“Happy b’day bhaiya”. Characteristics of Facebook Indian English

The purpose of the paper is to analyse linguistic practices of specifically one group of English Facebook users – the speakers of Indian English. As one of the most thoroughly studied members of the so-called New Englishes group, Indian English is believed to demonstrate a number of characteristic features resulting especially from the prolonged English-Hindi language and culture contact. Following a brief outline of the history and current position of English in India the paper examines in detail characteristic features of Indian English found in the Facebook material collected from fan pages and private messages: changes in spelling and pronunciation of English words, use of abbreviations, characteristic features of nativised Indian English grammar, language errors, as well as some typical sociolinguistic features of that variety of English, notably forms of address, culture-specific elements, and code-switching.