The problem is that Indian languages belong to three or four language families. In contrast, all European languages (except Basque, Hungarian and Finnish) belong to one language family.
Put another way, Hindi, Sanskrit and English are more similar to each other (all Indo-European) than any of them are to Ladakhi (Sino-Tibetan), Munda (Austroasiatic) or Tamil (Dravidian).
When an Indian speaks English as a second language, it will be influenced by their first language. But the effect of Punjabi would be quite different from that of Telegu, which in turn would be quite different from that of Zo.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 6 months ago
The key here is that you’ll probably find the exact same “oddity” among speakers of other languages, even outside India.
I feel like you might have unearthed something interesting here.
The English varieties spoken in those countries like Canada, Belize, USA, Jamaica, etc. had plenty recent interaction with multiple local languages; specially Canada with French. On the other hand, what people usually call “British English” is mostly Standard Southern British (up/middle class, around London), a bit too far away from any meaningful linguistic influence.
So I’m wondering if the pattern that you noticed for Indian speakers and for the others isn’t actually the same pattern. I’m just hypothesising though, this might be incorrect.
someguy3@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well British English is soft like many European languages. I remember listening to a video on sounds of different languages and was surprised that British English sounded so similarly soft as other European languages.