What a 'hotel' can mean in India

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the English word hotel was first recorded in the 1640s and denoted a 'public official residence'. The modern sense of the word as 'an inn of the better sort' (i.e. 'a place offering lodging, food and other services to travellers') was first recorded in 1765. The word comes from the French hôtel, which itself is derived from the Medieval Latin hospitale via Old French hostel.

In French, hôtel was used to refer mainly to public official buildings that frequently received visitors, but this has been largely replaced by the meaning of 'place offering lodging and food to travellers', as used in contemporary English. However, you can still see traces of this old usage in words like hôtel de ville 'town hall' and hôtel des impôts 'tax office' and hôtel de police 'police headquarters'.

In India, the term hotel has taken on a slightly different meaning (and pronunciation, with stress on the first syllable, not the second.) Visitors to India are likely to find that big modern buildings offering lodging are called 'hotels', but they might be slightly shocked to see signs for hotels that do not provide lodging at all.

Take for instance this hotel located right next to the Dimapur Railway Station. As you can see, the hotel only offers 'fooding', a very common term in Indian English meaning 'the provision of food' - this can include the catering at an event or simply selling food at a restaurant.

I'm not entirely certain how the term 'hotel' has come to be used to refer to (what I would call) a 'restaurant', where only food and no lodging is provided. I doubt that this use derives from the original French meaning of a public building that frequently receives visitors. Incidentally, there are also hotels in India that advertise 'only lodging' with no 'fooding'.

My guess is that the term did originally designate a place frequented by travellers and provided both food and lodging - I imagine that travellers were the most likely people to frequent places offering food since most people would have taken their meals at home or packed their own food. Over time, some establishments may have stopped providing one service or the other for whatever reason (e.g. greater profits from selling food), but the label 'hotel' remained. Consequently, the term 'hotel' no longer denoted a place of lodging, but simply a place frequented by travellers. Someone else starting a restaurant near a train station or along a highway may then choose to call their business a 'hotel', even though they have no intention of providing lodging, as long as their expected clientele are likely to be travellers stopping in for a meal.

Whatever the history of the word may be, don't be shocked if you rock up to a hotel in India and can't get a room - some of them simply don't have any for guests!

'X cum Y' construction

Many English speakers would be familiar with the construction 'X cum Y' (where X and Y are nouns) to designate something or someone with two different attributes that are combined , e.g. model-cum-actor or restaurant-cum-dining room. The word cum here comes from the Latin preposition meaning 'with' or 'together with'. In writing, the words are often joined by a hyphen.

In spoken English, it's not something I hear that often (at least outside South Asia), even if people know the construction. Few people I know would talk about an actor-cum-model, and would probably say something like actor slash model slash waiter (effectively spelling out the punctuation marks used to divide up the different categories) or just actor model waiter. It's also no surprise that when I was doing the crossword in one of the local papers here the other day, I was puzzled by the clue: sofa-___-bed (3). You guessed it, the answer was 'cum', but most people I know would just call it a 'sofa-bed'.

In South Asia, the 'X cum Y' construction is used much more ubiquitously than back home, and usually without the hyphens in writing. It's almost as if people here really want to emphasise that something has multiple functions - maybe it suggests you get more value for your money? Or perhaps it makes an event sound more impressive?

Here we have the sign at the Bamboo Pavilion (sic)at Kisama in  Nagaland, where the Hornbill Festival is held. There was an exhibition cum sale last year, and I imagine there'll be another one this year.



The other weekend in Guwahati there was an awareness-cum-sensitization programme (here with the hyphens).

At the university, we also have a library cum seminar room.

Update: two more examples from around Guwahati

This is fine and good, but most English speakers are probably giggling just a little bit at the above examples, because unfortunately, cum is homophonous with a noun that means 'semen' and verb meaning 'to ejaculate'! This often leads to some unfortunate but highly amusing examples (which is probably why most English speakers outside of South Asia avoid using the construction altogether!)

For instance, a month ago I saw this sign for a mega loan cum exchange mela (a mela is a kind of fair here), with only the words mega loan in bold.

The other day my friend L. mentioned that she was walking through Diphu, she saw a sign for fast food cum restaurant. This is probably based on the use of fast food as the short form of 'fast food eatery / outlet'. (Update: I've seen a few of them around Guwahati as well.)

And just the other day I was rather slightly when I got a text message from a student saying she couldn't come to class because she had to attend a freshers' cum picnic! Amazingly (especially for a text message here), she used an apostrophe, probably to point out that  freshers' was simply short for 'freshers' day', i.e. an orientation day for freshmen / first years.

It's a rather popular construction in Indian English, that really doesn't seem to be going out of fashion anything time soon. So in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy the humour-cum-amusement I get out of seeing these signs everywhere,

Plans, programmes and projects

Generally, if I wanted to know what someone else was up to at a later point in time, I'd probably ask them, "Do you have any plans for today / tomorrow / later?" or "What're your plans for today / tomorrow / later?"

Except when I'm in India. Here, it was far more common for people to ask, "What is your programme for today / tomorrow?" Consequently, it's what I've come to ask people too.

The first time I heard the word 'programme' used in this context, it sounded as if my life was some sort of show with carefully scheduled performances throughout the day. Ironic of course, given that in my experience of India, nothing has ever run according to schedule - I was once booked to catch a train that turned out to 13 hours late. As a friend pointed out, "Back home, we'd called that train 'cancelled'.

However, the words 'programme' and 'plans' are not always interchangeable. For instance, today my host here in Dimapur was explaining to his sister-in-law that we were running late because "we had a programme at 3.30". In that particular context, I would've said "something came up at 3.30".

On a related note, hearing the word 'programme' used in this context reminded me of when I was on exchange in Lyon. One of the French professors said during orientation that in French, you didn't ask someone "Avez-vous des plans?" but "Avez-vous des projets?" if you meant 'Do you have any plans?", the French word projet being a cognate of English project. (This I believe is for a more formal register of French.) In any case, I wonder if French learners of English often mistakenly ask people if they have any "projects" on for the day...

A more prosodic take on Indian English

Today I was at one of Guwahati's few cafes asking the waitress for direction to another place that I suspected wasn't too far away. Now I can ask in Assamese for basic directions now, but being at a cafe meant I could ask in English. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Is it far? Can I walk there?
Her: No, you have to take a bus.
Me: How long will it take to walk there? Half an hour?
Her: It won't take that long.

Now the thing is, when I heard her say 'it won't take that long', I instantly did a double-take and asked if she meant that it would take more than half an hour or less than half an hour to get there on foot. It sounds absurd to me in hindsight because the only possible reading for 'it won't take that long' should be 'it will take less time than that'.

However, for some reason, I interpreted what she had said as 'it won't take exactly half an hour to get there'. Till now, I can't figure out why I thought that and felt the need to clarify. I suspect the confusion was due to a combination of factors. For one thing, I'm always wary of familiar expressions that have slightly different interpretations in Indian English (see my previous post). It also didn't help that in terms of intonation, the word 'that' didn't receive any prominence compared to the word 'long' - if I'd heard 'it won't take that long' with emphasis / nuclear accent on 'that', I'm sure I wouldn't have needed clarification.

Then again, I don't think her speaking in monotone alone was sufficient to cause the confusion (even though it didn't help). Perhaps the reason was more to do with what she'd previously said - if it takes me less than half an hour to walk somewhere (and there's a footpath next to the road and it's not too hot or too cold), why on earth would I want to catch an overcrowded bus?

A take on Indian English

I always say that NE India really isn't like the rest of India, but something that does remind me that I'm in India are the brands of English I hear around me. They're not all the same, but given the prevalence of Indian TV here and the fact that many English teachers have come  / still come from the 'mainland' (the rest of India), I often still find some features I associate more with Indian English here. (I'm also aware that Indian English itself comprises numerous variants, but this is my own overgeneralised impression.)

It's not so much the phonology (speech sounds) and intonation I notice - there are too many accents, which seem more heavily influenced by speakers' first language. As a point, my Sumi and Angami friends often make fun of the English spoken by Ao speakers. Rather, it's certain collocations that use the verb 'take' that have stuck in my mind and after two months here I've taken to using some of them in my daily life as well.

The first one I use all the time is take food. People always ask if I've 'taken food' and I will often ask people if they've 'taken food' as well. If I'm in the mood, I usually reply that 'I've taken / not taken food.' but if I'm not, I will tell them that 'I've eaten / not eaten.', which is what 'taking food' means.

Another one I hear often and sometimes use is take rest. People will tell me to 'take rest', which as you can guess is an invitation to 'have a rest'. But I'm not sure if I would actually tell people to 'have a rest' back home, unless they were lying sick in bed...

Finally, there's one 'take' collocation I heard used a lot at the Ahuna festival in Zunheboto, and then again at the Hornbill Festival in Kisama. Before each item, the announcers would invite participants to 'take the stage' and 'please take your time'. I was first a little taken aback by such brazen use of sarcasm at a public event, till I realised that they were actually telling the participants: 'use the time allocated to you to perform'.

I suppose it's kind of like telling people to 'seize the day'.

(might upload a video if I find one where the announcer was saying 'take your time')

[UPDATE 11/01/11: The Assamese caretaker of the guest house I'm staying at just told me not to take tension, meaning 'don't worry'.]