Accents: how do you feel about Western accents in an Indian-looking person

chAos

and then only good for curry!

camelgirl

Thanks for those links Hyderbadi--awesome!!

Maybe I'll fork over the money & find out my real roots, as I can only go back 2 generations on both sides (it's what happens when your entire family disappears due to a little historical reality that occurred in the 1940s in Europe) & the few who survived kept their loss to themselves.

All I ever heard was from my grandmother who lived with us, whenever she got angry with me (often, as a teenager) she said "you don't deserve to be named after my grandmother, she was a wonderful woman." I'd laugh like crazy! Kids are so dumb

About accents--topic I think--I recently moved to the south after a lifetime living in the north and there are "mountain" people here whose accents I cannot understand. There is even a small book published to try to help (it's obviously a humourous book). I'm always very polite and try to work it out. Here is a link with some excellent examples. http://www.tngenweb.org/franklin/franfolk.htm If you have an Active X control you can also hear some great mountain music.

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Dilliwala

That it does - here assimilation attempts tend to lead to political suicide. Like the time the Ministry of Civil Aviation decided a decade ago that Tuesdays wud be Hindi-only days - they withdrew it in a hurry when southern MPs suggested there wud be no work done on Tuesdays in affiliated offices down south.
Lived in U.S. - no, visited a few times, plus the usual 3.4 relatives there. I'm aware though that in the U.S. people can pretty much do their own thing, maybe more than over here. That I was not lumping the U.S. with the PRC and the USSR shud have been clear from 'beyond a point' being in italics. If it wasn't, to be clear - I do not think the U.S. is beyond that point. Still it cannot be denied that there IS a certain expectation to conform to certain ideals/standards/whatever of what is generally understood and accepted as being American. Which is largely based on European and specifically Anglo-Saxon culture/ideals/whatever, that was my point. Otherwise why does Siddharth become Sid, and Satinder Sat, and Tapan Tap? Cud very well have more to do with their own insecurities, but they're not calling themselves Siegfried or Satoshi or Tashi.

Quote:

Who's talking about Aryans? What about the Mughals? OK, Asian, but not originally from the subcontinenet.

Absolutely, and I very much took the Mughals into consideration when making my previous statement. Fact is that roughly 5% of India's Muslims can trace their ancestry to Central Asia or Iran. So it's still correct to say that over 90% of Indians cannot trace their ancestry to 'outside'.

Quote:

So that makes Han Chinese imperialism directed at Tibetans and Uighurs more palatable? Anyway, the later "Native Americans" did come from another continent, in successive migrations from Asia. There are even some people who theorize that some of the migrations were by "sea-going vessels". But trying to rank the relative offensiveness of imperialism or cultural hegemony by whether or not the aggressors come from another continent in sea-going vessels is what lawyers would call "a distinction without a difference."

I'm surprised at the insinuation that I wud agree to that first proposition, given that you know my views (some of em at least) about the PRC.
I wasn't doing any ranking, even if that's your perception, but simply trying to counter your comparing the migrations of many thousand years ago (neighbourhood traffic, I call it) to 'modern-day migration', as if it was the same thing - it isn't.
Mode of transport is not the issue here, I'll bet you realised that too, but won't let on. What's that saying - admit nothing, deny everything?

(BTW, I'm not expecting to win the argument against a lawyer, and not one as good as yourself . But still worth a try, and good mental exercise, keeps the cells from rusting ).

Interesting discussion

capt_mahajan

yep. and never complain, and never explain.

and never say never

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Hyderabadi

Again,





I always liked that James Bond accent. Always stirred me but never shook me enough, though.

capt_mahajan

The last one that did both in a Bond movie was Halle Berry. After Ursula Andress.

err, are we offtopic again?

Maybe not, Connery's accent and all.

Nick-H

Halle Berry should beware of marrying a man called Mr Tosis!

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capt_mahajan

brishti

sunday mornin comin down eh nick?



mr tossit?

:brishti

Nick-H

Sunday morning, get up early to get the milk in (Mrs N always away on Sundays); feed the cats, have a cup of tea, some computer time, a silly comment or two and go back to bed!

dzibead

It's all the fault of those damned Founding Fathers, with their English (and a little Scots & Scotch-Irish) roots and all.

Well, of course I knew you wouldn't agree. That's why I used these examples, to show the flaw in what you appeared to be arguing: that migrations from another continent "by sea-going vessel" are somehow worse than migrations you are now labeling "neighborhood traffic" - and you still do seem to be ranking these different kinds of migrations when you say:

To the people thousands of years ago who were first impacted by this "neighbourhood traffic", I doubt whether it seemed that different from "modern-day migration" - if "outsiders" are coming into "your" territory, even from next door, many people will react negatively, so I suspect that the "neighbourhood traffic" of yore was not necessarily viewed as benign. In fact, I suspect it was often viewed the way a lot of people in Texas border towns view Mexicans coming into the U.S. - not as benign "neighbourhood traffic", which it arguably is, but more like a full-blown "foreign invasion."

Ahem - I think I was the one who pointed out that the mode of transportation was immaterial.

I think the real distinction you were getting at is the difference between gradual flows of different peoples from one territory to another, which are not necessarily accompanied by a shift of power/dominance to the newcomers (although this can and often does eventually happen) versus a more cataclysmic invasion - or at least intrusion - accompanied by an overt assertion of power, which may or may not be accompanied by population transfer, and if there is some population transfer the newcomers may or may not eventually outnumber the original inhabitants. There are lots of variables in these different migration scenarios that impact how "offensive" the migration is perceived to be by the people living in the areas impacted by the migration, and my point was simply that suggesting, as you seemed to be doing, that such migrations/intrusions are less offensive when they are done by people on the same continent didn't seem sound.

Wasn't this thread supposed to be about accents? So back on topic: I went to a festival today where there was a dance troupe of young Indian-American girls performing Bharatanatyam. I overheard them chatting later: all with garden-variety American accents. The funny thing was, this festival was the annual "Himalayan Fair" in Berkeley and ... well ... the last time I checked South India was pretty far from the Himalaya ...

capt_mahajan

Folks, can you stop blaming "sea going vessels" for everything from pollution to migratory problems, please?

brishti

methinks its time for gybing!


:brishti

dzibead

Yes, very foolish. Vessels plying inland waterways are obviously the real culprits.

Nick-H

No way I can forgive those Very Large Carriers for being so Crude. They should have been taught manners in the shipyard.

I blame the marine architects...