Difficult time understanding Indian accents

Nick-H · Sep 8th, 2007, 16:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by incitatus

... ... ...I find they have no problem understanding my fluency in naughty and rude Hindi (I never learned any naughty and rude Tamil ,just "kuti po" which doesn't count)
It's absolutely amazing the number of things you can tell someone to do with a chicken in Hindi.
Maybe I'll start a thread......

Pity we have no smilies featuring chickens

I understand po,and that to use it with no suffix (affix? anyway, I mean bit at the end!) is disrespectful. Po! Po! Go! Go!

So I asked Mrs N about Kuti...

In Malayalam it just means child and is not rude at all.

In Tamil it is a disrespectful way of taking about a girl, as in low-class boys boys discussing a girl.

kalbarri · Oct 3rd, 2007, 20:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick-H

You may find the accent troublesome, but I was once told by a teacher that even a badly-educated Irishman has a better grasp of English grammar than most English people do.

Australians, now... I just want to know how they managed to discover five totally different vowels?

:

wu

ddayameen, nick??!!

global_yatri · Oct 11th, 2007, 04:07

hey - what's this about "kuti" being disrespectful in tamil? never heard it before like that... thought it just meant small or little one - sounds like a term of endearment, eh?

singsub · Oct 11th, 2007, 12:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by crvlvr

In India, sometimes it not the accent but the structure of sentences and analogies used that can be confusing.

yes indians by and large think out the sentences in their vernacular tongue and then convert it into english word for word, producing disastrous results.

dzibead · Oct 11th, 2007, 12:40

There used to be a Scottish sit-com called "Rab C. Nesbit" and the main character was an unemployed lout who lived near Glasgow. In one episode, Rab and family went to London for a holiday, and the show used subtitles ... when the English people were speaking!

In Yorkshire, people couldn't understand me.

And I was once trying to talk to some U.S. Federal govt bureaucrat on the phone and the guy had such a heavy Southern accent I could not understand a word he was saying. But we were all "native speakers" of English.

For me, what can make some Indians and some Irishmen hard to understand is that they both talk really, really FAST!

global_yatri · Oct 17th, 2007, 04:02

speaking of southern accents, i was at a high school in west tennessee, close to memphis, and everytime there would be an announcement over the intercom i swear i thought i was being asked to go somewhere

and the craziest part is how most of us pick up little quirks and accents after just a few months of living somewhere or with someone, right?!

yes, the really really fast part plus the whole thing with sentence structure and nuances like using words twice for emphasis - hot hot - please please -- yes yes - very very - you know what i mean, correct - correct?

Nick-H · Oct 17th, 2007, 04:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by kalbarri

wu

ddayameen, nick??!!

Meen... now, I know that one! Malayalee for fish.

Can't make out the rest of the sentence, though!

Rab C Nesbit... Loved it

Global_Yatri... only passing on Mrs N's info. A native-born Tamil speaker also fluent in Malayalee.

She speaks pretty good English too

! Though it can be Tamil English, with consistent 'misuse' of certain words such as telling me to keep something somewhere when I would say 'put' --- but she does think in English when speaking in English, so does not change the word order to match Tamil grammar, or make literal translations that don't really make English sense.

Which all makes my life much too easy for me, really!

Alohaguy · Oct 17th, 2007, 05:38

Imagine an Indian sitting in a classroom in Hawaii, subject is Business Law. That was me in 1978. My first month in USA. Trying to get used to american accent. Here comes a teacher who was a lady from Georgia on sabbatical. I couldn't understand a word from her mouth. Never thought I will make through this degree program

Somehow I did pass because the other teachers were mostly Yankees

dzibead · Oct 17th, 2007, 05:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alohaguy

Imagine an Indian sitting in a classroom in Hawaii, subject is Business Law. That was me in 1978. My first month in USA. Trying to get used to american accent. Here comes a teacher who was a lady from Georgia on sabbatical. I couldn't understand a word from her mouth. Never thought I will make through this degree program

Somehow I did pass because the other teachers were mostly Yankees

Yeah, the Federal bureaucrat I was talking to (post #20, above) was probably her son ...

the three b's · Oct 17th, 2007, 06:18

Some people just have a way with words.......

moo · Oct 17th, 2007, 06:37

Yay! What an excellent thread - and it confirms everything I ever thought about 'English' . . .

Back in the 1970/80's I used to visit Bradford quite a lot, the older people, of Pakistani decent, were easier to understand than their kids who had Bradford/Yorkshire accents (I lived about 30 miles from Bradford).

In India I found myself having to listen more intently to Israelis than local people even though the Israelis had a better grasp of English.

When I was a kid in school, we spent a few English lessons listening to recordings of local farmers made twenty years previously - I hardly understood a word.

A friend of mine moved to Holland for a number of years and wound up in a very 'provincial' area listening to the local people whose dialect made quite a lot of sense to a Yorkshireman even though he hardly spoke a word of Dutch!

English is WEIRD . . . . enjoy!

dzibead · Oct 17th, 2007, 06:57

In the mid-1980's there was a TV good series about the English language as it's spoken around the world. It was done by Robert MacNeil, who used to be a news commentator on American Public Television. It's described here:

http://ling.cornell.edu/teachling/AV/story.html

The videos are still available - I'm tempted to buy them, or DVDs if they're available.

PeakXV · Oct 17th, 2007, 07:48

Had an Egyptian Machines Prof in University from whom I could understand hardly a word, and complained to the Dean of Engineering .... to no avail - so gave up the lectures and taught it to myself.

In the same year, had an Indian Calculus Prof who had the clearest, most relaxed english of any teacher I ever had at anytime through my learning years. He kind of sounded like that Valmik Thapar - the tiger advocate fellow.

global_yatri · Oct 17th, 2007, 09:16

hey - what was that british show with an english teacher and a bunch of "foreigners" trying to learn english - pretty ridiculous and outlandishly funny... there was definitely an indian in the class.

rangss · Nov 21st, 2007, 00:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by incitatus

For some reason my Mother gets a lot of these "telemarketing" calls.The callers are invariably south Indian-she doesn't understand a word and oddly enough usually I don't either.

Neither do I!

Oct 17th, 2007, 05:38	#23
Alohaguy Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Hawaii and Japan Posts: 205	Southern accent !! Imagine an Indian sitting in a classroom in Hawaii, subject is Business Law. That was me in 1978. My first month in USA. Trying to get used to american accent. Here comes a teacher who was a lady from Georgia on sabbatical. I couldn't understand a word from her mouth. Never thought I will make through this degree program Somehow I did pass because the other teachers were mostly Yankees

Oct 17th, 2007, 06:18	#25
the three b's Member Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Northampton, U.K. Posts: 44	absolootlee Some people just have a way with words....... __________________ frequently bothered & bewildered, but totally.....

Oct 17th, 2007, 07:48	#28
PeakXV Naan.tering Nabob Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Abode of Glooscap Posts: 5,879	Had an Egyptian Machines Prof in University from whom I could understand hardly a word, and complained to the Dean of Engineering .... to no avail - so gave up the lectures and taught it to myself. In the same year, had an Indian Calculus Prof who had the clearest, most relaxed english of any teacher I ever had at anytime through my learning years. He kind of sounded like that Valmik Thapar - the tiger advocate fellow. __________________ What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

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Oct 11th, 2007, 04:07	#18
global_yatri fellow traveler Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: west coast Posts: 110	hey - what's this about "kuti" being disrespectful in tamil? never heard it before like that... thought it just meant small or little one - sounds like a term of endearment, eh?

Oct 11th, 2007, 12:40	#20
dzibead res ipsa loquitur Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Northern California Posts: 2,885	There used to be a Scottish sit-com called "Rab C. Nesbit" and the main character was an unemployed lout who lived near Glasgow. In one episode, Rab and family went to London for a holiday, and the show used subtitles ... when the English people were speaking! In Yorkshire, people couldn't understand me. And I was once trying to talk to some U.S. Federal govt bureaucrat on the phone and the guy had such a heavy Southern accent I could not understand a word he was saying. But we were all "native speakers" of English. For me, what can make some Indians and some Irishmen hard to understand is that they both talk really, really FAST!

Oct 17th, 2007, 04:02	#21
global_yatri fellow traveler Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: west coast Posts: 110	speaking of southern accents, i was at a high school in west tennessee, close to memphis, and everytime there would be an announcement over the intercom i swear i thought i was being asked to go somewhere and the craziest part is how most of us pick up little quirks and accents after just a few months of living somewhere or with someone, right?! yes, the really really fast part plus the whole thing with sentence structure and nuances like using words twice for emphasis - hot hot - please please -- yes yes - very very - you know what i mean, correct - correct?

Oct 17th, 2007, 06:37	#26
moo Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: original york Posts: 118	Yay! What an excellent thread - and it confirms everything I ever thought about 'English' . . . Back in the 1970/80's I used to visit Bradford quite a lot, the older people, of Pakistani decent, were easier to understand than their kids who had Bradford/Yorkshire accents (I lived about 30 miles from Bradford). In India I found myself having to listen more intently to Israelis than local people even though the Israelis had a better grasp of English. When I was a kid in school, we spent a few English lessons listening to recordings of local farmers made twenty years previously - I hardly understood a word. A friend of mine moved to Holland for a number of years and wound up in a very 'provincial' area listening to the local people whose dialect made quite a lot of sense to a Yorkshireman even though he hardly spoke a word of Dutch! English is WEIRD . . . . enjoy!

Oct 17th, 2007, 06:57	#27
dzibead res ipsa loquitur Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Northern California Posts: 2,885	In the mid-1980's there was a TV good series about the English language as it's spoken around the world. It was done by Robert MacNeil, who used to be a news commentator on American Public Television. It's described here: http://ling.cornell.edu/teachling/AV/story.html The videos are still available - I'm tempted to buy them, or DVDs if they're available.

Oct 17th, 2007, 09:16	#29
global_yatri fellow traveler Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: west coast Posts: 110	hey - what was that british show with an english teacher and a bunch of "foreigners" trying to learn english - pretty ridiculous and outlandishly funny... there was definitely an indian in the class.