Peggy Mohan delivers talk on language evolution

The Department of English at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) organised a lecture under its subject association featuring noted linguist, novelist and academic Peggy Mohan as the guest speaker. The talk, titled ‘The South Asia Story: from Early Migrants to Indian English’, explored the evolution of Indian languages, their interconnectedness and the development of Indian English.

Peggy Mohan, born in Trinidad, West Indies, completed her PhD in linguistics from the University of Michigan in 1978. Her dissertation, ‘Trinidad Bhojpuri: A Morphological Study’, laid the foundation for her later research on language death. In her lecture, Mohan traced the history of migration and language evolution in South Asia. She spoke about ‘the waves of migration of people’ and noted ‘the similarities between Sanskrit and Old Avestan’. She said, “Interconnections between Indian languages are much deeper than what we can perceive,” and elaborated that “Indian English is actually a kind of Prakrit.” Highlighting linguistic nuances, she remarked, “Indian English uses nouns whereas International English uses verbs.”

The lecture also addressed issues of gender sensitisation and linguistic diversity. It was attended by students and faculty from across the university.