[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by mayankk

...tor-kyu (torque)
voi-lens ...

LOL In certain parts of western India, one finds similar literal vocalization: usually -gue is spoken out as -gayu. Imagine how one describes a fatigued person!

Another oddity in that area is the conditional vocalization of "board" (in English). In "Board-room", it is 'bord' (rhymes with 'cord'; ignore the fact that 'cord' is 'cored' in some places) - 'bord-room'. In "cupboard" it is 'bored' (rhymes with 'scored', but with an more elongated o sound) - 'cup-bored'!!!

Down south, one wouldn't be surprised if one hears the following:
Bri-di-je
Fri-di-je
Cal-a-culator-e
The middle a is short but distinctly audible, as is the trailing e. If the trailing e is an a, it is a question, especially if this a is intonated with a sing song up-and-down tone, accompanied with a violent up-down nodding of the head. Talking of nodding, a violent left-right / figure-of-8 nodding of the head is an indication of assent / agreement in a discussion!

And whenever someone has managed to improve something (anything), he has always "improvised" it. Initially I used to ignore it as a seeming expression of jealousy, till I realized they mean "improved" when they say "improvise". Maybe everyone is used to doing jugaad (improvisation) all the time to have such a deep impression of the same.

Guess these:
Plei-yar
Mei-yar
Trei-yar
Loin (as in "saara shahar mujhe ...")
Not sure whether these are still prevalent - that was how it was till a generation back!

[Ajaybiz]

Lovely thread sorry for pulling this out after such a long time,
BTW can someone explain me why Thank is pronounced without "H", are we Indian are right or the people who invented this language called English?
Can someone explain me the difference between word "Bath" (fae takes it daily and few monthly ) and the word used after rice "Bath"?
Many of my North indian friends name were Santosh, Chetan, Aarti, Rohit and in no time it became Santhosh, Chethan, Aarthi, Arathi, Rohith, it might be right for few but i cant digest this "Th".

[mayankk]

Originally Posted by Ajaybiz

Lovely thread sorry for pulling this out after such a long time,

Can someone explain me the difference between word "Bath" (fae takes it daily and few monthly ) and the word used after rice "Bath"?
".

That's corrupted.
It's actually bhaath.

[jacs]

I was once checking for a Photocopier in Selam - Erode route, TN. No one was able to help me find any. After so much of wandering here and there, a young chap asked me whether I am looking for "Jerax capy" yes Xerox copy it is!

[Gansan]

Perfect diction may not make for perfect communication; not always.

More than a decade ago, when I was working in the Shipping division of my employer, we had a vessel called "Spic Pearl" which was waiting outside a port in China, as a berth was not available. Since it was not our usual route, we did not have an agent to attend the vessel, and engaged a temporary one. Communication was at best patchy and difficult, as they could barely speak English.

Our General Manager was getting restive, not knowing when exactly our vessel would berth. This gentleman had a perfect British accent. He would repeatedly call the agent's office, some one would answer the phone, saying "Wei" or something to that effect. Then our boss would enquire politely about the berthing plans, upon which the other party would promptly hang up!

This happened many times, and it struck one of our colleagues (who can speak passable English, no great accent!) that the other end was repeatedly hanging up because they could not understand our GM! So he offered to try, to which the GM grudgingly agreed.

"Tring...tring.."

"Wei...?"

"Calling from Madras, India"

"Yes...?"

"Our shippu.....Spic Pearlu...."

"Ok...?'

"Berthingu / no berthingu...?"

"No berthing...."

"I see.....! When berthingu....?"

"Tuesday".


And there it was, what the GM wanted to know all along!

[srishiva]

My friends from Maharastra usually say ' I had braid' (bread)

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by Ajaybiz

... Santosh, Chetan, Aarti, Rohit ... became Santhosh, Chethan, Aarthi, Arathi, Rohith, it might be right for few but i cant digest this "Th".

There is a whole lot of syllabic corruption in the language, due to limitations of the vernacular script and the 'originators' of the (for rest of Indians, funny) transliteration:
* Devanagari त / थ / द / ध causes a lot of confusion with ट / ठ / ड / ढ. Since 't' is a constraint, it is associated with ट (ditto 'd' with ड). By adding 'h' they are softening the pronunciation to त and द. Perhaps now you can understand the accent while speaking Hindi!

So what about थ and ध?

* Similar confusion exists for क ख ग घ and प फ ब भ, so much so that 'पेट भर खाना खाया' could easily become 'पेड पर गाना गाया' ('पेड़ पर गाना गाया'). On transliteration (and subsequent articulation) it would still be bad, since 'Pet bhar khana khaya' would become 'pet bar kana kaya'!!!
* Devanagari ड़ / ढ़ cannot be handled - neither in English nor in vernacular. It is incidental if a south Indian pronounces Vada as वड़ा instead of वडा
* The confusion continues to vowels too: ए is fine, ऐ causes chaos, since in north India पै (as in पैर) is strange for south India, which pronounces it as 'Pie', causing the continued confusion whether Mr.Pai is पै or पाई!!! This can't be simply transliterated in English, closest to the actual पै sound is a funny 'pae', and पैर would be 'pair'

Originally Posted by mayankk

... It's actually bhaath.

Heh heh another one of those: it is भात in Devanagari (cooked rice), bhaat in north, bhaath in south! So go figure what is 'Rice Bath'

Originally Posted by Gansan

... "Our shippu.....Spic Pearlu...." ...

Must be someone native to Karnataka. A native of Madras would have articulated the same things as "Our shipp-e.....Spic-e Pearl-e...."!

The Chinese are used to Japanese speaking English (no, they don't speak the same language even if the scripts look similar) with the same 'u' ending and short seemingly-ungrammatical sentences. Of course, "Spic Pearl" would be pronounced as "Supiccu Paalu" (r substituted).