33 Indian words used in English - and memory aid sentences

Problem
How do you remember the Indian words in the English language. (In my case this is for a speech in English, to an international audience, or to an Indian audience. The Indians in Singapore mostly speak Tamil. But they often also speak Hindi. In an international audience Europeans often speak English, plus either French, Spanish or German, or two or or three or more European languages. Many ethnic Chinese people from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore speak Chinese (Mandarin) and dialects such as Cantonese (from Honk Kong) or Hokkien (from southern China). So I expect an international audience to be multi-lingual and open to the idea of learning about other languages and picking up vocabulary the easy way.

Answer
Having discovered a list of words I already know, my next aim is to combine them into a story so that both I and the listener can remember them.

Story
I first heard of this idea of using all the words from a language in Greece. Our Greek guide read out a speech delivered in English to the united nations, a speech which included numerous long words of Greek origin.

Here's my first story for use in a speech on the Indian languages:

A Pukka Day of Yoga In India
I started my day in India doing yoga on the verandah of my bungalow. I wore pyjamas and a cummerbund and a bandanna. My guru wore a pashmina and shook her bangles as she recited a mantra. Afterwards I served her a breakfast of kedgeree with chutney. She declined my offer of punch and a hot toddy.

We sat looking across the peaceful lake at the dinghies rowing towards the jungle but the calm was shattered by the sound of a juggernaut. We planned to go the afternoon gymkhana so I shampooed my hair.

My husband came in from work wearing khaki dungarees. He changed into jodhpurs. He brought in a newspaper which reported that thugs who had escaped with loot had been caught by a typhoon. We agreed it was karma.

In the evening we went to a Mogul restaurant near the place of the Maharajah. My husband told us he has a new job designing avatars. I signed the chit as a thank you to the pundit, my yoga teacher. We all have cushy lives and pukka jobs. We were in Nirvana.

I have tweaked this story twice to make it more logical and connected and therefore easy to remember. I changed the story so that my husband drives the juggernaut.

Tips
See lists of Indian words in Wikipedia.
If you don't need these words for teaching or learning languages or for speeches, they will make the start of a lively discussion over an Indian meal.

Author

Angela Lansbury, author, teacher of English and other languages, speaker and speech trainer.
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