) is a cover term for Englishes in the South Asian region that includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. English language, in all these regions, has a dominating presence due to its widespread functions in significant domains of social life, education, and cross‐cultural communication (Kachru 1997, Hickey 2004). In these countries English is perceived as a language of “power” and of “upward social mobility” (Baumgardner 1996). English, in addition, also functions as a “link language” between groups that do not share the same language. In fact, in a country like India, it has begun to be viewed as a language of the region.

In the South Asian region, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are contiguous entities and are members of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). They comprise over 12% of the Asian continent or over 3.6% of the world's land surface area. They account for about 40.9% of Asia’s population or over 24.3% of the world’s population. The official language of SAARC is English. It is home to speakers of several hundred languages that belong to Indo‐Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto‐Burman, and Austro‐Asiatic language families, and many of these languages are spoken across different countries, such as Hindi/Urdu (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal), Bengali and Assamese (Bangladesh and India), ...