Pakistan

English in India and Pakistan is used as a semi-official language alongside the two versions of the same native language, known as Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan. The latter form has been influenced, especially in its vocabulary, by Arabic because of Islam, the official religion of Pakistan. In its phonology English in both Pakistan and India is remarkable for its intonation and for the retroflexion of consonants (pronouncing the alveolar consonants of English with the tip of the tongue curved back towards the palate). Both these features derive from native background languages in the two countries in question. Furthermore, one should mention that English in Pakistan and India is rhotic and that vowels show much less diphthongisation than in southern British English. The style of English in South-Asia is remarkable for its decorative and somewhat archaic character, a style furthered both by the means of transmission of English, through linguistically conservative texts, and the conception of good style in the native languages of the region.

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