An obsession with correcting other people’s pronunciation, especially words of foreign origin, is a favourite hunting game of a certain kind of Indian. The usual vibrations that this produces became a loud buzz recently when renowned academic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and a student at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University engaged in a stand-off over the name of American sociologist W.E.B. Check …
A few days ago, I saw a video of Austrian-American actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about hiring an accent removal coach at the start of his career to eliminate his thick Austrian accent. During The Graham Norton Show, when the host praised Schwarzenegger for his accent, Schwarzenegger quipped, “Yeah, after 5,000 years.” When I shared the video in a …
Pronunciation transcriptions and audio for more than 800 entries associated with Indian English, including words like ‘desh’, ‘bachcha’, ‘diya’, ‘almirah’ and ‘bindaas’, are now available in the Oxford English Dictionary. This most recent addition to the World English pronunciation audio archive fills a large gap for the 130 million Indian English speakers in India. I am delighted that we have …
Indian internet users might have noticed a new feature Google added to its website last year. Every time you look up the pronunciation of a word, Google gives three options: one in British, one in American and one in Indian English. That’s in the realm of research right now.” Google says their reasons for doing this is to promote language …
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