Our nightly reading these days is Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, which I first read three decades ago and have very much been wanting to revisit; at close to 2,000 pages, it should occupy our bedtimes well into next year. The first novel, The Jewel in the Crown (also the title of the superb television serial made from it), is online at archive.org for anyone who wants to sample it; I thought I’d post this passage for its linguistic interest:
The teacher at the Chillianwallah Bazaar school, whose pupils were all Indian, was a middle-aged, tall, thin, dark-skinned Madrassi Christian, Mr F. Narayan: the F for Francis, after St Francis of Assisi. In his spare time, of which he had a great deal, and to augment his income, of which he had little, Mr Narayan wrote what he called Topics for the local English language weekly newspaper, The Mayapore Gazette. In addition, his services were available as a letter-writer, and these were services used by both his Hindu and Muslim neighbours. He could converse fluendy in Urdu and Hindi and the local vernacular, and wrote an excellent Urdu and Hindi script, as well as his native Tamil and acquired Roman-English.
“Roman-English” doesn’t convey anything to me; I’m guessing it might mean English written in the Roman alphabet, but how else would it be written? All suggestions welcome.
Also, just because it was preying on me and I’m pleased to have solved the puzzle: I’m enjoying my new Blu-ray of Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó, notorious for its 439-minute running time (I’m following my brother’s advice and taking it in chunks, easy to do since it’s divided into twelve parts), and today I watched the sixth part, “A pók dolga II (Ördögcsecs, sátántangó) [The Job of the Spider II (The Devil’s Tit, Satan’s Tango)],” which takes place in a bar where everyone is getting increasingly drunk. One character, Kelemen, keeps repeating the same phrases over and over until you want to slug him, and the most frequently repeated was subtitled “I was plodding and plodding” (it’s the first thing you hear in this YouTube clip). Of course I wanted to know what the Hungarian was, and I think I’ve finally figured out it’s vágtattam (see the conjugation here), which means ‘I galloped.’ I don’t know why the translator went with “plodding,” but it seems misleading.
There are plenty of google hits for ‘Roman English’, often along the lines of ‘Qur’an Transliteration in Roman English Script’.
It does seem to be specifically the script rather than the language (and it looks like it’s part of a list of scripts in your quote) – I found one page which talks about ‘writing the Urdu in Roman English Script’, which just seems to mean ‘in Roman characters’.
This seems like a faint possibility, but I’ll mention that with his namesake St. Francis, it seems possible that his is a Roman (Catholic) English.
But then I know little about Indian linguistic/religious history beyond what I learned from that classic of Bollywood Realism, Amar Akbar Anthony.
(Of course, his Roman-English ability follows on his ability to write in “Urdu and Hindi script”, so a script meaning seems more likely.)
One online Indian source offering “Roman English” versions of the Quran also offers a different volume in “Roman Urdu,” which means in context Urdu typeset in roman script rather than the usual script. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Urdu, which is more focused on online use. There’s still the question of what non-Roman script Indian publishers might typeset an English text in, though … That would just make the phrase peculiar-because-redundant, though, rather than nonsensical.
László feLugossy (one of the actors) – I wonder what the story behind the surprising (non-)capitalisation is.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEOfqF5p78
I am believing a knowledge of Hindi is helping understand this video, but it is not necessaried!
László feLugossy (one of the actors) – I wonder what the story behind the surprising (non-)capitalisation is.
Me too, but it seems to be a quirky personal addition; apparently he was born Lugossy László.
Hmm, and there are variants: Lugossy, feLugossy, Fe Lugossy László, fe Lugossy Laca.
Oh wait, I think I’ve solved the Roman-English thing; way down in the OED Roman entry we find: