Zulfiqar Suhail Mannan

ENGL 149
Alex Reider
5/4

The Politics and/in the Varieties of Pakistani English

Notes on Dialectical Variation, Power, and Affect

“The sounds and grammatical forms used by a language, together with the principles ac-
cording to which sentences are constructed, constitute the system which makes the lan-
guage what it is and which enables its speakers to communicate with one another. While
sounds, forms, and syntactic patterns are all liable to constant change, this necessarily
happens in an evolutionary way which preserves the underlying integrity of the system.”
— Terry Hoad, “Preliminaries,” Oxford History of English

“It is important to note that Pakistanis are using three varieties of English which are
acrolect (spoken by elite class), mesolect (used by middle class) and basilect (market
English used by uneducated class) (Mansoor, 2002).” — Humaira Irfan Khan, The Evolu-
tion of Pakistani English (PakE) as a Legitimate Variety of English

“Oiye, take the report of this buffalo’s kutta, he is in [a] hurry.” — May 22, 2005 from
Dawn News, Pakistan's oldest, leading and most widely read English-language newspa-
per1

One night as a first-year at Yale, I waltzed into my suite’s common room to show off a beautiful

dark-green waistcoat I had bought the previous summer at Shahnameh.2 At this time, I had already begun

navigating that my English was different from the English my American or international peers spoke. For

reasons of little importance or formula, I had settled on announcing my waistcoat as a vest because I felt the

latter term would be more evocative or accurate in my new context. Expecting appreciation or wonder for a

particularly Pakistani garment, I was instead met with a bewildered puzzlement.

As in, waistcoat.

No, we got that, but what did you call it before that?

A vest?

A west?

Yeah, a vest!

Do you mean a ‘vest’?

Yeah, that’s what I said.

No, you said west.

What do you mean? You’re saying the same thing twice.

1Talaat, Mubina, and Behzad Anwar. "The Impact of Urdu-English Code-Switching on Pakistani
English." Kashmir Journal of Language Research, vol. 13, no. 1, 2010, pp. 121-VI. ProQuest,
https://search.proquest.com/docview/908441383?accountid=15172.
2 https://www.facebook.com/ShahnamehHeritagewear/
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 No, it’s called a vest. You were calling it a west. Like Kanye West, or, like, the direction.

Humaira Khan notes in her comparative study of research conducted on Pakistani English, or PakE,

that PakE speakers often do not differentiate between the /v/ and /w/ sounds in English (Khan, 7). She under-

stands this from two varieties of PakE speakers. Khan references a 2004 study which asserts that this may be

the case because “Urdu does not have a phonemic distinction between /v/ and /w/” (Khan, 7). She explains,

however, that it still pronounces both variations of the sound depending on syllabic stress. This allows PakE

speakers, generally, to accurate pronounce /v/ consonants where they show up expressively, e.g. in a word

like ‘love.’ On the other hand, Khan presents a 1990 study that discusses this feature of /v/ and /w/ (non-)dis-

tinction with reference to Pushto speakers of PakE, who “do not articulate /v/[,] for example[,] in

‘love’ [luo]” (Khan, 7). In her exploration of the phonological variations within PakE, Khan goes on to list

numerous diversities of pronunciations, particularly with regards to vowel and consonant sounds, that exist

between Punjabi and Pushto speakers of PakE. “Pakistan” is at times regarded as a “state unlike other

states.”3 Various perspectives on the statement hold varying focuses and reasons for saying so. Linguistically,

it is important to understand that Pakistan is a nation comprised of four(-ish) provinces, all of whom boast

their own, matured regional languages that have existed and developed for centuries on centuries. Ethno-

logue, an annual publication, lists 74 languages in Pakistan, of which 66 are indigenous, and from which six

are classified as “institutional,” 18 as “developing,” and 39 as “vigorous.”4 Khan’s study only narrows down

on the phonological diversities that arise from PakE speakers hailing from Urdu, Punjabi or Pushto as source

or native languages. From my own experience, I can assure you – nay, bet you – that listless phonological

deviations or alternatives will present themselves if comparisons of English pronunciation is made within

PakE speakers of Sindhi, Balochi, Balti, or Kashmiri origins.

All of this presented is to still say nothing about the linguistic nationalization that Pakistan has gone

through for the past 73 years which has socioeconomically mandated all Pakistanis to be at least familiar if

not entirely well-versed in Urdu. In addition, before there was ever an Urdu (or similarly, a Hindi in India),

there was the vast expanse of “Aam Bhasha” (or, translated literally, a “commonspeak”) which served as a

language for inter-regional trade and communication throughout the Indian Subcontinent, and which can be

3 https://tribune.com.pk/story/1362749/pakistan-different-states-created-name-religion/
4 https://web.archive.org/web/20160325205546/http://www.ethnologue.com/country/pk/status
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considered as the “dialectical phase” of Hindi/Urdu just how Middle English is to English.5 In this essay, I

aim to elucidate the diversities present within the variety of PakE to comment on the various politics that lay

behind these variations. I hope to complicate the idea of “Pakistani English” from its description as a “legit-

imate variety” through commentary on the classed nature of how Pakistani is a (certain) Pakistani’s PakE and

why. Though I appreciate neoliberal academic tendencies to legitimise varieties of English as indigenisations

or postcolonial ownership, I plan on discussing the intentions and forces behind the acrolect, mesolect, and

basilect dialects of PakE to unveil the continuity of the colonial project in the presence of English in the Pak-

istani embodied space.

I spent many days after the incident in my common room reflecting on my mispronunciation of

‘vest’ as ‘west.’ In typical postcolonial anxiety, I also experienced a lot of frustration. If I am pointing to a

beautiful dark-green waistcoat and even refer to it as a ‘west’ in my obviously Pakistani-accented English, I

am sure it must be very hard to stay confused or to earnestly believe that I might be talking about ‘west’ the

direction or ‘West’ a last name. In my first year of high school in Pakistan, I became bestfriends with M

whose English was fur-fur. Off the top of my head, I do not know if “fur-fur” is an Urdu word or a PakE bas-

tardization but it is an idiomatic phrase that anyone in Pakistan will be familiar with. It roughly translates to

“fluent” or “fluently” (depending on where it is placed syntactically or whether it’s said in a Urdu-majority

sentence or an English-majority sentence) and it connotes a speed, an ease, or a lack of pause/disruption in

speech. My English was fine, too. In fact, it was much better than most of my peers. Still, it could also be

easily distinguished from the English M spoke for his was fur-fur and his accent was saaf, in my own opin-

ion even.6 When I called him up that week in freshman year (he was going to school in Boston), I floated

the /v/ and /w/ distinction with him and, without any background information, he was able to differentiate

between the two sounds and shared not an iota of my shock that the two sounds were at all different. Of

course, they were different. Why else would there be a v and a w? Maybe just like there’s a k and a q, and

how sometimes I am written as ‘Zulfiqar’ and at other times as ‘Zulfikar.’ When I had explained to him what

had happened, he had lightly giggled and brushed it off as not that important a distinction. You can’t even

really tell.

Elitism in a postcolonial context carries a lot of baggage and anxiety. You do not want to be the

stereotype for the stereotype is laughed it, does not know when it is incorrect or savage or uneducated, and is

5Zaidi, Nishat. “Flows, Counter-Flows Across the Artificial Divides: The Case of English-Hindi-
Urdu.” Indian Literature, vol. 59, no. 2 (286), 2015, pp. 158–178. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/
44478533. Accessed 4 May 2020.
6 Saaf translates to “clean” with a connotation of “pure.”
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at the mercy of civilised or upstanding discourse. Additionally, and especially, you are so much closer to the

stereotype-maker in terms of wealth, education, and social standing than the stereotype so, what gives? Re-

cently, a Lahore University of Management and Science (LUMS) student, Sheherzade Noor Peerzada

(@sheherzade.peerzada), went viral for her Instagram comedy page, Baji Bombastic (@baji.bombastic).

LUMS is often referred to as the “approximate equivalent of Harvard University in Pakistan” and, in many

discourses, is considered synonymous to liberal elitism in the country, just like Harvard in the United States.7

The name of Peerzada’s character, “Baji Bombastic,” is in itself a noun-adjective compound from an Urdu-

English hybridization in PakE (Talaat et al, 10), where the Urdu word “Baji” is a term “used to address an

elder sister” or an elder-sister-like figure in someone’s life.8 Peerzada’s attempt at comedy has been de-

scribed in the following way by one of Pakistan’s leading news channels:

“Social media sensation Baji Bombastic who recently went viral due to her hilarious
videos isn’t just your daily dose of entertainment. There’s much more to her character
which in reality9 takes a dig at Pakistan’s obsession with English…Baji has also received
a lot of backlash from social media users who thought that she was mocking a certain
class and the way they speak English.”10

To be frank with you, I am one of Peerzada’s vocal critics. The simplest criticism is that Peerzada, a

social media influencer under her own name and profile as well as under her character Baji, is an acrolect

speaker of PakE and the butt of her jokes is a confident mesolect speaker of PakE who does not champion

any insecurities about her ability to speak English, sure, but also manages to make “hilarious” errors that

give away her lack of fluency or mastery over ‘correct’ English. A twitter user (@fatherhels) summarizes,

unprompted: “Isn’t she a [LUMS] student making fun of the way working class women talk? and actually

doesn’t talk that way?”11 Peerzada claimed in a Mangobaaz12 article that “Baji has been with [her] since [she]

was 9 years old” which should not be (and is not) a surprise to anyone of our shared social class because the

joke, in its easy classism and punching down on the lesser, is very common among an elite youth. One of

7 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/world/asia/19ali.html
8 https://www.quora.com/What-is-meant-by-Baji-in-Urdu-or-Hindi
9 Emphasis added.
10 https://arynews.tv/en/baji-bombastic-mocks-obsession-english/
11 https://twitter.com/fatherhels/status/1257241913276674050
12 “Mangobaaz” is a popular Buzzfeed-type news organization and the name is an example of a
PakE affixation, albeit a complicated one, where the word “mango” refers to another PakE com-
pound idiom “mango bachay” or mango kids, who are typical Pakistani kids, and it refers to Pak-
istani mangoes because they are known to be a delicacy, and “baaz” is an affix which means
“player” or “expert,” as in, Mangobaaz is really good at doing, saying, and being all things mango.
It’s bizarre but it makes a lot of cultural sense, I promise.
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Peerzada’s signature joke, mentioned in the subtitle of the Mangobaaz article on her, is when Baji – videoed

in a car, travelling up north to Pakistan’s beautiful mountains – says she likes “to safar” (pronounced as

[sʌf.ər]). The joke is that the Urdu phrase ‘safar [karna]’/ [‫ ﺳﻔﺮ ]ﮐﺮﻧﺎ‬means “to travel” and is pronounced exactly as

the English word “[to] suffer.” When used in its Urdu form in an otherwise English-majority PakE sentence, it can

be sort of funny (the first time you hear it, when you are five years old). My mom makes the same joke every time

an instance of travel is a bit irritating or rough, in that someone would say they ‘went on safar’ and she would

cheekily ask: “English wala ya Urdu wala?”13 Another moment of analysis of Peerzada’s ridiculing of the

mesolect dialect of PakE can come from a comparison of how she writes the Instagram captions of her own page

in comparison to the one she writes as Baji. Baji writes “i make brekkfurst!” or “hallo aavryvun !! lets salabrate

100,000 folower !” or “halo aavryvun - em travel” while Sheherzade Peerzada writes “happy sunday, hopefully

next time i’ll make the food too and not just the dessert” or “What is my superpower? Right before I tell you my

superpower, I want to acquaint you with where I come from. I am an actress, stand up comedian and aspiring pi-

lates instructor from Pakistan.”

In my experience of speaking and listening to PakE (or other Englishes), I will posit that it is not particu-

larly odd or apparent to replace a /v/ with a /w/ consonant sound, unless the /v/ sound is stressed. It could be a

matter of someone’s speed, or just laxness. However, a day after my vest/west incident – and my reassurances to

myself that it did not reflect too badly on my acrolect English proficiency that I did not know the two sounds were

different, I realized that making the opposite error was unforgivable in terms of class-identification on the basis of

language. As a child, when I had been the one making fun of someone’s English and, at times, not anyone’s par-

ticular English but rather of a general understanding of mesolect or basilect PakE, I would often pronounce com-

mon /w/-starting words with a /v/ instead. The harshness of the /v/ sound ensuring that the ridicule is not missed

by anyone, that a very common English word is being pronounced in a laughable accent. Years later, present in

almost every Baji Bombastic video is the intentional mispronunciation of the words ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘why,’ and

‘when’ with a /v/-sound beginning instead of a /w/-sound beginning.

The little inflections in Baji’s voice, the mispronunciations, and the syntactical or lexical choices as com-

pared to Peerzada’s “real” voice may provide endless fodder for a comparison of acrolect PakE to the lesser privi-

leged (not just different) mesolect and basilect dialects of PakE. According to Braj Kachru, a non-native variety of

English like PakE “passes through three stages[:] in the first phase, the very existence of local variety is not

recognised, in the second, it is considered sub-standard[,] and in the third, it is slowly accepted as the

norm” (Khan, 2). I think we underestimate power and linguistic authority (especially as it exists in our world

13 “The English one or the Urdu one?”

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of English-based socioeconomic globalization)14 when we assume that the evolution of a non-native variety

of English from the aforementioned second phase to the third phase will be natural or, frankly, ever entirely

possible or “accepted.” We must constantly refer back to the idea that the prevalence, promotion, and en-

couragement of English in postcolonial contexts like Pakistan is a “product of the local hegemonies of Eng-

lish” (Khan, 2) as becomes apparent in the dialectical variations (in acrolect to be the elite class’s English,

mesolect as the middle class’s, and basilect as “market English used by [the] uneducated class”) of PakE. As

mentioned previously, Middle English was “par excellence, the dialectical phase of English.”15 Marilyn Cor-

rie explains in the Oxford History of English that this means that it was a “period in which dialectal variation

was represented in writing and, significantly, in which it was represented without the ideological issues

which have underscored the writing of dialects in subsequent times” (Mugglestone, 86). We may be able to

say that the first statement is true for the stage, or life, that PakE seems to be in within its own development

but I am afraid that the second statement may never be able to be said about a non-native, postcolonial, post-

Industrialization variety of English. Postcolonial realities take postcolonial Englishes through a lot of the

same procedures that Middle English went through as it transitioned into early Modern English and became a

formidably elaborated (if not yet standardized) language.

The contacts and conflicts that Middle English partook in with regards to Latin, Norse, and French –

particularly in the processes of loan words, loan translations, and semantic loans – mirror the process an im-

perial or hegemonic English finds itself in with regards to indigenous or nationalist languages, as exempli-

fied throughout the course of this essay (Mugglestone, 73). In addition, postcolonial activism surrounding

language (in the form of creative writing that supersedes the prescriptive anxieties of authoritarian English)

takes advantage of the fluidity of communicational efficacy versus institutional permissiveness in the same

way that the “the diversity of Middle English could be beneficial to an author, but it could also undermine

the very viability of what other writers were trying to do” (Mugglestone, 109). If I want English to carry, nay

represent and illustrate and show beautifully, the weight of my Pakistani experience, do I master the tool as it

is to be internationally most diffusible and then litter it with some lexical hybridizations like Mohsin Hamid

so I am both able to represent Pakistan (kind of) accurately but also get published in an industry that follows

the typical Global North production module? Is it preferred, then, to Pakistanize English on a spectrum, do

so as was done so in Middle English where “the projected audience of a text and its genre [were] important

variables too—a piece of writing aimed at a wide readership [could] avoid forms known to be parochial,

14 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/the-link-between-english-and-economics
15 B. M. H. Strang, A History of English (London: Methuen, 1970 ), 224.
6
whereas a personal letter [could] not; at the same time, a selfconsciously ‘literary’ piece [could] aspire to the

complex syntax and ornate vocabulary which are features of ‘high style’ in the period” (Mugglestone, 114) or

is that hegemonic pandering, fated to insult the underprivileged panderer?

I talk in a different English in America than I do on my Whatsapp with my PakE-speaking friends,

now scattered throughout the world – whether it is Dubai, New Haven, Boston, London, or Groningen. All of

us are locked out from the Pakistani in the “Pakistani English” in our World English contexts (and for some

unlucky ones, our American English contexts) and are still a product of an English that is maybe English,

sure, but one half of what makes Pakistani English, undeniably. I think the Marxist understanding of class

anxiety must also shape how we delineate Pakistani English in the neat spaces of acrolect, mesolect, and

basilect variations. Baji Bombastic has ~132,000 followers on Instagram. It is a joke that came to a nine year

old’s brain that “used to make her family laugh.”16 Peerzada’s defensive and, in my opinion, overly self-ex-

onerating response to her critics is that “[t]he point is not to poke fun at such people, but the point is to take

pride in your own mother tongue and not be concerned about the fact that you can’t speak stellar English [as]

English is not our mother tongue.” I do not exactly see how she achieves this satirical intent, or how this was

her brainstorming from as far back as when she was nine years old but I want to give her the credit that a

quick look on Baji’s Instagram comments elucidates that her followers are not only venmous acrolect PakE

speakers. Recently, Baji’s character has taken the turn of explicitly making commentary on class in Pakistan,

sort of using Baji’s mesolect PakE as a protagonist more and more so rather than the butt of the joke. Though

many will still critique that it is not a dialect for Peerzada to own, I cannot help but recognize the growth.

Another interesting moment in Baji’s growth and corresponding fame is that when Peerzada appeared on a

national TV channel and spoke as herself, acrolect-elite tone, manner, and vibe, there are many comments

that feel betrayed by her: “WTF HER ACCENT IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT” reads one comment and “Why

act jahil17 or make fun of such ppl???” reads another. Peerzada deliberated in her Mangobaaz article that

“[she] want[s] people, especially those from [her] generation, to realize that they need to stop trying to put

things under labels and in boxes in order to understand them.” Despite all the criticism and her personal im-

plication in it, Peerzada does reflect a truth “that accents ha[ve] social implications” in 21st century PakE,

16https://www.mangobaaz.com/baji-bombastic-social-medias-hilarious-new-sensation-has-an-
important-message-for-us-all
17Jaahil means “uneducated” – a particularly Islamic term that’s very common in India/Pakistan
but also in the Arab World as people from before Islam’s time are said to be living in (a state of)
“Jahilia.”
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very similar to how accents have carried social implications in earlier periods of English (as Alex would say,

plus ça change). My personal takeaway from this education in English at Yale is that I am now more aware

that there is and can be an authoritatively Pakistani English to own, to mobilize, and to play with. I will ar-

gue that many kids in Pakistan still grow without that vote of confidence. The discouse of correct versus in-

correct does not only win, it carries and bleeds into socioeconomics and permanent psychological impact.

May the beauty of PakE that I now witness and encourage others to witness conquer that all.

Works Cited

1. IRFAN KHAN, Humaira. The Evolution of Pakistani English (PakE) as a Legitimate Variety of English.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, [S.l.], v. 1, n. 5, p. 90-99, sep.
2012. ISSN 2200-3452. Available at: <https://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL/article/view/
747>. Date accessed: 04 may 2020. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/ijalel.v.1n.5p.90.
2. Talaat et. al. “The Impact of Urdu-English Code-Switching on Pakistani English." The Free Library 31
December 2010. 04 May 2020 <https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The Impact of Urdu-English Code-
Switching on Pakistani English.-a0277994048>.
3. Mugglestone, Lynda. The Oxford History of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.