What I’m learning from this thread is that there are at least as many ways of speaking English in India as there are in the UK. I’d noticed this with pronunciation (one colleague propels P and T sounds with explosive force, but none of the other Indians I work with do this), but I hadn’t picked up on grammar and vocabulary differences.
This is a feature of many Indian languages. Word order doesn’t matter or doesn’t matter as much.
गाय वह चऱायेगा, वह गाय चऱायेगा, चऱायेगा वह गाय all mean “he will take the cow out to graze” irrespective of word order, but of course there can be subtle shifts in meaning. (Apologies for any typos / potentially bad translation). Eg चऱायेगा वह गाय could be “he WILL graze the cow” if vocal stress is applied to चऱायेगा.
A lot of “Indian English” traits make more sense if one understands a few Indic languages. Southern Indic languages have their own super interesting traits as well, eg Tamil speakers often insert “simply” into sentences, this reflects usage in Tamil.
never_inline|7 months ago
sevensor|7 months ago
gulabjamuns|7 months ago
Only we understand what the sentence means :)
"Only I'll do it tomorrow". "He only wanted milk."
signal11|7 months ago
गाय वह चऱायेगा, वह गाय चऱायेगा, चऱायेगा वह गाय all mean “he will take the cow out to graze” irrespective of word order, but of course there can be subtle shifts in meaning. (Apologies for any typos / potentially bad translation). Eg चऱायेगा वह गाय could be “he WILL graze the cow” if vocal stress is applied to चऱायेगा.
A lot of “Indian English” traits make more sense if one understands a few Indic languages. Southern Indic languages have their own super interesting traits as well, eg Tamil speakers often insert “simply” into sentences, this reflects usage in Tamil.