Anna, Abba enter the Oxford Dictionary

Anna, meaning elder brother in Tamil and Telugu, can now be found in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In all, 70 new Indian words from Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Hindi and Gujarati have been added to the dictionary in the latest update that happened in September 2017.
 

English first arrived in India as a foreign tongue used by merchants and missionaries, later being used by the colonial administration, then finally attaining official status in an independent India. The word Anna exists in the dictionary as a noun, which means a former monetary unit of India and Pakistan, equal to one sixteenth of a rupee. Now, anna 2, noun, has been added.

Another word from South India had previously made it to the Oxford dictionary - Aiyoo

Abba, an Urdu word for father has also been added. The other Indian words added to the dictionary are  Achcha, Bapu, Bada Din, Bachcha, Surya Namaskar. Most of the Indian words added pertain to relationships, culture and food. In addition to Achha for okay that already exists, Achcha, an exclamation used to express an emotion of surprise, doubt and joy, is now in Oxford English Dictionary .

According to `Release notes: Indian English' written by Danica Salazar, OED World English Editor, "Seventy words originating from Indian English have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in this latest update, alongside the 900 or so words already existing in the OED."

She writes, "Indian speech etiquette features a complex system of kinship terms and terms of address, in which age, gender, status, and family relationships are marked by a highly specific vocabulary with no direct equivalents in English.This lexical gap is filled by borrowing such words from Indian languages (abba, anna, bapu, chacha, didi, mata), or adapting existing English words (cousin brother, cousin sister)."

The OED publishes four updates a year in March, June, September, and December respectively.

• anna
• abba
• oxford dictionary