English: The Glorious Mongrel That Conquered the World (and Why OMG Isn’t NASA)”

The World’s Most Successful Mongrel (and Why OMG is Not NASA)

Language, that most mercurial of human inventions, is forever evolving — slippery, inventive, and gloriously impure. Many years ago, my late friend Frank F. Moore — “Tio Franco” to his circle in Denton, Texas. He was a scientist with Poco Graphite in Denton, Texas, a man trained to measure carbon structures rather than turn phrases.  — put it more pithily, bluntness he declared: “English is a mongrel language.” He passed away in 2017, but the quip lingers, echoing in my mind every time I stumble upon the quirks of acronyms, initialisms, and our Indianised flourishes. 

At first blush, the phrase may sound ungenerous, as though our lingua franca were some scruffy street-dog skulking about alleyways. But in truth, his description was spot on. English is a mongrel of the noblest sort: resilient, resourceful, and gloriously unashamed of its mixed heritage.

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A Patchwork Parentage

English has never been shy of borrowing, pilfering, or adopting wholesale from every tongue it encountered. Its patchwork parentage is a veritable museum of world history:

Latin and Greek gifted it scholarly gravitas — philosophy, radius, auditorium.

The Saxons and Norsemen gave it the bread-and-butter words — sky, bread, winter, house.

The Norman French added aristocratic sheen — judge, court, beef, mutton.

And then comes India, which has contributed far more than the oft-cited bungalow, curry, and pyjamas. Its gifts run into the hundreds, spanning flora, fauna, food, textiles, and everyday life. Some gems include:

Animals & Nature: cheetah (Sanskrit chitraka, “spotted one”), mongoose (muṅgūs, Marathi), jackal (from Persian via India), banyan (Gujarati vāṇiyo, “merchant” — for traders who sat under the tree!).

Food & Drink: curry (Tamil kari, “sauce”), chutney, toddy (tadi, palm sap), punch (Hindi panch, “five ingredients”), ginger, mango (Tamil maangai).

Everyday Life: pyjamas (Hindi pae jama, “leg garment”), shawl (Urdu shal), khaki (Urdu khākī, “dust-coloured”), verandah (from Hindi via Portuguese).

Other Curiosities: loot (Hindi lut, “to plunder”), thug (Hindi/Marathi thag, “swindler”), jungle (Hindi jangal, “forest”), pundit (Sanskrit pandita, “learned man”), guru.

Seafaring Culture: catamaran (Tamil kaṭṭumaram, “tied wood”), proof that Indian maritime ingenuity quite literally floated into English vocabulary.

The Americas, meanwhile, added tomato, chocolate, hurricane, and barbecue.

If words were dowries, English has been married a dozen times over. And the beauty is, it makes no attempt to hide its mixed parentage. Where the French wring their hands over la pureté de la langue française, English cheerfully shrugs and says: “Come along, old chap, you’re one of us now.”

This mongrel nature is precisely what makes English not merely a survivor, but a global conqueror. It can compose a Shakespearean sonnet, draft a High Court judgment, and order a plate of samosas without breaking stride.

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A Linguistic Masala

And let us pause for a moment to tip our hats to India — the generous benefactor of words that travel from spice bazaars to scholarly tomes. From cheetahs prowling in Sanskrit texts to catamarans floating on Tamil seas, English has absorbed it all. It’s as if the language has a passport stamped with the entire subcontinent. And yet, while English savours these exotic ingredients, it also welcomes the mundane — your everyday “verandah” or “khaki” — with equal relish.

Truly, if English were a dish, it would be a global thali: some tang from Latin, a dash of Norse, a dollop of French cream, and a generous sprinkling of Indian spice. And just when you think you’ve finished, it surprises you with a nugget from the Americas.

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Acronyms vs Initialisms: Do You Really Know the Difference?

And yet, for all its genius, English delights in sowing confusion. Consider the curious case of acronyms and initialisms — those little bundles of letters we fling about with gay abandon: BBC, NASA, OMG, WHO, ISRO. We use them daily, but do we really know the difference?

The Shared Parent: Abbreviations

Both acronyms and initialisms belong to the larger family of abbreviations. Where they diverge is in pronunciation.

Initialism: You read each letter separately.

BBC → Bee Bee See

USA → You Ess Ay

OMG → Oh Em Gee

WHO → Double You Aitch Oh

ISRO → Eye Ess Ar Oh

> “Yes, India’s pride ISRO is another initialism — launching satellites, not words, into orbit.”

Acronym: You pronounce it as if it were a proper word.

NASA → Nassa

FIFA → Fee-fah

SIM → Sim

WHO → sometimes Who (“the WHO declared…”)

Notice the trickster? WHO is a linguistic double agent, equally comfortable playing for both sides.

Why Does This Matter?

At first glance, this seems like a pedant’s parlour game. But it does matter. It shapes how we write, how we speak, and even how we teach. To call USA an acronym, for instance, is technically wrong — though no one will confiscate your passport for it.

 

The Indian Quirk

 

In India, of course, we add our own masala. We blithely say, “I am going to fill my SIM,” as though the poor card were a vessel for dal and rice. Or we solemnly announce that BCCI is an acronym, when in fact it is very much an initialism. Our English is flexible, forgiving, and fabulously inventive — but a pinch of precision never hurt anyone.

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The Larger Lesson

So, what do these quibbles reveal? That English is gloriously inconsistent, yes, but also gloriously forgiving. It thrives not on purity but on promiscuity. It laughs at linguistic gatekeepers and greets newcomers with an amiable shrug. That is why today you can text OMG, read a NASA bulletin, admire ISRO’s launch schedule, and then order tandoori chicken — all in English.

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Closing Thought

 

The next time someone tosses “OMG” or “NASA” into the conversation, you may gently enlighten them: both are abbreviations, but only one is an acronym. And if you wish to impress further, point out that WHO is both — a rare double agent in the world of words.

 

Yes, English is a mongrel. But it is also the most successful mongrel in history — resourceful, resilient, and utterly unashamed of its eclectic parentage. And perhaps that is why, when the story of human civilisation is told in centuries to come, it will most likely be told — in English.

In memory of Frank F. Moore (“Tio Franco”), who first reminded me that English is, and will always be, a glorious mongrel.

 

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