Namma Suvarna Karnataka
My blood is tested +ve for Java.
Regards,Vinny M.
proud Fan of European Champion CHELSEA FC
"If you don't see the bug where you're looking, perhaps you're looking in the wrong place" -James Gosling
Originally posted by Chetan Parekh:
We had a colleague whose name is Mayur, but they called them Majoor.
![]()
![]()
![]()
Originally posted by Jaya Nagar:
Just to know everybody that this ironic laughter and beer chug because Majoor means Subservient daily wage worker in India.
My blood is tested +ve for Java.
Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
This is a pet interest of mine: how non-English words are rendered into English, and why particular renderings are chosen. In particular, I wonder why they're often rendered into English in such a way that a native English speaker will pronounce them wrong, as is apparently the case here. If I read "Anantharaman Subbaraman", my pronunciation would, indeed, sound like "Anotherman Superman", or perhaps more like "Anotheraman Superaman". But for this joke to work, the real pronunciation must be radically different from this.
So my question is "Why spell it this way in English, if this isn't how it is pronounced?" Can you propose a better spelling, or somehow explain how it would otherwise be pronounced?
Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
It's true that English spelling is crazy, the main reason being that English is such a polyglot language -- it's been influenced by so many different things, in multiple waves over time -- especially multiple Romance languges and Germanic languages (Why is "J" is "Jose" pronounced "H"? Because it's a Spanish word.)
Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Although the things you've pointed out are very important, I suspect the most important thing here is syllable stress. We say "SOOperman", and I find that it's difficult to make SOOperman and SOOberman sound much different. On the other hand, I can say sooPERman and sooBERman so that they're fairly distinct. Where does the stress fall when you say it Subbaraman? Hindi sounds very lyrical to my ears, I think because cadence of accented syllables is different than in English. I think the Anantha/Another difference is similar: we say "aNUHther", and with the accent on the UH sound, that "n" may get lost.
Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
In American regional accents, there are letters that routinely disappear, and somehow Americans manage to understand each other -- like the classic "Boston accent" in which you "pahk" your "cah" in the "yahd," the letter "r" disappearing altogether when it's inside a word. There's a technical term for this although it escapes me right now.
Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
So my question is "Why spell it this way in English, if this isn't how it is pronounced?"
"I'm not back." - Bill Harding, Twister
Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
[Ram Bakt]: Hey, then your original question, "Why spell it this way in English, if this isn't how it is pronounced?" is probably more valid for Spanish than for Hindi. Because pronouncing H for J is totally illogical.
I disagree - Spanish spelling and pronunciation are very consistent. It's just that it's not the same as what is used in English.
[Ram]: In fact, I am also very surprised at the ability (or lack of thereof) of westerners reading a word (no matter how uncommon) and putting proper sounds to the letters.
Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
[b]
You should hear how you guys sound to Western ears.I kid, I kid... Mostly.
![]()
Originally posted by Ram Bhakt:
Some of the words are so freaking crazy I always forget how they are pronounced...panacea, panache, and first time I heard my boss saying Coupon ( Q Pon ) I couldn't understand what he was saying because in India we say coopun.
"I'm not back." - Bill Harding, Twister
Helping hands are much better than the praying lips
Ok on a lighter note...Can anyone say the difference between Superman and ordinary man..??
Warm Regards, S.Iyer
SCJP1.4, SCWCD1.4
Originally posted by Rambo Prasad:
Ok on a lighter note...Can anyone say the difference between Superman and ordinary man..??
An ordinary man wears his underwear inside his trouser, whereas superman wears it outside!!!
Originally posted by Rambo Prasad:
Ok on a lighter note...Can anyone say the difference between Superman and ordinary man..??
Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
[b
Back to Indian languages - I suspect that most of the logical regularity of the orthography comes from the fact that the mapping was performed recently, relatively speaking, and predominantly by a small group of people from one nation, Britain, with an interest in having a consistent orthography. See what happens after a thousand or more years of heavy interaction with many other countries using the same alphabet (but different rules) - particularly if India continues its rise in economic prominence.
It's probably also just luck that Indian languages didn't have too many phonemes that were vastly different from those in European languages. Compared to say Chinese, with many more variations of vowel sounds compared to Western languages. It's much harder for a Westerner to tell the pronounciation of a Chinese name from the way it's rendered in the Roman alphabet - the vowel sounds have too many subtleties unrecognized to most Westerners.