Saturday, February 12, 2011

The Curious case of the missing “R”

Indians have adopted English as their own and have attached various notions around it. You are “Educated” & “Classy” if and only if you “tippy tongue” your way while speaking it. English has various local influences depending on the Region whether it is “How are you doing, Yaar ?” to “Eeendeeiyaa is my country” with “Yemmu”, “Hecchoo” replacing M & H respectively. It is hilarious as to how this Indinglish has evolved. The most comical one is the main focus this article. Quiz time, folks.

Let us see how many of you can identify the below:

1. Badae
2. Mo Kaa pa Kaa
3. Kantaavesee
4. “Thae maeku payuva kaattyu”
5. Ayan
6. Veekaa
7. Equaiya


Give up ? The answes are….

1. Birthday
2. More car per car
3. Controversy
4. “Then Maerku paruva Kaatru” (தென் மேற்கு பருவ காற்று == south west monsoon in Tamil) an NDTV Hindu anchor who is a tamil girl was trying to fit into the Indinglish scheme of pronunciation and ended up with this. But at the same time has no problem pronouncing all French names with all the native nuances in the same program :-(
5. Iron
6. Weaker
7. Require

Notice a pattern, somehow, in Indinglish if you pronounce the R in all its glory then your English is not correct! Tearing your hair out, well unless you are a “native” in this language you will not get it when spoken to by folks, especially the women folk seem to be well adept at this tippy tongue language during their college days. It is hilarious and sometimes the effort required to match the local pronunciation with the actual word requires lot of thought !!!

I would be curious to understand the basis for this “R” less English pronunciation; it certainly makes my life colorful. I will leave it at that.

2 comments:

  1. I havent been reading your posts lately, but pretty much got to all of them this hour! This one is hilarious! I can't stop laughing......

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  2. Veekaa and Ayan all sound very African actually. Wonder if you had the opportunity to go to SA and hear the locals.

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