India One - Text
Female, born Lucknow, India, 1979. Lived later in Hyderabad and New Delhi. Was attending American University in Cairo when Krista Scott recorded her there in 1999. The subject, whose English is very educated and fluent and British in influence, speaks of the many Indian accents that can be heard in India, complaining of the stereotypical Indian accent imitated in the West. However, the subject strongly exemplifies the lack of aspiration on initial [p], [t] and [k]. She also speaks of the celebration by the Indian community in Cairo of the Festival of Colours. Paul Meier edited this sample 10/10/99. Running time 00:02:38.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I initially lived in Lucknow, which is in India, then moved on to Hyderabad, again in India, and then back to New Delhi where I lived for the past five years. Studying in the American university, I often come across people mocking about the Indian accent. They often start by saying, uh, “What is your name?” “How are you doing?” but, which is actually not the typical Indian accent, only because we have different languages and accents. We have a number of languages because of which the accent, the dialect differs. That’s why even the, even in English you get to see people who, who speak in various accents. So maybe this is what it is funny about, but I think Indian accent is different in itself, it is various, it’s varied in India itself. You often get to not understand people in India who speak English. But, uh, this is the way it is. Indian accent is not just one what I spoke. It is, it is a blend of various other accents, I should say. There’s this Indian festival called Holi and, uh, the special thing about this festival is that you’re, eh, it, it starts, the festival starts in the morning, and all you have to do in the festival is color the person in front of you. It depends on…see, you…eh…Holi is a festival of colors in which we, we play with colors, we color the people around us, and throughout the morning we just keep either throwing water at people or coloring them and, uh, the best experience I’ve had is in Cairo where we got to color each other and when we started walking on roads people were terribly astonished as to what happened to these people. I mean they, they were, sometime they were expressionless. They didn’t know what to say after having looked at us, multicolored faces, walking on the streets and it was really, I mean it was embarrassing for us. We thought, it’s a typical Indian custom with peo-, which people would enjoy outside, but we really got really funny and expressionless faces to see.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY PETE CROSS, 14 JULY, 2008