Team-BHP - Technical aspects behind the various Indian accents and pronounciations

Quote:

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k (Post 1840205)

You didn't get my point. I know there are various accents. what I said is americans don't make an effort to pronounce tough syllables as much as asians or europeans. They create a simplified version and that becomes the standard throughout the adulthood. Ask an american adult to pronounce a hard 'R' and you will see how difficult it is.

I am able to see it because I am at the boundary where the change is occurring. For the second generation it will become the standard, my son will not even notice it when his children do that.

Do you know young kids in India can not pronounce a hard 'R', and replace with an 'L'. The more delay in perfecting the 'R', the more teasing they get for the "lisp". American kids just glide over it. that's the effort I was mentioning above.

but this is seriously :OT.

Read your blog too, Vivek. Apparently, states is not alone. I lived in UK for a couple of years and it had a deep impact on my communication skills. (I am going a OT here. so please bear with me) Fortunately or unfortunately I don't know but that's where I got fluency in communicating verbally in English. In India I studied in a school where syllabus was in English but medium of instruction was Hindi, as a result I could write English very well but Verbal communication skills suffered allot.

After living in Uk, I got my verbal skills polished a bit also learnt alot about the difference in Indian and British dialects. In indian english dialects (or language) Phonetics/phonemics are completely absent. But in British english consonents are disappearing for example sound of 'T' followed by any vowel is pronounced silent (glottel sound) i.e. water becomes wa'er, mate becomes ma'e, better become be'er, That become aea (for example: like that is pronounced as lik-aaa), there become ner. The missing 'T' is presented by a glottel sound in throat. Similarly 'Th' sound is replaced by 'F' sound i.e. 'three' became 'free' now, 'thing' became fing, 'thanks' became 'fanks' (don't mistake this sound with Th as in mother, brother, bother etc). The list is endless but yeah language is evolving once again but slowly.

PS: I am not a language expert but I do have a habit to analyse deeply how people speak. So all above comments are just my observations.

Regards
Punzabi

Quote:

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k (Post 1840205)

hmmn, yeah i think i misunderstood you. I think in general, us Americans like to simplify things or to just glide or gloss over stuff. I havent really noticed it myself when i was in school or speaking though, or maybe i just didnt pay attention to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Punzabi (Post 1840806)

just listen to Danny Morrison whenever he commentates ;). The English accent is very clear there..or is he a South African??

Quote:

Originally Posted by e1t1bet (Post 1835882)

Thanks a lot for the "t to th" explanation. What I have noticed though, is that writing th for t is not peculiar to Tamil Nadu. People do this in Karnataka as well. So does Kannada have the same funda? (one letter representing different phonetics)

No, I don't think so. For e.g., Kannadigas write Prashanth or Prashant whereas I have seen spellings like Prasant or Prasanth from neighboring states. Also, Kannadigas write Shekhar or Shekar whereas, I have seen Sekar.

See, nothing is right or nothing is wrong about these spellings. Because these are not English words at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by e1t1bet (Post 1835882)

P.S. Indians should respect each others accents. Light-hearted humor is obviously okay. However, I find it very annoying when my North Indian friends deride Southies in Bangalore for their accents, food habits etc, and vice versa. What makes the country great is the co-existence of so many old languages and cultures. This country doesn't need more Bals, Rajs, and Senas.

This is absolutely true. Mainly about food. North Indians brand all South Indians as 'madarasis' without understanding our culture properly. They make fun of the food habits. The Sambar or Rasam, as properly known or HuLi or Saaru in Kannada is criticized. Educated people making such comments sounds really bad in this century.

I don't have friends or relatives who make fun of North Indians. But I'm sure there are some people who do so. Please stop such things guys.

I never make fun of any food. Especially because you are making fun of a whole culture of people. Also, we have 'Sardarji Jokes' circulating around, which is really bad and shows 'cheap' Indian mentality.

Please learn to respect other's culture guys. If you don't like anything, a polite "I don't prefer curd rice" instead of "I puke when I hear curd rice". See the difference.

We are one nation, please remember. Lets not make each state a nation.

P.S, Sorry if I hurt anyone in this post, but the intention was to criticize people who disrespect other cultures.

@ Thread starter, Please close this thread with moderator's help. I wouldn't appreciate highlighting cultural differences within our country.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rm_arjuna (Post 1856331)

i think nothing can beat this :eek:..
My name is typed as Thirumathi Malliga Arjun:Frustrati ( Ms.Malliga Arjun) in the voter ID card whereas my proper name is Mallikarjuna . In Tamilnad " Mallika " is mostly written as " Malliga " because of Regional influence and which is a womens name in tamilnadu , whereas in Karnataka & AP Mallikarjuna is common names .

That really takes the cake! BTW "Malliga" in Tamil = "Mallige" in Kannada. It is indeed a female name. But Mallikarjun/Mallikarjuna/Mallikarjunan are also common enough male names here, so I don't know how this goof-up happened!

A simple dosa(ದೋಸಾ) is pronounced as Dosa(ಡೋಸಾ) or dosha(ದೋಷ - which means fault :) ) by some

Also some refer to Kannada as 'Kannad' which just shows their ignorance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by blue_pulsar (Post 1855899)

@ Thread starter, Please close this thread with moderator's help. I wouldn't appreciate highlighting cultural differences within our country.

Why is highlighting cultural differences wrong? As long as it is not in bad taste i don't think anybody will have a problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jinojohnt (Post 1858236)

The Tamil guy said 'Dosa' is correct, because Tamils invented the Dosa before Mallus, so they rightfully coined the word 'Dosa'.
My Mallu colleague won this argument hands down by saying:
You know, 'Dosha' is correct - remember the 'Shhhhhhh' sound when you make a Dosha?

Does Tamil have letters representing 'sha' i believe even if it was 'sha' it would have been said as 'sa', what say? BTW did the Mallu guy agree that Tamils invented Dosha first?lol:

Spike

This is a nice thread. I have gone through some pages and see quite a few posts on whether a language has certain letter in it or not.

I am not sure why members are confusing language with the script it uses. Languages existed for thousands of years but the scripts were standardized only during last few centuries. If a language does not have a certain letter to represent a certain sound doesn't mean the people decided to drop that sound. In fact it is the other way round. The language did not need that sound hence the language script does not include any letter for it.

I was reading some articles regarding devnagari script to understand Marathi evolution. Quite a few mentioned that the script only came to be accepted as standard to write Marathi during late 19th/ early 20 th century. Try reading some texts from Shivaji period available in Museum, chances are you won't be able to.

This is one of the reasons why some spellings are different in American English and British English. The language travelled to America during 15 and 16th century but the spellings only came to be standardized during 18th century in respective countries bringing in the discrepancies.

With regards to script, well it is not english at all. It is Latin or Roman as you'd know. Most of the european languages use it with their own variations bringing in umlongs and calling j as y (Deutsch)

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPIKE ARRESTOR (Post 1858794)

Does Tamil have letters representing 'sha' i believe even if it was 'sha' it would have been said as 'sa', what say? BTW did the Mallu guy agree that Tamils invented Dosha first?lol:

Spike

Well, both are wrong. It is actually written and pronounced as "Thosai" in Tamil as there is no "D" equivalent. But in common dialect it is "dosai". Dosa is actually how people from the north call it.

And it is actually supposed to have originated in present day Karnataka!

Dosa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for the Mallu guy not contesting the invention of Dosa, well, it may be because back in those days both Tamil and Malayalam were one and the same and had not evolved in to their present forms!

Malayalam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia