Learn English – Usage and meaning of the word “Ragging” in India

Indian here. So I've been called 'dear' in some situations where it felt weird. And in all of them, the speaker was mostly trying to communicate familiarity and affection. See, when we speak in Hindi, we generally add a word like 'bhai' (brother) or 'sahab' (sir). So the 'dear' is probably an attempt to showcase their affection for you. They just don't know that such usage is uncommon and that there are other phrases to convey the same emotion.

A person who my dad was consulting texted me asking for some info. When I gave it to him, he said "Thank you, dear." He would never call me dear to my face or on phone, so I think this meant, "Hey, thanks a lot, man. Bye." in textspeak.

Having clarified that, PLEASE NEVER EVER CALL A GIRL OR WOMAN DEAR WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW THEM VERY WELL. The traditional people would balk at your forwardness and the open minded people would react the way you'd expect an American (assuming a random country) to react: "Is he alright? He's acting weird." And don't call males 'dear' either. I can't predict their reaction but you'd be better off avoiding it altogether.

Be yourself. If some dude calls you 'dear', please inform them that the word isn't normally used like that. Tell them to call you bro or pal or something else you're comfortable with. Not only will it help them out, it will also reduce the number of unintentionally creepy Indians on the planet, for which I'd like to thank you in advance.

According to Collins Dictionary, since the early 2000s there has been a steady decline in the usage of pukka in printed literature. Unfortunately, it's unknown if the data includes websites, online magazines and forums, but I suspect it doesn't. Taken at face value, it suggests that the term is falling out of favour particularly among British English native speakers.

Google Ngram seems to confirm the downward trend, in stark contrast when pukka reached its peak of popularity in 1945, long before its modern slang meaning.

According to Josephine Livingstone, who was writing for Prospect in 2013; the slang form, "excellent" and "first-rate", was first recorded in 1991.

For a full biography of this tricky little word, specifically in its incarnation as a loan-word into English, there is no better place to look than Hobson-Jobson. So, what’s the true definition of “pukka”? Well, firstly, the present-day British English slang use of “pukka” is a true definition. People all over Britain use the word, all the time, to mean solid, trustworthy, sure. Observe definition 3.b in the OED’s entry:

• b. Brit. slang. Excellent, superb; ‘cool’.

• 1991 Sun 13 June 23/6 Hey, man, that shirt’s pukka.

• 1996 Observer 5 May (Review Suppl.) 7/6 Girls mug girls for jewellery or pukka clothes.

• 2002 C. Newland Snakeskin xix. 255 ‘Yuh mum’s pukka,’ Davey chimed in, with so much passion I knew he wasn’t just being polite.

The article continues...

So, from Hobson-Jobson we learn that British pukka is a fairly literal loan from Hindi and Urdu (pakka), but that the English adopted it as a metaphor. Its literal sense survives in Indian terms like “pucca housing,” often used today to describe permanent residences which are less susceptible to natural disaster. [...] Hobson-Jobson reveals some of its cultural bias, however, in what it leaves out. There is no entry, for example, for pukka-sahib [see Wikipedia]. This term literally means a high-class European; a European might describe his friend thus if he wanted to suggest that he was a first-class gent. As we can read in EM Forster’s A Passage to India, however, pukka-sahib is also used satirically to refer to an attitude of prim, arrogant, magisterial aloofness: the ruling hypocrite’s pose. Henry Yule was a pukka-sahib for the ages.

Not living in the UK, and not having heard or met up with pukka I cannot say if the slang is commonly used among Londoners today, I imagine it's very familiar among the over 65s, and among youngsters who were growing up between the late 1980s and 90s. It would be lovely to hear somebody's first-hand experience.