Saturday, March 03, 2007

Indlish or Engdian ?

In the "learning something every day" category, I'm sitting here watching the news on Indian TV and all the people are speaking a mixture of Hindi and English. Sometimes they begin a sentence in English and end in Hindi and vice versa. Sometimes they speak English for a few sentences and then switch to Hindi. But, there's enough English mixed in so I can follow the stories pretty well. Odd, thought I. So, I did a bit of research and found that both Hindi and English are considered official languages in India. So, why are the Indian customer service reps so difficult to understand?

4 comments:

Cathy said...

We don't have anything like that here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. I suppose the closest we have is on local cable access... I would call it "hillish" - a cross between hillbilly and english.

Lone Ranger said...

They do the same thing in the Philippines.

Mark said...

I have been contemplating a post on a similiar topic. Since I've been working my new job in Virginia, I have come across a veritible plethora of people who live and work in Northern Virginia, who don't seem to speak a word of English. Not just Hispanics, but Indians and Asians, as well.

How is it that they can speak English in their countries but can't in America?

Maybe I have too much common sense, or maybe I don't have enough, but I think if I were to move to another country, it would be advantageous for me to learn their language in order to ommunicate with the natives.

Why don't they see the same logic in this?

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I think it's because the companies are hoping you'll give up.