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I've noticed people from the Indian subcontinent tend to be a lot more sarcastic than Americans. I wonder if it is a relic of the British colonization.
by bdhe 16y ago
I've noticed people from the Indian subcontinent tend to be a lot more sarcastic than Americans. I wonder if it is a relic of the British colonization.
- FraaJad 16y agoDefinitely not. They were not here long enough and did not interact with enough people to have that influence. Most of the sarcastic comments, the tone and the nature of sarcasm does not even parse for a westerner. In fact you will see a lot of Indian language sarcasm directly "translated" to English leading to hilarious situations. British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing every god-damned thing about India to the "British Influence".
- bdhe 16y ago> British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing every god-damned thing about India to the "British Influence". My bad. I just wondered, considering that British humour is a lot dryer than American humour. I apologize if my comment was misconstrued in anyway.
- FraaJad 16y agoSorry for being a little harsh there. At the height of British occupation , there were not more than 1700(!) British people at the same time on the Indian subcontinent. Which itself is a fantastic testament to the British Raj's bureaucratic machinery. The English education was an instrument in creating that machinery.
- arethuza 16y agoThat's a surprisingly low number - the Wikipedia page on the Raj gives a count of 125,945 Britains in India in 1861 of which 84,083 were in the Army. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj
- FraaJad 16y agothanks for the citation. I had a feeling that 1700 was too low a number.
- known 16y agoSarcasm and hypocrisy are inbuilt by birth in https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Caste_system_in_India https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Caste_system_...