Sociolinguistic Background 1. The South Asian sub-continent is highly multilingual.
Most people command two or more languages.
It is not uncommon to see a person using one language at home, a second on the street, a third in school, a fourth in a holy place, and a fifth at work. Code switching, i.e., switching from one language to another during speech, is prevalent in the speech of urban speakers. Educated speakers frequently mix English in their language. Many switch to English through half way of their sentence in informal settings. Mixing between South Asian languages, say Hindi and Panjabi, is also common in South Asia.