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Likely that influence comes from when India was part of the British Empire. Lots of Indian-derived words made it into British English.


Pyjamas and bungalow are examples of borrow words from India. India has rather a lot of languages and I don't think you can lump them all into "Indian".

"Char" as in "cuppa char?" is the usual spelling (would you like a cup of tea?)

According to this: http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/cup-char it is likely that "char" is derived from Chinese (another country with rather a lot of languages - would the real Chinese please stand up!)


I think this is overly snippy. GP just seemed to imply that the words cone from India, not that India has a single language.

Also as far as i can tell "cha" is far more common than "char" in the British Isles.


"Also as far as i can tell "cha" is far more common than "char" in the British Isles."

No, it isn't. "Char" is always the spelling I have encountered here (in 47 years).


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Are just some Indian words loaned by English.

Two interesting words that Punjabi/Hindi has loaned from French is Savon (sabun) and Cartouche (Kartoos).




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