Indian linguistic influence on other colonial powers

Many Indian languages do use those letters, so the result would be quite interesting...

Well, if you post some .wav files or similar here with speakers of Indian languages saying the appropriate words in their native language, I promise I will write them down the way they sound to me, using Dutch spelling conventions. Of course, then perhaps I must find a way to write the Dutchified Indian words down using English spelling convertions to allow a native speaker of English to get an inkling of how they sound in Dutch.:D
 

Thande

Donor
Well, if you post some .wav files or similar here with speakers of Indian languages saying the appropriate words in their native language, I promise I will write them down the way they sound to me, using Dutch spelling conventions. Of course, then perhaps I must find a way to write the Dutchified Indian words down using English spelling convertions to allow a native speaker of English to get an inkling of how they sound in Dutch.:D

:D Are you alright with the International Phonetic Alphabet? That might save some trouble...
 
Jodhpurs, after the city

Doolally, from Deolali (an Army transit camp at which British soldiers got cabin fever, hence it carrying the meaning of going crazy)

I've never seen these words before. Are they purely British?

By the way, I spell "pajamas," well, "pajamas." I'm not sure about other Americans.
 

Thande

Donor
I've never seen these words before. Are they purely British?
Er...no, they come from India ;) If you mean they are only found in British English, then yes.

Codae said:
By the way, I spell "pajamas," well, "pajamas." I'm not sure about other Americans.
That's because it's correctly pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable; American English does that anyway, so you spell it with an A, whereas British English puts the emphasis on the first syllable by default, so we spell it with a Y to indicate it's a short schwa. At least, I assume that's why.
 
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are you sure that's not from nabob rather than nawab?

I've checked it out, and according to Houaiss Dictionary the first register of the word "nababo" in a Portuguese text was from 1608, so it's more probable be a direct Indian transmission. Also, if it had come from English, I think the spelling would probably be "nabobe" then.
 

Thande

Donor
I've checked it out, and according to Houaiss Dictionary the first register of the word "nababo" in a Portuguese text was from 1608, so it's more probable be a direct Indian transmission. Also, if it had come from English, I think the spelling would probably be "nabobe" then.

Ah, I hadn't realised nabob was just an earlier anglicisation of nawab, as the meanings have since diverged...
 
Ah, I hadn't realised nabob was just an earlier anglicisation of nawab, as the meanings have since diverged...

These little divergences are sometimes funny. Portuguese, for example, imported from English the word "beef" written as "bife". But in Portuguese it means only meat, and not specifically bovine meat. So, we can actually eat a "pork beef".
 

Thande

Donor
These little divergences are sometimes funny. Portuguese, for example, imported from English the word "beef" written as "bife". But in Portuguese it means only meat, and not specifically bovine meat. So, we can actually eat a "pork beef".

I've heard of other cases like that, where a word is borrowed and spelled in one way, then there's a pause and then it's borrowed again, spelled another way, and means something different...
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
I've heard of other cases like that, where a word is borrowed and spelled in one way, then there's a pause and then it's borrowed again, spelled another way, and means something different...
We have some lovely Norse-English cognate sets in English; for example, ship and skiff, or shirt and skirt. Note that the Norse member of the set almost always has some sort of pejorative connotation once it is borrowed into English ("Those Vikings don't have ships, they have little skiffs! And they don't wear shirts, they wear women's skirts!").
 

MrP

Banned
I've heard of other cases like that, where a word is borrowed and spelled in one way, then there's a pause and then it's borrowed again, spelled another way, and means something different...

I rather like the fact that the Greek word for orange is derived from Portugal. :cool:

Not that that really has any bearing on what you said above, but I felt I should attempt to tie it in somehow. Er. :eek: :D
 

Thande

Donor
I rather like the fact that the Greek word for orange is derived from Portugal. :cool:

Not that that really has any bearing on what you said above, but I felt I should attempt to tie it in somehow. Er. :eek: :D

Ah yes, portygul or bortygul. That also appears in Frank Herbert's Dune...
 
:D Are you alright with the International Phonetic Alphabet? That might save some trouble...

I've heard of it, but confess I do not know it well enough to use it; stuck with double Dutch...

Here is an example of what I think may be a good example of hearing only the sounds you already know:

- In Swahili, a photograph is known as a 'picha' and a flat tire as a 'puncha'. If you think how the words 'picture' and 'puncture' sound if you do not know how they are written, these are pretty accurate (to my Dutch ears posh British English may sound just so :eek:).
It gets more interesting if you know that 'ch' in Swahili is interpreted as in English, i.e. as in 'church' (their vowels do not follow English rules: they are normal :D). So perhaps the words entered Swahili in an oral/aural form and were only later written down fololowing largely English conventions.

- In Dutch and English the animal is known as krokodil / crocodile; in Italian and Spanish it is cocodrilo; who turned the letters around?

- In Dutch the fish is known as a 'kabeljauw' (~cah-buhl-yow), but in Portuguese it is a 'bacalhau' and in Italian a 'baccala'; who turned the letters around? (It's a cod)
 

Thande

Donor
I've heard of it, but confess I do not know it well enough to use it; stuck with double Dutch...

Here is an example of what I think may be a good example of hearing only the sounds you already know:
That's true, and if a language changes over time (e.g. English's Great Vowel Shift in the 16th century) then the sounds we hear may be different, resulting in the duplications mentioned above.

On the IPA, does this help at all?
 

MrP

Banned
- In Dutch and English the animal is known as krokodil / crocodile; in Italian and Spanish it is cocodrilo; who turned the letters around?

- In Dutch the fish is known as a 'kabeljauw' (~cah-buhl-yow), but in Portuguese it is a 'bacalhau' and in Italian a 'baccala'; who turned the letters around? (It's a cod)

I can help with the former, thanks to Greek. :)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crocodile
croc·o·dile
Pronunciation:
\ˈkrä-kə-ˌdī(-ə)l\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English & Latin; Middle English cocodrille, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin cocodrillus, alteration of Latin crocodilus, from Greek krokodilos lizard, crocodile, from krokē shingle, pebble + drilos worm; akin to Sanskrit śarkara pebble

For the cod, I dunno, but I do recall that Latin bucca means cheeks. So maybe it's derived thence.
 

Thande

Donor
Middle English & Latin; Middle English cocodrille, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin cocodrillus, alteration of Latin crocodilus, from Greek krokodilos lizard, crocodile, from krokē shingle, pebble + drilos worm; akin to Sanskrit śarkara pebble

For the cod, I dunno, but I do recall that Latin bucca means cheeks. So maybe it's derived thence.
Ah, so it's because the Vulgar Latins couldn't spell:? :D
 

Thande

Donor
Henry Beard has a nice line about French: You do realise you're only speaking lower-class provincial Latin, don't you? ;)

With German influences...

Isn't there some obscure Italian dialect on Sardinia or somewhere that is supposedly so unchanged over time that it's almost identical to the Vulgar Latin that the average Roman soldier might have spoken?
 
With German influences...

Isn't there some obscure Italian dialect on Sardinia or somewhere that is supposedly so unchanged over time that it's almost identical to the Vulgar Latin that the average Roman soldier might have spoken?

Dunno but Sardinian is said to retain many Punic words dating back to pre-Roman times.
 

MrP

Banned
With German influences...

Isn't there some obscure Italian dialect on Sardinia or somewhere that is supposedly so unchanged over time that it's almost identical to the Vulgar Latin that the average Roman soldier might have spoken?

Dunno but Sardinian is said to retain many Punic words dating back to pre-Roman times.

I think we need Leo in to answer this. I do recall that in cut off bits of Magna Graeca in the Italian hinterland, they were supposed to be speaking Greek after the (Byzantine, IIRC!) Empire fell.
 
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