218
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by someguy3@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

Do they just speak faster? Do the Indian words/pronunciation flow better/faster than English does? And they are simply trying to match the cadence?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Well I don't know enough to differentiate "that's a Sanskrit accent" and "that's a Hindi accent" etc.

I think British English put more and longer emphasis on vowels. It's almost like they speak in vowels only. Compared to Canadian English, Indian accents are still fast.

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The key here is that you'll probably find the exact same "oddity" among speakers of other languages, even outside India.

I think British English put more and longer emphasis on vowels. It’s almost like they speak in vowels only. Compared to Canadian English, Indian accents are still fast.

I feel like you might have unearthed something interesting here.

The English varieties spoken in those countries like Canada, Belize, USA, Jamaica, etc. had plenty recent interaction with multiple other languages; specially Canada with French and Belize with Spanish. On the other hand, what people usually call "British English" is mostly Standard Southern British (up/middle class, around London), a bit too far away from any meaningful linguistic influence.

So I'm wondering if the two patterns aren't actually the same pattern. I'm just hypothesising though, this might be incorrect.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Well British English is soft like many European languages. I remember listening to a video on sounds of different languages and was surprised that British English sounded so similarly soft as other European languages.

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

The problem is that Indian languages belong to three or four language families. In contrast, all European languages (except Basque, Hungarian and Finnish) belong to one language family.

Put another way, Hindi, Sanskrit and English are more similar to each other (all Indo-European) than any of them are to Ladakhi (Sino-Tibetan), Munda (Austroasiatic) or Tamil (Dravidian).

When an Indian speaks English as a second language, it will be influenced by their first language. But the effect of Punjabi would be quite different from that of Telegu, which in turn would be quite different from that of Zo.

[-] MrsDoyle@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

You haven't met the man from Strabane, have you? https://youtu.be/XhGbpatmplQ?feature=shared

this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
218 points (99.1% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35868 readers
345 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS