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After listening to about 10 clips your point becomes abundantly clear. One speaker, who sounded like they were from the mid-west United States, was dropping th
by cptskippy 5y ago
After listening to about 10 clips your point becomes abundantly clear.
One speaker, who sounded like they were from the mid-west United States, was dropping the S off words in a couple clips. I wasn't sure if it was misreads or some accent I'd never heard.
Another speaker, with a thick accent that sounded European, sounded out all the vowels in circuit. Had I not had the line being read, I don't think I'd have understood the word.
I heard a speaker with an Indian accent who added a preposition to the sentence that was inconsequential but incorrect none the less.
I hear these random prepositions added as flourishes frequently with some Indian coworkers, does anyone know the a reason? It's kind of like how American's interject "Umm..." or drop prepositions (e.g. "Are you done your meal?") and I almost didn't pick up on it. For that matter where did the American habit of dropping prepositions come from? It seems like it's people in the North East primarily.
- OJFord 5y agoI can't quite imagine superfluous prepositions (could you give an example?) but I have found it slightly amusing learning Hindi and coming across things where I think Oh! That's why you sometimes hear X from Indian English speakers, it's just a slightly 'too' literal¹ mapping from Hindi, or trying to use a grammatical construction that doesn't really exist in English, like 'topic marking'. [¹] If that's even fair given it's a dialect in its own right - Americans also say things differently than I would as a 'Britisher'
- batch12 5y agoAre you talking about phrases like "please do the needful"?
- OJFord 5y agoThat's not one I've heard. Examples that come to mind are 'even I' (which seems closer to 'I too' than the 'you'd scarcely believe it but I' that it naturally sounds to me), 'he himself' (or similar subject emphasis), and adverb repetition. I'd say it's mostly subtler (I suppose that should be the expected distribution!) things I've noticed though, they're just harder to recall as a result. (Just want to emphasise I'm not making fun of anybody or saying anything's wrong, in case it's not clear in text. I'm just enjoying learning Hindi, fairly interested in language generally, and interested/amused to notice these things.)
- OJFord 5y agoJust thought of another - '[something is] very less' - which comes, presumably, from कम being used for both little/few and less than. Hindi is much more economical, to put it literally, one says things like 'than/from/compared to orange, lemon is sour', and 'orange is little/less [without comparison] sour'. Which, I believe, is what gives rise to InE sentences like 'the salt in this is very less' (it needs more salt, there's very little).
- batch12 5y agoI have never heard that example. Maybe it is regional. I have heard, "you done?" as an example.