Is there a word for the feeling of costantly being watched? I feel like I am constantly being watched, but this person, or thing, only exists in my mind. It's like some sort of demon. I can describe it, but I don't know how I know what he/it looks like. What I do know is that it's a black, smokey...
@Robusto You say "Possibly one of the worst crimes Britain perpetrated on the world was to give English to the subcontinent." I couldn’t reply to that comment yesterday because I couldn’t think of a good response at the moment. But sine you have pasted that comment numerous times in chat here, and now, it is directed at me I thought I’d say a thing or two about it.
People from other nationalities speak English too with different accents. So maybe you are saying that because you interact with people from subcontinent on Skype more than from other nationalities? Or is it because British ruled the Subcontinent? Which has nothing to do our accent I believe. Enlighten me if I’m missing the point of that comment. Even if you said that in an “affectionate” way it is kind of mocking in an indirect way if not directly snide. Just saying.
I mean what if I said something like “What I find highly annoying about US is it meddles in the affairs of Arab countries and then later, try to play righteous, and beat muslims for their own agendas.”? It is not a language related example but still a comment that has a dog whistle in it and could rile up people from US here (like you) and rustle your jimmies. In short if I made that comment it would have no point other than to jerk off in chat.
I think the point is that Indian English, which is just as valid and respectable as any other dialect of English like AmE or BrE, happens to sound very strange to those of us coming from different dialects.
There are certain constructs common to InE that just seem really, really odd to the rest of us so we find them shocking when we come across them.
That doesn't make them "wrong", of course, just odd to me.
Yeah I see your point. But I thought this was the context: "I hated Skype calls to the subcontinent, where you're online with 15 strange accents that all sound the same."
But that's when Rob pasted that comment the second time.
@englishstudent Yes, again, not as polite as it could be, true.
On the other hand, it is also true that speaking to people with strong accents very different to your own does make it hard to understand.
I know I have trouble understanding my Indian colleague over the phone, for example. It's fine when talking in person.
And his English is almost native and he lives in the US so his accent's been watered down.
You just need time to get used to new accents. it can be difficult.
There are many British accents that are very hard to understand, for instance. I can think of two or three that are simply incomprehensible and sound like gibberish to me.
@englishstudent It was intended as a joke, a bit of hyperbolic humor. And, as @terdon said, I would agree with your other statement. Sorry if I offended you.
For the record, non-video Skype "meetings" (scrums, in the "agile" parlance of our time) with multiple faceless individuals half a world away, who all speak in a heavily accented version of English, was for me an impossible situation from which to derive any benefit. The best take on it that I could muster was that it was funny, and so I went with that.
@terdon Strange would be fine. My problem was with incomprehensible.
I've worked with other nationalities all speaking a form of "strange" (to me) English: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and even dialectical Brits, Aussies, Afrikaners, and Irish, and found them out of my sphere but comprehensible. The worst were (when speaking English) Chinese, Japanese, and Indian, in that order.
I don't have anything against these people or their countries. I just find them very difficult to understand, especially in a business setting.
Note that some of the best programmers I've ever worked with were Indian. Also some of the worst.
How many Indians speak English as a native language? A small proportion, I think. It's kind of a native speaker's prerogative to evaluate or comment on the usage of those who speak his language as a second language.
(However, I agree that that joke could have been phrased more considerately.)
As it happens, English was not the only language that was forcibly conferred to the subcontinent.
> For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent, due to the admiration the Mughals (who were of Turco-Mongol origin) had for the foreign language. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent.
@Færd Yes, I know that. I also know about the Battle of Plassy, the Sepoy Mutiny, and the rest of the depredations that John Company (a/k/a the British East India Company) perpetrated on the subcontinent. The hyperbole in my joke was in conflating something manifestly harmless (and possibly even beneficial) with all of that other stuff.
I never really understood the big todo over the read-eval-print loop because..well.. isn't that just a command line interface? Like what's the big deal?
except I'm sure at the beginning with punch cards and toggle switches and core ram actually made out of a mesh of magnets that it was a pretty wild idea.
Like feet.
Bear with me.
you don't really notice your feet because they just are
but before there were feet everybody was wondering how do get around. Hop on your knees? roll down hill? None of those are particularly comfortable.
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…