Areh yar, listen to me.

Aishah

Britbat - I hear newsreaders on TV all the time dropping the definite article e.g. the government, is always 'government'; the Prime Minister, always 'Prime Minister'. One gets so used to this that it hardly matters here. Shashank's English to my ear is very good,not requiring any sort of extra concentration to understand him. Does this really matter this sort of thing? Doesn't common usage come into play here? You hear very well educated, highly intelligent people using the same idioms and since they are so widely accepted no one bats an eye.

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"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

Nick-H

It depends on what you are aiming at and why. They (whoever they are ) say that the devil is in the detail.

The devil is certainly in the lack of detail of our British BBC, once reliable not only for factual reporting, but as an arbiter of polished English too.

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Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

Aishah

BBC News on radio was what we used to think of as 'perfect English' - sorry Britbat to bring back that expression! NZ radio announcers tried to emulate the pronunciation etc. Now that was elocution! All gone to the dogs, as my mother used to say. Times change.. usage changes.. and this is what I am asking. Will it make that much difference to be meticulous re the detail?

Nick-H

Yes, because the elegance and poetry is in the detail. Not that my English is perfect, or anywhere near it.

Britbat

My idea has NOTHING to do with "correct", "proper", "right" or any other superlative you might apply. I am not complaining about Shashank's English. Indeed, Indian English speakers in the main have a better command of the language(n.b.) than a large percentage of English English speakers. I have no difficulty understanding Indian English, written or spoken. My neighbour,
Mr. Similar Education and Background as Me has no difficulty understanding Indian English. Our dustman, Mr. Not Very Bright to Start With Not Helped by Poor Education, has extreme difficulty understanding Indian English on the telephone to a callcentre. Please extrapolate for yourself.

I've given up on the idea, now, by the way. Moved on. This thread has now officially morphed into yet another vehicle for Nick's posting marathon. I reckon he'll get at least 8/10 more posts out of it. All add up.

Please note my own milestone approaching!

Nick-H

My post count is simply an embarrassment to me: ignore it, I do.

Yes, the thread has morphed, as is the nature of the site. Morph or die!

navinkurian2002

People in ladakh yearn to learn english and those who know a bit would like to improve on that.And leh does not have a single decent esl institute .

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I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare dream of meeting your heart's longing. Budget Hotels ]

CliveG

Would it not be boring world if we all spoke with the same accent. Regional accents vary a lot in the U.K. as in most othe countries -doesn't it enrich society as opposed to turning us all into one homogenous population? Variety is the spice of life and I for one like to hear regional accents on the news and and in documentaries.

PeakXV

This is so true and the keener the ear the more intriguing it all becomes. Here at home, I enjoy the game of trying to determine instantly if the speaker is Canadian or American and if I have time(before it is revealed) to determine what region/state/province they might hail from.

I must say that the average Indian I run into on the street is - as or more understandable - than the average rural Canadian, American, Australian or British accent that I might hear on the nightly news telecast.

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We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ...and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

Alohaguy

Canadian is easy EH?

PeakXV

Aloha Alohaguy - not quite as easy as Hawaii! So catch you later ..... Ermm I mean Aloha!

chanakya2

I hate to add my two cents to a pretty much dead thread, but I will anyway since my opinion is different than everyone else's. And that is - I Support BritBat!!!
I did not misunderstand what he said at all. What he was trying to say was that a less educated paying customer from UK calling an Indian call center would know right away, inspite of someone having the exact same accent as himself, that the person taking the call was not local.
How do I know that? I live in a suburb of Washington, DC, and when I go out of DC, people call it Washington. So if someone on the phone were to ask me if I lived in Washington, instead of DC, then I know that person is not local. Simple as that.
So, I think Britbat was inquiring if there was a niche market in providing information about such local nuances, in the way the language is spoken.
Another example, in India a lot of people nowadays are speaking, or trying to speak, the American way. So they try to pronounce all I's as 'ai', as in Vinyl would be pronounced Vai-nil. Vitamin would be Vai-taa-min. Unfortunately, in India they take this too far and pronounce Entity as En-tai-ti.
The way I say 'developer' verses an american saying 'developer' is just different.
But ultimately, I have learnt, the voice quality of different races is just different, so that I can usually, I mean usually, tell when a white person is speaking, verses a black, asian or an Indian.

Nick-H

I think we all understood, if not at first then soon after.

But responses are not always as well aimed as queries, and, especially after a few dozen posts, the goalposts get moved to a different car park.

Alohaguy

At IM threads never die. They morph. Or they are resurrected months later. Fun site indeed