Title: Indian English
1Indian English
2General features
- - Indian English oder South Asian English
comprises several dialects. These dialects
evolved during and after the period when Britian
exercised colonial rule over India. - -English is one of the official languages of
India, fewer than a quarter of a million people
speak English as their first language, other
speakers use it as a second or third language
after their indigenous Indian language(s)
3Phonological features
- - The form of English that Indians and all
- the other people of the subcontinent are taught
in schools is essentially British English. A
socially-superior accent is deemed to be that of
Received Pronounciation.
4-Because of the growing influence of American
culture in recent decades, certain elements of
American slang are now used by some Indians,
especially younger ones. American-English
spellings are also widely used in scientific and
technical publications, while British-English
spellings are used in other media.
5 -many speakers do not differentiate between the
vowel sounds /?/ (as in "dress") and /æ/ (as in
lttrapgt), except in cases where a minimal pair
such as ltbedgt/ltbadgt exists in the vocabulary of
the speaker. - When a long vowel is followed by
"r", speakers of Indian English usually use a
monophthong, instead of the diphthong used in
almost all other accents. Thus "period" is
pronounced pir??d instead of p?????d.
6- Indian English often uses strong vowels where
other accents would have unstressed syllables or
words. Thus "cottage" may be pronounced k?ted?
rather than k?t?d?. - Continuing the above
point, the indefinite article ltagt is often
pronounced by many Indian English speakers as
e?, irrespective of whether it is stressed or
unstressed. In native varieties of English, ltagt
is pronounced as ? when unstressed and as e?
when stressed
7- Many Indian English speakers do not make a
clear distinction between /?/ and /??/. -
Because of the previous characteristic many
Indians pronounce words such as ltflowergt as
fla?(r) instead of fla??(r), and ltourgt as
a?(r) instead of a??(r). -Sometimes, Indian
speakers interchange /s/ and /z/, especially when
plurals are being formed. --gttree/z/
8Syntactic Features
- Progressive tense in stative verbs
- They might say I am liking it very much.Instead
of I like it very much. - Incorrect Tag questions
- They might say They did it, no? / He is here,
isnt it?/ She closed the door, did she?Instead
of They did it, didnt they? / He is here, isnt
he?/ She closed the door, didnt she?
9Word order variations They might say My all
closets are empty.Instead of My closets are all
empty. They might say He does this
always.Instead of He always does this.
10Omission of the definite article e.g. "Let's go
to city" instead of "Let's go to the city" Use
of "told" instead of "said". An example would be
"Ravi told he is going home" instead of "Ravi
said he is going home" or "Ravi told me he is
going home".
11Pindrop silence! - Teachers in schools may say
this to the kids. "Hotel" means "restaurant" in
India "I ate in the hotel". "Lodge" is used to
refer to small hotels. So "Lodge" refers to a
place where you stay and "Hotel" refers to a
place where you eat. "Kindly" used to mean
"please" "Kindly disregard the previous
message".
12The word "healthy" is used as an euphemism for
fat -gt "His build is on the healthy side" refers
to a overweight person. Use of "reduce" means
"to lose weight" as in "I need to reduce!"