🚀 go-pugleaf

Phred <ppnerkDELETETHIS@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:bgbfl9$n5j7p$1@ID-151056.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Thomas M. Goethe <goethe11@lycos.com> wrote

>> I think the deal here is that the rep was educated
>> to deal with Americans, understood our culture

Pfft, no such animal as that last.

>> and had a good command of the language.

> This is an aspect of India that struck me when there.  The older
> Indians had learnt their English from the English, and most spoke
> it beautifully.  The younger ones had learnt it from other Indians,
> and had an accent much more difficult to understand.

> I would expect that in another generation or so Indian
> "English" will be totally incomprehensible to Aussies or Yanks.

Dunno, it may well get better due to other factors like the mass
media. Thats certainly whats happened with the more obscure
european languages, most of them do manage english pretty well,
just because there is fuck all on TV in their own language etc.

> (Maybe the Poms themselves could cope --
> many of their dialects are incomprehensible too. ;-)

Then there's their mentality |-)

>> That has not been the case with most of my calls. This is not to say
>> that there aren't a lot of talented Indians, just that one needs more
>> than technical knowledge to provide tech support. I would, for example,
>> be unable to provide good support for Indians as I am unable to speak
>> their languages and do not understand their culture well enough to
>> communicate effectively even if I had a crash lesson in Tamil or Hindi.

> That's another issue.  I think the official language is still English(?).

Nope, Hindi. It never was english.

> Though there have been pushes to switch to Hindi,

It was always the official language since independance.

> that change

There is no change with the official language.

> has been strongly resisted by a number of States.
> In fact, it surprises me that the place hangs
> together at all, considering the cultural diversity.

It didnt just after the war.

> I knew there were language differences, for example, but I hadn't
> realised that they also have completely different scripts!  Once we
> crossed the border into one of the southern States, my Hindi-speaking
> colleague was as baffled as I was -- he couldn't even read the street
> signs, much less speak the lingo.  English was the only common
> language -- which almost put me into the position of "interpreter"
> in several situations of misunderstandings!

No wonder you got lost.