Re: about eclipse


Roedy Green wrote:
On 5 May 2006 05:17:57 -0700, "ramakrishna"
<ramakrishna.nelavalli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

sorry i didn't mean it.

This happens quite often when people from India post and people from
Europe respond. I wondered if anyone could shed light on the
linguistic differences that would account for this repeated friction.

Not to sound like the official spokesperson for India, but in many
cases, I have observed people "thinking" in their native tongue and
trying to literally replace english words for their native tongue
word-for-word.

Any request can be encoded with deference in many of the native tongues
without use of the word "please".

e.g. In tamil - "paadu" is asking someone to sing and "paadu-ngal" is
asking someone to sing - with respect encoded by the use of 'ngal' -
and if you noticed, the verb, "paadu" (to sing) is retained intact in
both situations.

Now if i had to replace word by word in english and ask someone to
sing, it would be "can you sing" as opposed to "can you please sing".

Having said all of the above, if people choose English as their primary
language of instruction (which can't be taken for granted), then the
teachers make sure to imbibe the need to use "please".


For example, is it sort of like if I were to speak French I would get
the genders all bolloxed because there are no genders assigned to
inanimate objects in English. Indian English is influenced by native
Indian languages.

Some of the Indian languages also have genders for inanimate things
e.g. Hindi - but Tamil does not.


Is it from the caste system, and Indians have an unconscious
assumption those they are addressing are of lower caste or there is a
convention that all foreigners belong to some caste.

This theory can be quite easily rejected as far-fetched, especially in
India-Europe equation :)

This seems
unlikely. When I went to India I was treated like visiting royalty. It
was embarrassing the amount of deference.


Good to know !


--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.

--
Arvind

.

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