How to understand an Indian accent? - 5 things you didn't know about: Indian English and dialects
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- How to understand an Indian accent? - tips for people to understand the Indian accent better
If you are one of those who finds a really hard time understanding your Indian colleagues and friends then you've come to the right place!
This video will help you to know some differences in accent and dialects so that you can understand Indians better the next time.
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There's finally an Indian people admitted their accent problems and explained how to understand the Indian English. Thank you.
Now you see how desperate I am when I literally search the topic
I search this because I am an intern and cannot understand what my mentor say every day in the past two weeks😂
Not only accent is hard to understand, they also speak too fast for me to catch... hope I'll get use to it
4 real, i just started in my job 2 weeks ago but sometimes is really hard understand what they are trying to explain, sometimes the noise in the background is really annoying too
I’m going through it now,In my field I really need to improve understanding
@@TallShawnNetwork you studying cs right, yeah me too
your accent sounds like a combination of every accent
Don't know about the accent but I use British pronunciation. 😀
Thank you very much for this. It’s incredibly difficult to admit you have trouble understanding someone because you lack enough exposure to their accent-especially in a business and social setting.
I just happened to make friends with someone in India online and am looking to better understand their accent so we can voice chat more often.
Thank you very much for these individual examples. If you made second video, I’d appreciate if you could translate the pronunciations from a conversation/sentence level instead of individual word level
Glad you found it useful, will definitely try to make another detailed video soon. Thanks 🙏🏽
I think South Indians tend to have a clear and understandable way of speaking, whereas the North Indian accent, particularly from regions like Punjab or Uttar Pradesh, can be more challenging to interpret.
South and North India have many different states, the dialect is mostly different in every state.
Im having so much difficulty in translating English-speaking Indian colleagues all around the world for the project I am helping to run now..
It's just... they are brilliant and Intelligent individuals and the most painful part is when people, including me, do not fully understand what they just said
even though it is quite important and helpful to the project.
I probably would be able to understand them fully If I worked with those guys many years however It is extremley difficult to understand
considering I worked with them for like a month.
I am sure you will get used to them after having interaction with them for some time.
Hey, three months later, did you get used?
hey 1 year later, did you get used?
It isn't that hard. I too couldn't understand Americans the first time i interacted with them. I got used to it after a while.
The Indian accent/english dialect is very beautiful, and i love listening to it! But i always feel terrible because it is admittedly difficult to understand 😅
Thank you for this. I have always struggled to understand the Indian accent, and I always feel bad when I spend so much of my energy trying to process the words they're saying that I can't focus on the meaning of what they're saying. I think I just need to listen and practice more instead of just getting frustrated with myself. This helps though to start paying attention to sounds and recognize what is being said.
Thanks for sharing!!
Very useful, thanks for sharing!
Very useful! Thank you
This is super helpful! Thank you so much!
This is so helpful. Thank you
Helpful. Thanks 🎉
Wow! this explanations were great, very helpful
Thank you so much! I have to deal with Indian students at different universities and often struggle to understand them. This was very helpful. I'll try to get more information in order to understand them even better.
It's really helpfull,
Thank you. What was I looking for to better understand our lovely Indian brothers and sisters.
Definitely nailed it. American here. These issues you discussed are certainly challenging to my ears. Additionally, similar to your point about literal pronunciations, I find Indian speakers also will sometimes place the emphasis of a word in a different place, such as CER-ti-fi-cate, whereas I would say cer-TI-fi-cate. String enough of those together, and I honestly get lost. Another to add is pronouncing “V” and “W” identically. In most English variations around the world, the “v” is fricative, like a vocalized “f” where the top teeth are placed on the bottom lip before aspiration. I will often notice, however, that Indian speakers pronounce this like a “w”, with mouth partially opened, no contact of lips or teeth.
Chinese did same because we can't here the difference
This video is very helpful. I'm pleased to see you've broken down the differences in pronunciation by sound. Just an aside, you will help your own pronunciation if you can improve your "V" sounds.
The lack of aspirated consonants is extremely confusing. In English there are two different consonants made with the mouth in the same way, but one is aspirated and one is not: P and B, T and D, K and G. If you don't aspirate those letter sounds you change the word sounds from Tiger to Dyger, from Cat to Gat and from Pen to Ben. These are very confusing pronunciation changes for American English speakers to understand because they sound exactly like different sounds that are a part of standard English. Words like Ten and Den, Pack and Back, Cut and Gut are all normal English words that only differ in whether or not you aspirate the initial consonant. If you don't aspirate the consonant you are literally saying a different word.
JUST a correction, you are confusing better sound aspiration and voicing of a sound. Aspiration of the sound 'p' is 'ph' and voicing of the sound 'p' is 'b'.
P vs B, k vs g, t vs d... Etc are all voiceless and voiced sounds respectively. The difference between them is not in aspiration, but it's voicing of the sound.
Eg: Pen is voiceless and Ben is voiced. And majority of the Indians don't mixup p,b or k,g or t,d. That's wrong.
The only mixup Indians have in terms of sound is v vs w, as there are no separate letters and so people generally can't distinguish between those sounds. But that doesn't change the meaning as the word is still understood pretty easily and replacing v with w won't change the meaning as well. And of course the aspiration is one thing we don't do, as the spelling doesn't have any aspiration and we don't aspirate until it is necessary for the meaning of a word or the word contains a 'h'.
The aspiration of the sound is p vs ph, k vs kh etc... and That we Indians don't aspirate especially because in Indian languages we have both separate letters aspirated and nonaspirated, and so we only use aspirated sound where it's necessary like thousand, thunder, etc. and since Indian languages are phonetic, we only pronounce sounds based on the spelling and thus we don't aspirate if there is no 'h' in the spelling.
Of course there are some languages like Tamil, Malayalam, who don't have different letters for voiced and voiceless sounds, and thus those people might even mixup k,g or p,b or t,d or etc...
For indians the phonetics and the phonemes of it is more important than stress, intonation and aspiration. As long as the similar phonetic sound is produced we understand the words pretty easily. Of course people belonging to languages lacking few sound distinctions like Bengali, Odiya (v vs b), Tamizh, Malayalam (voiced vs voiceless), and other peculiar traits of people speaking different languages will actually change the phonetics of it which needs some learning curve and exposure.
You are correct, cheers mate
Thanks so much this video has really helped me understand more about the differences between the accents 👍
Thank you! My Indian coworkers are highly intelligent & cordial but sometimes difficult to understand. Now I’m better able to work with them.
Wow! I feel relieved. There are so many people who don't understand Indian people when they speak English. I thought it was just me.
Thank you for your video, it helps me a lot.
Not at all! 🌹
the thing is that accent is part of the language, and when we are learning a new language we use the sounds of our native language to approach the sounds we listen from the language in learning, which are also different to what we are listening because our natural neural networks (brains) have been trained differently through the dataset of our native language.
Example, in Spanish we have what the Linguists call the Standard 5 vowel system in all Spanish dialects, this is pretty consistent, In English they have from 18 to 22 vowels depending on the dialect. For me, every vowel in English sounds like a combo of those 5 vowels, after decades of listening to English as an adult I can identify them but not reproduce them accurately when speaking.
What we call accent is part of the Phonology of the language
Good bro!
This is genius, It helped a lot, Thank you
Very nice video. I enjoyed it a lot. In my opinion, South Indians are harder to understand sometimes because of retroflex sounds that they inherit from local languages. Aside from that, I had a singing teacher from Kolkata and she always pronounced whednesday as whed nes day, that is, as it is written.
I find Indian accents very melodious, beautiful and even attractive.
Keep up with your amazing work.
Hello from Latvia
great video thank you for the help. If you make another one I think that it could be helpful if you included a caption of each word you're saying.
Glad you liked it. There's another video on some common Indians phrases and words. Do check it out too.
good video
Hey! Thanks for the video, I really wanna understand the Indian accent and this video is quite helpful!
Glad you found it useful 🙏🏽
Thank you so much! I have a presentation about Indian English compares with British English and this video help me understand it very much 😭🙏🏻🙏🏻
Very helpful video. I am an EFL teacher teaching Japanese consultants dealing with Indian clients and your video is great. Just what I was looking for. Thank you, much appreciated!
That's great! Glad you found it useful.
Yes indian ppl have different accent..
My first encounter with spoken English in Indian accent when I was in senior high school. Initially I couldn't catch what my biology teacher was saying because she pronounced the word "yellow" as "ellow", the letter "a" became "yay" and "blood vessels" became "bloody cells". I only knew the words when she wrote them on the blackboard. Later, I was told that the biology ,teacher was an Indian native, originated from Tamil Nadu and graduated from University of Madras.
That is the typical way tamil speakers pronounce English words ellow for yellow etc. it’s the limitation of Tamil
Thank you. My family is latina and they have accents but it's hard for me to understand Indian accents. Thank you for this.
Anytime 🌹
I think cadence is also important.
Wow, the P,T,K aspirations thing is the hardest part for me. I never understand those word when its spoke in indian accent. BTW, you are the first indian accent speaker that i had no problem in understanding any word you have said.
Aspiration is not common with non Native speakers of English, it's just people are not much familiar with listening to a particular accent or dialect
Hey, thanks a bunch for the video. I think exposure is key when it comes to understanding a specific dialect and that's why it's hard sometimes, it's just something new for us! I've wanted to get exposed to Indian English accents for some time now, but I haven't found any podcasts or something like that. Do you have any recommendations?😅 (Apart from watching Indian movies, Lol)
Well, many Indian English news channel. Good to get some information and get used to the dialect too.
I agree about exposure. As a native speaker of Canadian English I understood every word spoken in this video but I still struggle to understand many Indian English speakers. I need more practice.
@@RishuVlogCan you recommend any?
@@donwald3436 Wion news channel - However you won't hear a typical Indian accent. To hear a typical Indian accent check Indian news channel - Times of India. There are also many famous Indian comedians - Vir Das, AIB, etc
@@RishuVlogHmm, too much silence/music from Times of India, I understand every word Vir Das says in a few of his videos and I understand everything in yt/ApBJomjEsUs (from AIB) that I think was in English. What am I missing?
I’m interested to know if their is a polite/non-offensive way to tell someone you don’t understand their accent. I am currently in training and the person who is breaking down scenario requirements speaks very fast, mono tone without breaks and uses “you know” in place of “um” and it’s really hard for everyone in the training process what he’s saying.
One of the first things we talked about in our training was about unconscious biases and micro-aggressions - so no one is comfortable telling them they are hard to understand.
Well, it's definitely not polite to say that his accent is bad. But we should definitely tell a person to speak a bit slowly so we can understand him better. The person won't realize until you mention it, the accent is something he can't change so we should not say anything about the accent but a slow speech is atleast a more intelligible even with a bad accent.
Yes indian ppl have different accents.. depends on their geography
As good as you English is, it seems you also have a problem distinguishing V from W.
It's an old video and I agree that in the video the distinction was not clear at times during the recording.
Fantastic video! But missing one important variation: th -> t. They'll pronounce "think" as "tink", "thing" as "ting", and so on... I've already got used to that...
Most good Indian English speakers pronounce th sound well since in their local language th sound do exist. But u r right, there are a few who pronounce th sound incorrectly.
I often visit a coffee place owned by Indian folks and I love that crew to death but I have such a hard time understanding the one I interact with the most 😭 Thank you for posting this to help us!
Very helpful lesson. I'm worried about the meeting tomorrow with Indian clients. Hope you can join the meeting.😇
😀. Good luck with that! I would join if were your Indian client, now deal with them. 😜
Very helpful video, thank you. Having worked with Indian people in the tech industry for 15 years, I only have difficulties with a small handful of Indian men here and there. For some reason, Indian women don't do this. Example, rather than saying December they say Decmdrr, Technology = Tekknngy, Transportation = Trrasptn. Whole sections of the words are left out and slurred together into a flowing sound with no pausing in between.
That's weird because Indians usually tend to pronounce each and every syllable in a word. Perhaps they belonged to a certain part of India.
the number 8 please?
That became a bottleneck in IT related hiring processes. Every interview goes perfectly fine, until the final technical one made in indian English. That is devastating. I believe only other Indians or maybe native English speakers could do well on these, even the technical part itself being easy.
Thank you, very good explanations. I am a 73 YO American guy who has studied 11 foreign languages, so I have a very good ear for sounds. Also my hearing itself is fine. I have a very hard time understanding some Indians, whether because of their specific strong Indian accent or they are talking too fast for me to "translate" into American English. Also when they are talking quickly, it is a very staccato sound, which I compare to the feeling of driving over railroad ties. This is unpleasant to my ears. If Indians are using a British English accent, or they are very fluent and don't talk too quickly, no problems though.
The non-aspiration is a good clue. that really makes a difference, as English is aspirated. The pronunciations of specific letters that you demonstrated is usually not that much of a problem for me; I can most often figure out what they mean.
glad you found it useful
Thank you for the video
I came here after miss hearing my boss, I thought he said for load but he was saying fallout
I work with 50 million plus people from all across the world and as a native English speaker it's interesting I didn't understand certain words just because of the pronunciation of a letter and sometimes you can feel lost but after about 3 weeks my brain started understanding their accent.
The issue in my experience is the difference pronunciation of words and this can sometimes make you feel lost at sometimes
When I started travelling and talking with people from different country, I started to understand them gradually, it's about the exposure to different dialects and accent and it takes time to get accustomed to them.
So helpful 😂 I really want to easily understand my Indian teammate saying
Good luck with that! 🤞
It is crazy to notice that many things are similar to the Italian accent :D
It depends on the first language one speaks. I suppose the sounds in both Italian and Indian languages are almost the same.
I know different accents are okay but I just want to understand it.
I just wanted to know if it is really that hard to learn "real" English accent for an English learner? I am a Canadian and I've seen some international students from asia with almost perfect accent (Friendly, just asking a question)
It's called MTI- mother tongue influence. Ask yourself a question, you have been speaking English with a Canadian accent all your life, can you switch it to a complete British accent? It's not impossible for some people to do it but one can't get rid of its MTI easily.
@@RishuVlog thanks for telling me this
can you answer md something? why do you use like "na??" after a sentence? Like "you know" or "understand"?
These are some fillers and catchphrases that are influenced by the local language they speak.
I think the not distinguishing between sh and s might be Assamese accent(northeast), I have seen mostly older generation not being able to distinguish S, Sh and Ch sounds. They all end up as S, the most stereotypical is pronouncing Chicken as Sicken.
Yes, but in North some people also pronounce both sounds same due to the dialect.
@@RishuVlog oh, I see
It's all the little changes that makes it litterally impossible to understand some indian accents
Are there any movies or TV shows available on a streaming service like Netflix, where captions are available, that would help me (American English speaker) get better at understanding Indian accents?
A lot. Some Indian movies: Hotel Mumbai, The White tiger, Slumdog millionaire, English Vinglish, Queen. Series: The Family Man, Special Ops.
your video deserve more view than 730
To me, it sounds like EVERY letter is rolled. I usually have to have my them spell the word, phonetically, very slowly. J as in Jack, E as in Edward, etc If they're giving me numbers I have them tell me each number one by one very slowly and then I repeat the numbers back to them very very slowly. American born and bred here. This is the hardest accent in the entire world to understand in my opinion.
Most of the IT people come from the Southern part of India. Believe it or not, even North Indians sometimes find it difficult to understand them but it's all about getting familiar with the sounds and dialects.
Greetings from Brazil...
Karina brought me here
Hi, teacher!!!
Thanks! Hope you found the video useful. ❤️
@@RishuVlog it was extremely useful... thanks to you
you didn't say about far back tongue (T / D) sounds. they are very indian specific.
I am not quite sure what sounds you are mentioning. I did mention the T sound which is different in an Indian accent.
@@RishuVlog no, i meen when the south indian people put there tongue very very back and pronounce (t) sound.
for example there are 2 t sounds in tamil i think.
@@denizsincar29 yes, but the other T sound is often used in the words with Voiceless Th sound such as thank you, thing; which is not so different from the English Th sound.
How would you pronounce Punjab, Partha sarathi Sharma? Can you help me?
Pun-jaab, Puh-raatha, Saa-ruh-thi Shar-maa (no aspiration for P sound)
Good attempt. One of the famous English cricket commentators , John Arlott pronounced the name as Paraatha Sarathi Sharma.
Shaarma.
What about Anantha Padmanabhan?
@@arajendranrajendran7133 Foreign people are not familiar with the Indian names like how Indian people are not familiar with foreign names.
cmon where is the T sounds :D i mean D, dond dell me what do do
D=T that’s all we need to keep in mind 😂
Like Indonesian accent.
Problem with English language,Indian languages are highly advance in its development. One can identify the pronounciation by the matra.... therefore, the issue with primitive language English
What an amazing chromakey😅
helpful video, but I cannot watch for to long to lose my accent
Your accent is too weak to lose then. You must be meeting a lot of people around the world if you travel.
M
It is easier in person, but on the phone it's nearly impossible to understand.
😅 Get used to it.
I almost hang up on my IT support, totally un-understandable.. Each sentence I couldn't understand like 3 words..
Most people find it difficult to understand a South Indian accent if they encounter it for the first time.
Respectfully speaking, I find Indian English accent ugly and weird, but I need to understand it because there are videos with interesting topics spoken with Indian English on youtube
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, cheers!
I’m really struggling to understand it and they so fast when they’re speaking
It takes time to get used to a certain accent so try to communicate more with them and you will start to understand well.
@@RishuVlog I’ll, thank you for your feedback
Your accent sounds more like Carribbean...
You pronounce the letter V as WE
It's the other way round.
@@RishuVlog Nice!
I just met an Indian friend and here I am 😭 can't understand what he says at all
you will get used to it after a few more meetings.
Are you in the boiler room or sth?
nah, just my room 😀
Thiger in uk tiger indian accent
Thea in uk tea in Indian
Phen in uk pen in indian
It's a different T sound as in the Hindi letter ट
indian sounds like sarcasm
As long as they can speak, they can sound like anything 😇
You should try to improve your accent to be more understandable when you want to speak with foreigners.
There is no indian accent..
How about you stop using this "dialect" and learn the eff how it is done properly, so the rest of the planet stops making fun of you guys...and you will be understood by everyone finally???
so you mean to say that all Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Thai, etc. should learn the British or American accent as they are sometimes intelligible by the foreign people?
@@RishuVlog You nailed it! I was only talking about Indian people, not the rest of your list. That is exactly what they should do! Learn BE...as everyone else has to do as well.
Starting with the correct pronounciation of the English alphabet.
It can't be, that the rest of the planet has to adept to that gibberish. They have to learn it properly, not us learning to understand that whatever that is.
@@Kivas_Fajo English is a non native language to all these countries and what you mentioned is improbable if you understand about different languages, tones, mother tongue influence, dialects, etc. The world needs to adapt to different accents and improve their listening skills which is the most probable option.
@@RishuVlog That is one of the major problems on the entire planet these days. Little groups of people demanding the entire planet to do as they please! And I say it stops here! NO! Learn it the way it is supposed to be spoken!
@@Kivas_Fajo haha, alright mate! Probably, The USA and the UK are the entire world