Take a fresh look at India.

Take a unique journey back in time and travel the East India trade routes of the English language while gaining a fresh perspective on India's past. Written in an approachable style suitable for all ages, this book is packed with surprising facts and rich detail about the birth of the Spice Trade and indeed global trade.

• Did you know that the Portuguese were trading with India for more than 100 years before the first English arrived seeking trade?
• Did you know that the powerful Mogul Empire controlled most of India for 700 years - 500 years longer than the British?
• Did you know that there was more than one East India Company competing with each other?
• Did you know that France controlled more territory in India than the British, and nearly kicked out the British out altogether?

Take a unique journey back in time and travel the East India trade routes of the English language while gaining a fresh perspective on India's past. Written in an approachable style suitable for all ages, this book is packed with surprising facts and rich detail about the birth of the Spice Trade and indeed global trade.

English Masala is firmly focused on uncovering the intriguing origins and histories of more than 200 English words that have their roots the Indian sub-continent.

You will learn that cheetah is the Indian word for leopard, that swastika is actually a good luck symbol meaning 'good luck' and that the original thugs were a sophisticated network of murderous Indian thieves. Have you heard that Vindaloo, the T-Rex of curries, is Portuguese for 'wine and garlic'?

Learn about the surprising origins of many Anglo-Indian words, including: mango, indigo, catamaran, Guru, gingham, juggernaut, teak, Pale Ale, civilian, jungle, loot, aubergine, mantra, nirvana, shampoo, snooker, polo and Blighty.
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In total, the book covers more than 200 English words and 1000 years of history.

The book begins briefly with the formation of ancient India before diving straight in to explore the rise of the Spice Trade, European sea trade and the rise of colonisation. The story that unfolds is also the story of India and its modern creation.

English Masala offers a fresh and quirky look at India's past and present, through its co-operation and collision with Persia and Europe. Learn about this fascinating country by understanding the origins of the English words that have been adopted from there.

... a book primarily about the English language.

At the height of the British Empire, Britain’s territories in the Indian sub-continent would broadly equal the size of Europe and hold some 400 million people. It is often forgotten that Britain was not the first European power to begin trading with India, nor was it the only European nation trying to claim its vast landmass for its own. The Portuguese had established trading ports in India more than a century before the first English traders arrived to do business. France nearly kicked the British out of India altogether. Had it done so, and had the French acquired the same vast control as did the East India Company and the Raj after it, then French might well be the second most spoken language in India after Hindi. We might well be speaking of le Raj instead of the Raj.

The other misconception about Anglo-Indian history is that India was a part of the British Empire for one long stretch. According to that view, the East India Company is overlooked and we forget the situation that occurred – unimaginable today – that parts of India, and tens of millions of people living in it, were under the control of not a British government but a publicly listed British corporation. The start of the Anglo-Indian relationship began in 1600 and lasted until the formal separation in 1947. In the beginning, the English were simply traders and Muslim Moguls ruled India. By the time it all ended, India had been under British Crown rule for almost 90 years.

But this is not a book about the British Empire. It is a book primarily about the English language. History, however, plays an important part in the reasons behind each word’s inclusion in the vast English canon. Every word is a marker, a remnant of the bonds between Britain and the Indian sub-continent. Some are loan words, others are neologisms simply created in India. Yet more trace back through Latin, Greek and Persian all of the to the very roots of what is, after all, the Indo-European family of languages.

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