top | item 44507462

(no title)

gulabjamuns | 7 months ago

We have a knack of placing only wherever we like, even at the beginning of a sentence.

Only we understand what the sentence means :)

"Only I'll do it tomorrow". "He only wanted milk."

discuss

order

signal11|7 months ago

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.