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
[-] Vanshaj@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago

I'm not an expert on this, and I'm not trying to sound I know everything, but I'm an Indian and have spent 20 years of my life speaking Hindi, which is one of the widely known and spoken language in India, especially in North India. I think this is related to how the language is structured and the way consonants and vowels are used in the "Lipi" (I wasn't able to find an English word for it, but you think of it as the set of symbols with which the language is written.) of Indian languages. The Lipi for Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Maithli and many other languages is Devnagari. And It has a somewhat complex structure to it, more complex than English. Like English has 5 vowels and are used directly in the middle of consonants. But in Devnagari, you can see there are traditionally 13 vowels and every vowel can be used independently or dependently in a word, which means you can have a vowel appended or pretended to each consonant, and that will produce a different sound. A kid in India in his early age is taught to identify each of that sound and he uses all that early knowledge and learning, all his life when he talks. This allows him to create and follow different sound patterns and makes his speech continuous and flow-full, which I think you're referring to as being fast. I find other languages like Mandarin has a similar structure, and makes me learn about them even more.

[-] baatliwala@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Lipi is basically alphabet bhai (or written script)

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

well correction English has 20 vowels, depending on dialect

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Vowel has 2 definitions that conflict.

One definition is the letters 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', and 'u' (and sometimes 'y'). The other is the speech sound without any blockage or constricting of the vocal tract. Vowel letters are used in written English to indicate vowel sounds, but because English is a pain in the ass, there's no 1 to 1 match between the 5(ish) vowel letters and the 20+ vowel sounds.

[-] Vanshaj@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

As I said I don't know much about the topic, I presented my thoughts.

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

I think the guy you responded to was making a joke about how some native English speakers talk

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

No, they were pointing out that, even though English doesn't use a separate symbol for each phonemic vowel sound, there are 20 distinct vowel phonemes in the language.

If we gave each its own letter, there would be 20 lettered vowels in English. Which would probably make English easier to learn.

This is why "bay," "bat," and "bar" have completely different vowel sounds even though it's the same letter. And you just have to "know" the difference because there is no separate vowel to distinguish them.

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

No Stupid Questions

35706 readers
3715 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