The Rise of Romanized Scripts

Open a family WhatsApp group in Chennai, a college meme page in Bengaluru, or a market forum in Kochi, and you will notice something striking. The conversations are not in English, nor are they in Tamil, Kannada, or Malayalam script. They are in a hybrid space where regional languages are written in the Roman alphabet. “Enna da panra?” sits next to “Super macha,” “Vaa sapdrla” next to “Nalla irukku.” This is not shorthand anymore. It is the everyday written language of millions.

Romanized scripts have become the default for much of India’s digital conversation. Hinglish dominates Twitter trends, Tanglish floods Instagram captions, Manglish drives debates on Facebook, while Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati too flow effortlessly into the Roman alphabet. Typing in native scripts is possible, but rarely the norm. Switching keyboards feels clumsy, predictive text struggles, and younger users often never learned to type in their mother tongues in formal script. Instead, they bend the Roman alphabet to carry the rhythm, slang, and emotion of their speech.

This is not a dilution of language. It is its extension. Romanization allows for humor, cultural nuance, and fusion with English in a way that mirrors how people actually talk. A single sentence can glide across languages, capturing the reality of how Indians think, argue, and joke. In this sense, romanized scripts are not an aberration but the most authentic record of how digital India communicates.

Yet most institutions act as if these voices do not exist. Pollsters, researchers, and even many social media analysis tools either misclassify Hinglish and Tanglish as “bad English” or ignore them entirely. The result is that the largest and most dynamic share of online opinion slips through the cracks. When we measure public mood only in English or formalized native scripts, we are missing the heart of the conversation.

The cost of this blindness is obvious. In Tamil Nadu, Tanglish memes often set the tone for political satire before television catches on. In Kerala, fiery Manglish debates on Facebook pages can mobilize sentiment long before newspapers report them. Across North India, Hinglish YouTube comments can elevate or destroy a campaign video within hours. A WhatsApp forward written in romanized Bhojpuri or Telugu can ripple across districts faster than any survey can capture. These are the spaces where identity, grievance, and aspiration collide. To ignore them is to misread the nation.

Technology is beginning to recognize what institutions still overlook. The rise of vernacular language AI models shows that the digital world is adapting to India’s linguistic complexity. These models are being trained not only on formal scripts but on the messy, code-mixed, romanized reality of how people actually write. They are learning to understand Hinglish, Tanglish, Manglish, Kanglish, Benglish, and the many hybrids that flourish online. This is not a small technical feat. It is a cultural recognition that India’s voice is not uniform, and that meaning lives in the hybrids as much as in the standards.

Romanized scripts are not a passing fad. They are a linguistic revolution born of digital convenience and cultural adaptation. They carry the true tone of Indian public opinion: irreverent, multilingual, fast-moving, and deeply expressive. To continue ignoring them is not just a technical shortcoming. It is a failure to hear the country as it speaks.

The task before us is to take these voices seriously. To build systems that can read and interpret romanized languages with the same sensitivity as English or formal scripts. To accept that India’s public opinion lives not in neat categories but in fluid, hybrid expression. Those who adapt will find a way to measure society more truthfully. Those who do not will keep mistaking silence for consent.