Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
But you referred to this effect your own lily-pink self, Shiv! Some 200 posts ago. Sent from my iPad On Jun 7, 2012, at 8:00 AM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Tuesday 05 Jun 2012 12:58:41 pm thew...@gmail.com wrote: Standards have fallen, though. That actually depends on whose standards you consider as the right standards. Indian school children of the shiv in Poona class (and tens of thousands of others) were taught that Ye olde Britishe Public schoole was the standard to follow. Typically they liked Wodehouse. But the bunch I was thrown with after I joined Medical college, all of whom scored marks near the top of a competitive entrance exam, mostly did not like Wodehose or English classics. Decades on they are none the worse for their ignorance of what was considered essential in my own schooling. But funnily enough, my own friends circle today seems to include those very Wodehouse fans of that era, and fewer of those who did not like Wodehouse, suggesting to me that this sort of education also imbued a kind of Old School Network/Public School Caste like personality on many of us. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Thursday 07 Jun 2012 5:33:40 pm Bonobashi wrote: But you referred to this effect your own lily-pink self, Shiv! Some 200 posts ago Which effect Mr top poster? The olde schoole tie effect? Absolutely. I do not find Kendriya Vidyalaya graduates meeting each other after decades saying Yo ho ho old chap! You had hair on that shining pate of yours when we last said toodle-oo British style Public schools, like army regiments, created a sense of loyalty to the school colours. The uppah class English and classics were part of the mantras essential in creating the caste. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 6:17 AM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: My own Alma Mater (what a quaint olde Brit imposed Latin expressionne :) ) is The Bishop's School in Poona where my life was closer to the lifestlye led by Billy Bunter rather than Acharya Pathshala where many of my native peers studied in the vernacular. Bishops was started in 1864 under the aegis of the Anglican Bishop of Bombay specifically to educate the children of British army officers. Doc ... I am also a Bishops School Poona alma mater. Fondly remember the flat and the meticulous monitoring of nail, dental and follicular hygiene ... During my time many of the anglo indian teachers (who were in the majority among the faculty) began emigrating to Argentina and Australia ...I wonder how many of them are left now in the faculty. Ashok 1864 was in an eventful and tense era. The British crown had taken control of India from the East India company about 15 years earlier. Shortly after that was the military uprising against British rule that is was called the Mutiny of 1857 but is now referred to as India's first war of independence. The Bishop's school was started soon after that and was an unashamedly British style public school. It is worth recalling that around 1854, the British policy for education in India decided that a class of Indians who were British in mind and heart would have to be created in order that they would appreciate the good things that Britain had to offer so that India could then serve as a vast market for goods made by a rapidly industrializing Britain. This is absolutely clear from a speech made by Macaulay around 1854 or so. But the history of that policy goes back earlier and can be gleaned from this link.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 4:47 PM, ashok _ listmans...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 6:17 AM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: My own Alma Mater (what a quaint olde Brit imposed Latin expressionne :) ) is The Bishop's School in Poona where my life was closer to the lifestlye led by Billy Bunter rather than Acharya Pathshala where many of my native peers studied in the vernacular. Bishops was started in 1864 under the aegis of the Anglican Bishop of Bombay specifically to educate the children of British army officers. Doc ... I am also a Bishops School Poona alma mater. Fondly remember the flat and the meticulous monitoring of nail, dental and follicular hygiene ... During my time many of the anglo indian teachers (who were in the majority among the faculty) began emigrating to Argentina and Australia ...I wonder how many of them are left now in the faculty. There is a book by Farukh Dhondy (cant remember the name, it had Poona in the title ) which was interesting to me because it had a chapter about the school. Ashok
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Wednesday 06 Jun 2012 7:22:21 pm ashok _ wrote: There is a book by Farukh Dhondy (cant remember the name, it had Poona in the title ) which was interesting to me because it had a chapter about the school. Poona Company. I first read it in the mid 80s and bought and gave away 3 copies to Bishop's friends and family. After writing that post I found the book online, ordered it on Infibeam and received a copy again yesterday. The Bishops and the St Vincents' parts are seriosuly funny, but the book is a piece taken out of my childhood. If I may get personal, which years were you at Bishop's? Please take it offline if you want. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Tuesday 05 Jun 2012 12:58:41 pm thew...@gmail.com wrote: Standards have fallen, though. That actually depends on whose standards you consider as the right standards. Indian school children of the shiv in Poona class (and tens of thousands of others) were taught that Ye olde Britishe Public schoole was the standard to follow. Typically they liked Wodehouse. But the bunch I was thrown with after I joined Medical college, all of whom scored marks near the top of a competitive entrance exam, mostly did not like Wodehose or English classics. Decades on they are none the worse for their ignorance of what was considered essential in my own schooling. But funnily enough, my own friends circle today seems to include those very Wodehouse fans of that era, and fewer of those who did not like Wodehouse, suggesting to me that this sort of education also imbued a kind of Old School Network/Public School Caste like personality on many of us. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
John Sundman j...@wetmachine.com P.S. Would be delighted to hear what y'all sound like too-also. I find that my accent is curiously malleable -- when I was in School in Botswana I was occasionally asked if I was American and frequently teased about sounding like an Englishman. In 12th grade in relatively homogenous Kerala I was told that I sounded like a negro (the word shocked me, but is apparently fairly innocuous in Indian English). In Bangalore I've been told I sound like a typical Malayali. This contrasts with many people I've met who retain their distinctive accents despite spending 30 years away from the place where they acquired it. == b
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Standards have fallen, though. When I went to school in the 80s and 90s, we never had Classics teachers. I've learnt all my Latin from Umberto Eco and Asterix, while my only familiarity with Virgil et al comes from Billy Bunter and Wodehouse (Death of Dido, anyone?). As for literature, we did some vulgar common bestsellers written for the hoi polloi (Dickens, Shakespeare), and some RomZoms (almost) written for rich ladies of leisure (Bronte). Lahar Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone -Original Message- From: ss cybers...@gmail.com Sender: silklist-bounces+thewall=gmail@lists.hserus.net Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 08:56:45 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi On Monday 04 Jun 2012 9:35:42 am John Sundman wrote: His satire of the British class system, and the upper class in particular, could be quite savage I think that it was a curious anachronistic fact that while Wodehouse was writing his satire in America in an era when the british upper class was being democratized, Indian schools were traing Indians to appreciate the language and attitudes of that very upper class of Britain. Indian youth who learned English often got the language directly from Britons (my parents' era) or from Indian or anglo-Indian teachers in Public schools of the type that were attempted mirror images of uppah class British Public schools of the Eton/Harrow/Rugby genre. Indian schools like Lawrence school Lovedale, and Doon school were at the apex of this list, and my own school, the Bishop's school in Poona belonged in that genre, if not that class. We all had Houses, Prefects etc. Our English accents had to be right and our reading material was the Classics. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On 03-Jun-12 11:23 AM, Charles Haynes wrote: Definitely true, I adore Singlish, and am amused at Afrikaans words sneaking into South African English (lekker, braai). Indian English has a distinctive vocabulary that some Indians I've talked to have been surprised that I considered non-standard like prepone and avail as a synonym for to make available In Uganda and Rwanda the pronunciation has shifted in ways I find charming but that are completely different from other shifts I've heard. You may find this old discussion of interest: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/20503 Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Dragging this back to the original thread- how widely read is PGW today? Does he still attract fresh batches of public school readers, or is his appeal limited to those who started reading him in the 90s or before and have fond memories of Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world? This article, remember, was written in 2002. I remember Swapan-da once slicing apart Tharoor, saying that he was prouder of being President of the Wodehouse Society than of being Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. On a personal note- PGW was a personal favorite through much of school, but the only book of his on my current reading list is Wodehouse at the Wicket. That said, I still think I got all my Shakespeare quotes from PGW. Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone -Original Message- From: Deepa Mohan apeedna...@gmail.com Sender: silklist-bounces+thewall=gmail@lists.hserus.net Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 03:23:28 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 1:03 AM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: Shashi Tharoor on The Master. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/20/classics.pgwodehouse\ We will have to accept that there is a whole world of readers out there who do not know their Plums from their peaches. I feel that Plum's world is like another writer in Tamizh that I know of...his pen name is Marina, and his plays deal with the leisurely world of the Brahmin community in Chennai, a community, like the members of the Drones Club, that no longer exists. Has anyone read Marina's work? Deepa.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 12:08 PM, thew...@gmail.com wrote: ** Dragging this back to the original thread- how widely read is PGW today? Does he still attract fresh batches of public school readers, or is his appeal limited to those who started reading him in the 90s or before and have fond memories of Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world? My son has several stories by PGW as part of his IGCSE English Litt syllabus in Grade 9 and 10. And adores him too, as a result.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 9:19:10 am John Sundman wrote: Remains to be determined whether others understood me. I heard that voice sample. Actually your voice is very good for dubbing or narration. There is almost no detectable accent to me other than that it is American. But I detected the cup of kwofi at the end :) IG the way to bypass these Microsoft maniacs is to use VLC media player - assuming you use Linux like I do. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Swapan-da? Sent from my iPad On Jun 3, 2012, at 12:08 PM, thew...@gmail.com wrote: Dragging this back to the original thread- how widely read is PGW today? Does he still attract fresh batches of public school readers, or is his appeal limited to those who started reading him in the 90s or before and have fond memories of Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world? This article, remember, was written in 2002. I remember Swapan-da once slicing apart Tharoor, saying that he was prouder of being President of the Wodehouse Society than of being Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. On a personal note- PGW was a personal favorite through much of school, but the only book of his on my current reading list is Wodehouse at the Wicket. That said, I still think I got all my Shakespeare quotes from PGW. Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone From: Deepa Mohan apeedna...@gmail.com Sender: silklist-bounces+thewall=gmail@lists.hserus.net Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 03:23:28 +0530 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net ReplyTo: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 1:03 AM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: Shashi Tharoor on The Master. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/20/classics.pgwodehouse\ We will have to accept that there is a whole world of readers out there who do not know their Plums from their peaches. I feel that Plum's world is like another writer in Tamizh that I know of...his pen name is Marina, and his plays deal with the leisurely world of the Brahmin community in Chennai, a community, like the members of the Drones Club, that no longer exists. Has anyone read Marina's work? Deepa.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Bonobashi bonoba...@yahoo.co.in wrote: Swapan-da? Would that be Swapan-da of Jadavpur?
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 12:08:45 pm thew...@gmail.com wrote: how widely read is PGW today? Does he still attract fresh batches of public school readers Not very widely read. Children do read nowadays as far as I can tell but Wodehouse is all but dead. I studied in a Public School in India, a school that is now 148 years old (more about that below), that created little brown sahibs - little coconuts who were brown on the outside and white on the inside and we were taught English of a particular upper class genre that spoke in subtleties and understatement. Wodehouse is good only from that angle. If you do not understand English from that socio-cultural angle Wodehouse is useless. This type of education instilled in several generations of Indians a curious schizophrenia in which Indians not only felt superior to other native, non English speaking Indians who were capable of communicating only in the verncular, but like the Brit uppah class these Indians were also taught to be derisive of American style slapstick humor and spellings. The fact that English speaking Indians often made other Indians feel inadequate was recorded by Booker Prize winning author Arvind Adiga in an interview. But one author who was able to see the ridiculous side of such education in the indian context was Farrukh Dhondy whose humorous book Poona Company sums up how such schools and attitudes mixed with the Indian milieu. It took Microsoft spellcheck and a dominant Holywood to set the English mentality right. Indians took somewhat longer to grow out of it. My own Alma Mater (what a quaint olde Brit imposed Latin expressionne :) ) is The Bishop's School in Poona where my life was closer to the lifestlye led by Billy Bunter rather than Acharya Pathshala where many of my native peers studied in the vernacular. Bishops was started in 1864 under the aegis of the Anglican Bishop of Bombay specifically to educate the children of British army officers. 1864 was in an eventful and tense era. The British crown had taken control of India from the East India company about 15 years earlier. Shortly after that was the military uprising against British rule that is was called the Mutiny of 1857 but is now referred to as India's first war of independence. The Bishop's school was started soon after that and was an unashamedly British style public school. It is worth recalling that around 1854, the British policy for education in India decided that a class of Indians who were British in mind and heart would have to be created in order that they would appreciate the good things that Britain had to offer so that India could then serve as a vast market for goods made by a rapidly industrializing Britain. This is absolutely clear from a speech made by Macaulay around 1854 or so. But the history of that policy goes back earlier and can be gleaned from this link. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1842459?uid=3738256uid=2129uid=2uid=70uid=4sid=56229603993 Indian appreciation of Wodehouse, and how the Woosters captured Delhi is a curious fallout of this history. I suspect that it will go down as a passing phase in Indian history. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
I'm not a Wodehouse scholar or even much of a fan; I've read about five of his books. I do think it's significant that Wodehouse wrote most of his books in America. His satire of the British class system, and the upper class in particular, could be quite savage. I believe he was an American citizen when he died. I wouldn't go so far as to say he was a (lower case d) democrat, but he came close. Or, at least, that's the impression I get from my limited exposure to his writings. jrs On Jun 3, 2012, at 11:17 PM, ss wrote: English of a particular upper class genre that spoke in subtleties and understatement. Wodehouse is good only from that angle. If you do not understand English from that socio-cultural angle Wodehouse is useless.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Wednesday 30 May 2012 1:03:25 am Thaths wrote: So how do you pronounce it - is it Woad-house or Wood-house? It's ironic that Wodehouse's main character Bertie Wooster bears a name that is a spoof on Worcester. It believe that World war I - (a war fought between nations who thought that the plains of western Europe constituted the whole world) was the great leveller that brought the British upper (uppah) classes down to the same level as the lower classes. The uppah class of course had all these wierd liinguistic, sartorial and culinary affectations including the intense need to keep their language pure and different from the hoi polloi. Even today Prince Charles is likely to say hice for house. About the house is abite the hice in the upper class Bertie Worcester accent. The female who cleans your house is a woman, not a lady. A lady is a lady, not a woman. The Brits threw off the uppah class affectations ages ago, but Indians have tended to hang on to them with fond, if faux, memories of days gone by. Some time in the late 1980s I was somewhere in England and needed to meet the man in charge of something or other (accommodation IIRC) I was told that I needed tomeet Mr. Woodwood? Woodwood? wtf, I asked. I was told Not Woodwood. Woodwood. Eventually I asked for a spelling and got Woodward And for the Kannada speakers I have this one. My sister in law from the US was baby-sitting her niece from England for a while in Bangalore. The little girl said I want woota. So my SiL thought the little girl is aking for a meal (oota) in Kannada. But the girl said No not oota. Woota She meant water which the Brits pronounce as woota. My SiL from America thought water was wa'er in Americanese. It is, of course wah-tarr for Indians. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
There was, actually, an Anglo-Indian (as in Brigadier Hugh Stevens, not as in Sir Henry Gidney) accent that preferred it to be 'wottah'. So, too, 'caw', as in 'moto-caw', of which you bought the best you could buy, to impress the 'gels'. A terminal 'g' was never, ever pronounced. People with proper RP accents like Philip Crossley, Assistant Editor of The Statesman, visibly blenched when they encountered this variant (except for dropping the 'g'). But that was a clash of extremes. Steven Miles, a career diplomat, had a far easier accent, one closest to the older breed of Indian Army Indian officers, and quite easy to cope with. Sent from my iPad On Jun 2, 2012, at 10:11 PM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday 30 May 2012 1:03:25 am Thaths wrote: So how do you pronounce it - is it Woad-house or Wood-house? It's ironic that Wodehouse's main character Bertie Wooster bears a name that is a spoof on Worcester. It believe that World war I - (a war fought between nations who thought that the plains of western Europe constituted the whole world) was the great leveller that brought the British upper (uppah) classes down to the same level as the lower classes. The uppah class of course had all these wierd liinguistic, sartorial and culinary affectations including the intense need to keep their language pure and different from the hoi polloi. Even today Prince Charles is likely to say hice for house. About the house is abite the hice in the upper class Bertie Worcester accent. The female who cleans your house is a woman, not a lady. A lady is a lady, not a woman. The Brits threw off the uppah class affectations ages ago, but Indians have tended to hang on to them with fond, if faux, memories of days gone by. Some time in the late 1980s I was somewhere in England and needed to meet the man in charge of something or other (accommodation IIRC) I was told that I needed tomeet Mr. Woodwood? Woodwood? wtf, I asked. I was told Not Woodwood. Woodwood. Eventually I asked for a spelling and got Woodward And for the Kannada speakers I have this one. My sister in law from the US was baby-sitting her niece from England for a while in Bangalore. The little girl said I want woota. So my SiL thought the little girl is aking for a meal (oota) in Kannada. But the girl said No not oota. Woota She meant water which the Brits pronounce as woota. My SiL from America thought water was wa'er in Americanese. It is, of course wah-tarr for Indians. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
It’s awfully nice that in the British Isles, there’s still a vigorous ecosystem of regional and class accents; and it pleases me that the BBC lets non-RP-speakers on the air. If you watch Al-Jazeera English (and you should) they have this shiny-black-skinned gent who gives the world weather in the most outrageously plummy upper-crust-English-via-the-Caribbean imaginable; one can’t not smile. To my ear the most pleasing of English accents is educated-black-South-African (white-SA is nice too) and the original Colorado accent, now being swept away, like most other regional US Englishes outside of the deep South. -T On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Bonobashi bonoba...@yahoo.co.in wrote: There was, actually, an Anglo-Indian (as in Brigadier Hugh Stevens, not as in Sir Henry Gidney) accent that preferred it to be 'wottah'. So, too, 'caw', as in 'moto-caw', of which you bought the best you could buy, to impress the 'gels'. A terminal 'g' was never, ever pronounced. People with proper RP accents like Philip Crossley, Assistant Editor of The Statesman, visibly blenched when they encountered this variant (except for dropping the 'g'). But that was a clash of extremes. Steven Miles, a career diplomat, had a far easier accent, one closest to the older breed of Indian Army Indian officers, and quite easy to cope with. Sent from my iPad On Jun 2, 2012, at 10:11 PM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday 30 May 2012 1:03:25 am Thaths wrote: So how do you pronounce it - is it Woad-house or Wood-house? It's ironic that Wodehouse's main character Bertie Wooster bears a name that is a spoof on Worcester. It believe that World war I - (a war fought between nations who thought that the plains of western Europe constituted the whole world) was the great leveller that brought the British upper (uppah) classes down to the same level as the lower classes. The uppah class of course had all these wierd liinguistic, sartorial and culinary affectations including the intense need to keep their language pure and different from the hoi polloi. Even today Prince Charles is likely to say hice for house. About the house is abite the hice in the upper class Bertie Worcester accent. The female who cleans your house is a woman, not a lady. A lady is a lady, not a woman. The Brits threw off the uppah class affectations ages ago, but Indians have tended to hang on to them with fond, if faux, memories of days gone by. Some time in the late 1980s I was somewhere in England and needed to meet the man in charge of something or other (accommodation IIRC) I was told that I needed tomeet Mr. Woodwood? Woodwood? wtf, I asked. I was told Not Woodwood. Woodwood. Eventually I asked for a spelling and got Woodward And for the Kannada speakers I have this one. My sister in law from the US was baby-sitting her niece from England for a while in Bangalore. The little girl said I want woota. So my SiL thought the little girl is aking for a meal (oota) in Kannada. But the girl said No not oota. Woota She meant water which the Brits pronounce as woota. My SiL from America thought water was wa'er in Americanese. It is, of course wah-tarr for Indians. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
We ought to have some modern day professor henry higgins on silk .. -- srs (blackberry) -Original Message- From: Tim Bray tb...@textuality.com Sender: silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus@lists.hserus.net Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2012 14:03:36 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi It’s awfully nice that in the British Isles, there’s still a vigorous ecosystem of regional and class accents; and it pleases me that the BBC lets non-RP-speakers on the air. If you watch Al-Jazeera English (and you should) they have this shiny-black-skinned gent who gives the world weather in the most outrageously plummy upper-crust-English-via-the-Caribbean imaginable; one can’t not smile. To my ear the most pleasing of English accents is educated-black-South-African (white-SA is nice too) and the original Colorado accent, now being swept away, like most other regional US Englishes outside of the deep South. -T On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Bonobashi bonoba...@yahoo.co.in wrote: There was, actually, an Anglo-Indian (as in Brigadier Hugh Stevens, not as in Sir Henry Gidney) accent that preferred it to be 'wottah'. So, too, 'caw', as in 'moto-caw', of which you bought the best you could buy, to impress the 'gels'. A terminal 'g' was never, ever pronounced. People with proper RP accents like Philip Crossley, Assistant Editor of The Statesman, visibly blenched when they encountered this variant (except for dropping the 'g'). But that was a clash of extremes. Steven Miles, a career diplomat, had a far easier accent, one closest to the older breed of Indian Army Indian officers, and quite easy to cope with. Sent from my iPad On Jun 2, 2012, at 10:11 PM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Wednesday 30 May 2012 1:03:25 am Thaths wrote: So how do you pronounce it - is it Woad-house or Wood-house? It's ironic that Wodehouse's main character Bertie Wooster bears a name that is a spoof on Worcester. It believe that World war I - (a war fought between nations who thought that the plains of western Europe constituted the whole world) was the great leveller that brought the British upper (uppah) classes down to the same level as the lower classes. The uppah class of course had all these wierd liinguistic, sartorial and culinary affectations including the intense need to keep their language pure and different from the hoi polloi. Even today Prince Charles is likely to say hice for house. About the house is abite the hice in the upper class Bertie Worcester accent. The female who cleans your house is a woman, not a lady. A lady is a lady, not a woman. The Brits threw off the uppah class affectations ages ago, but Indians have tended to hang on to them with fond, if faux, memories of days gone by. Some time in the late 1980s I was somewhere in England and needed to meet the man in charge of something or other (accommodation IIRC) I was told that I needed tomeet Mr. Woodwood? Woodwood? wtf, I asked. I was told Not Woodwood. Woodwood. Eventually I asked for a spelling and got Woodward And for the Kannada speakers I have this one. My sister in law from the US was baby-sitting her niece from England for a while in Bangalore. The little girl said I want woota. So my SiL thought the little girl is aking for a meal (oota) in Kannada. But the girl said No not oota. Woota She meant water which the Brits pronounce as woota. My SiL from America thought water was wa'er in Americanese. It is, of course wah-tarr for Indians. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 2:33:36 am Tim Bray wrote: It’s awfully nice that in the British Isles, there’s still a vigorous ecosystem of regional and class accents; and it pleases me that the BBC lets non-RP-speakers on the air. The BBC used to air English lessons on their shortwave channels in years gone by. I'm not sure how many Silklisters have spent hours listening to shortwave radio as I have done but there is an old joke about the BBC and those lessons. Will explain the punch-line after typing out the joke, which uses a sort of black-white stereotype that was common in one era. An Englishman, a missionary, was lost in the African jungle. He was part relieved - part terrified to meet a huge, black, bare chested man in a straw skirt carying a spear. The missioanry raises his hands in the air and appeals hopefully, saying, I'm lost. Can you help me please? He is amazed that the African tribal says in what sounds like almost perfect English Of course sir hzzz wrr phweee follow me please. The greatly relieved Englishman follows the African and they strike up a conversation. The latter's English is perfect, except that it is punctuated by non-words like bz phw and whr that are interspersed randomly between perfect English words. A few hours later they reach civilization and the Englishman thanks the African and comments, Your English is perfect. Where did you learn it? And pardon me for asking, but why do you make those sounds between words? It that your African mother-tongue? The African replies, No sir. Those are not sounds. They are English words as I heard them when I learned the language from the BBC's English lessons on my shortwave radio (The joke ends here, you're supposed to laugh) The sounds phwee, whrrr etc are what any listener hears between other things on shortwave radio. I was told that random radio waves generate that noise from interstellar electromagnetic radiation, but in my day I was also told that the Russians and Chinese were generating radio noise to drown out the BBC and VoA. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Well, the Russians and Chinese *were* generating radio noice to dry to drown out the BBC and VoA. I grew up in the Middle East and we totally relied on the BBC to find out what was really happening. The VoA was always shallow party-line propaganda shit. -T On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 6:23 PM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 2:33:36 am Tim Bray wrote: It’s awfully nice that in the British Isles, there’s still a vigorous ecosystem of regional and class accents; and it pleases me that the BBC lets non-RP-speakers on the air. The BBC used to air English lessons on their shortwave channels in years gone by. I'm not sure how many Silklisters have spent hours listening to shortwave radio as I have done but there is an old joke about the BBC and those lessons. Will explain the punch-line after typing out the joke, which uses a sort of black-white stereotype that was common in one era. An Englishman, a missionary, was lost in the African jungle. He was part relieved - part terrified to meet a huge, black, bare chested man in a straw skirt carying a spear. The missioanry raises his hands in the air and appeals hopefully, saying, I'm lost. Can you help me please? He is amazed that the African tribal says in what sounds like almost perfect English Of course sir hzzz wrr phweee follow me please. The greatly relieved Englishman follows the African and they strike up a conversation. The latter's English is perfect, except that it is punctuated by non-words like bz phw and whr that are interspersed randomly between perfect English words. A few hours later they reach civilization and the Englishman thanks the African and comments, Your English is perfect. Where did you learn it? And pardon me for asking, but why do you make those sounds between words? It that your African mother-tongue? The African replies, No sir. Those are not sounds. They are English words as I heard them when I learned the language from the BBC's English lessons on my shortwave radio (The joke ends here, you're supposed to laugh) The sounds phwee, whrrr etc are what any listener hears between other things on shortwave radio. I was told that random radio waves generate that noise from interstellar electromagnetic radiation, but in my day I was also told that the Russians and Chinese were generating radio noise to drown out the BBC and VoA. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
I'm manually forwarding this message which was trapped by the list filters - John, could you link to your attachment rather than send it to the list? On 03-Jun-12 7:28 AM, silklist-ow...@lists.hserus.net wrote: Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi From: John Sundman j...@wetmachine.com Date: 03-Jun-12 7:27 AM To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Water is a word that is pronounced in many different ways in Americanese. Even in these days of homogenization of speech, regional differences still exist. As do class distinctions. For example, when people first meet me they generally can't tell where in America I'm from unless I happen to utter a few tell words in the regional accent of the place I grew up. ( One such word is coffee.) My home town was my father's home town; he was one of the few among his classmates who went to college and aspired to learn high culture. My father was very particular with his seven children, correcting our grammar and diction when he thought they were low class. He wasn't (isn't) a snob; he just didn't want to seem stupid or uneducated, or more precisely, I guess, boorish. He speaks with an accent markedly different from that of his childhood companions. I grew up in a place called North Caldwell, New Jersey, a borough that covers an area of 3 square miles or so. When I was a lad the area still had farms and wooded areas; now it's all houses. I grew up in a modest farmhouse on a small farm (2 cows, 8 sheep, 60 chickens. . .). My father was a farmer from 4:30 to 6:30 AM and from 7 to 8 at night. During the day he worked in Manhattan, climbing up the corporate ladder. I only mention this because I suspect that most members of this list are at least marginally familiar with the accent most associated with the little borough of North Caldwell: that of Tony Soprano (Tony Fuckin' Soprano) and his wife Carmella. Tony and Carmella are fictional, but their North Caldwell is quite real; Carmella attends Notre Dame Church, where I was an altar boy; their daughter Meadow attends West Essex Regional High School, which was build on the farm taken from my family by eminent domain for that purpose, and so forth. The actors who portray Tony and Carmella do a very convincing job of speaking in a northeastern New Jersey accent.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9oY7zpan18 By contrast, here's what I sound like in my normal speaking voice (attached). For an extra bonus, if you listen to this short sample of me in my normal speaking voice you get to hear me in Tony Soprano mode at the end, including the word coffee. Regards, jrs P.S. Would be delighted to hear what y'all sound like too-also. -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Yes, I was thinking about that. The attachment is 2.3 megs or so. Pretty big. I can put it on my site wetmachine, I guess, if I can figure out how to do that without making it public. Or, if there's another, simpler solution anybody on the list cares to offer, please tell me. It's an mp4 file of me speaking, about 2.4 megs. I don't want to share it with the world, only with Silklist. jrs On Jun 2, 2012, at 10:50 PM, Udhay Shankar N wrote: I'm manually forwarding this message which was trapped by the list filters - John, could you link to your attachment rather than send it to the list? On 03-Jun-12 7:28 AM, silklist-ow...@lists.hserus.net wrote: Subject: Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi From: John Sundman j...@wetmachine.com Date: 03-Jun-12 7:27 AM To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Water is a word that is pronounced in many different ways in Americanese. Even in these days of homogenization of speech, regional differences still exist. As do class distinctions. For example, when people first meet me they generally can't tell where in America I'm from unless I happen to utter a few tell words in the regional accent of the place I grew up. ( One such word is coffee.) My home town was my father's home town; he was one of the few among his classmates who went to college and aspired to learn high culture. My father was very particular with his seven children, correcting our grammar and diction when he thought they were low class. He wasn't (isn't) a snob; he just didn't want to seem stupid or uneducated, or more precisely, I guess, boorish. He speaks with an accent markedly different from that of his childhood companions. I grew up in a place called North Caldwell, New Jersey, a borough that covers an area of 3 square miles or so. When I was a lad the area still had farms and wooded areas; now it's all houses. I grew up in a modest farmhouse on a small farm (2 cows, 8 sheep, 60 chickens. . .). My father was a farmer from 4:30 to 6:30 AM and from 7 to 8 at night. During the day he worked in Manhattan, climbing up the corporate ladder. I only mention this because I suspect that most members of this list are at least marginally familiar with the accent most associated with the little borough of North Caldwell: that of Tony Soprano (Tony Fuckin' Soprano) and his wife Carmella. Tony and Carmella are fictional, but their North Caldwell is quite real; Carmella attends Notre Dame Church, where I was an altar boy; their daughter Meadow attends West Essex Regional High School, which was build on the farm taken from my family by eminent domain for that purpose, and so forth. The actors who portray Tony and Carmella do a very convincing job of speaking in a northeastern New Jersey accent.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9oY7zpan18 By contrast, here's what I sound like in my normal speaking voice (attached). For an extra bonus, if you listen to this short sample of me in my normal speaking voice you get to hear me in Tony Soprano mode at the end, including the word coffee. Regards, jrs P.S. Would be delighted to hear what y'all sound like too-also. -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 8:34 AM, John Sundman j...@wetmachine.com wrote: Or, if there's another, simpler solution anybody on the list cares to offer, please tell me. It's an mp4 file of me speaking, about 2.4 megs. I don't want to share it with the world, only with Silklist. The silklist facebook page, perhaps? Those who don't want to be on facebook can ask John to email them the attachment. :) Udhay
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 8:20:59 am Udhay Shankar N wrote: Would be delighted to hear what y'all sound like too-also. My voice in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fy3XLnWsok shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Thank you for the voice sample, and the fascinating history lesson. I remember, very vaguely, the news of that encounter. As an American college student at the time who was subject to the draft, I was, as you can imagine, much more preoccupied with the war in Viet Nam. But I do indeed remember the 1971 Pakistan-India war. Your narration is quite good. Isn't it lovely, and curious, how we descendants of former subjects of the British crown can speak with such distinctive accents, yet still understand each other? Or, at least, I understood you. Remains to be determined whether others understood me. jrs On Jun 2, 2012, at 11:32 PM, ss wrote: On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 8:20:59 am Udhay Shankar N wrote: Would be delighted to hear what y'all sound like too-also. My voice in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fy3XLnWsok shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On 03-Jun-12 9:19 AM, John Sundman wrote: Your narration is quite good. Isn't it lovely, and curious, how we descendants of former subjects of the British crown can speak with such distinctive accents, yet still understand each other? Or, at least, I understood you. Remains to be determined whether others understood me. I converted your file and uploaded to the silklist page on facebook [1]. Interestingly, facebook was only prepared to accept it if I converted to WMA (I tried MP4, MP3 and WMA) Udhay [1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/silklist/ -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sunday 03 Jun 2012 9:19:10 am John Sundman wrote: I remember, very vaguely, the news of that encounter The reason I chose to narrate that particular encounter was that a cousin of mine (now no more) was one of the pilots. I have mentioned his name in the narrative because his plane brushed a sand dune and continued to fly after that. I will post a photo of that squashed tailpipe on the Silk Facebook page. He told me the story in first person after the war, but there is a very Indian side-tale attached to that. I cannot say whether the dates mentioned are true but my aunt (pilot-cousin's mother) and her sister (my late mother) certainly believed it. Some time in the middle of that intense, short war (16 days) my aunt and mother consulted an astrologer to find out how the war would go for my cousin. The astrologer is supposed to have said that my cousin had faced great danger to his life around the 4th to the 6th of December 1971 but that he would live. That was exactly the time when this encounter had taken place, but we did not know. I know for a fact that astrologers are great psychologists who can read faces and moods, and many are inveterate con men as well - so while I did not believe this, both my mother and aunt had faith. That was only strengthened when my cousin reappeared after the war and related this tale. shiv
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Oh, great! I can't download or listen to it!! You Microsoft sell-out, you!!! You...you anti-Semite! Sent from my iPad On Jun 3, 2012, at 9:53 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: On 03-Jun-12 9:19 AM, John Sundman wrote: Your narration is quite good. Isn't it lovely, and curious, how we descendants of former subjects of the British crown can speak with such distinctive accents, yet still understand each other? Or, at least, I understood you. Remains to be determined whether others understood me. I converted your file and uploaded to the silklist page on facebook [1]. Interestingly, facebook was only prepared to accept it if I converted to WMA (I tried MP4, MP3 and WMA) Udhay [1] https://www.facebook.com/groups/silklist/ -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 10:11 PM, ss cybers...@gmail.com wrote: . My sister in law from the US was baby-sitting her niece from England for a while in Bangalore. The little girl said I want woota. So my SiL thought the little girl is aking for a meal (oota) in Kannada. But the girl said No not oota. Woota She meant water which the Brits pronounce as woota. My SiL from America thought water was wa'er in Americanese. It is, of course wah-tarr for Indians. Saritha Rai has just written something about English being THE languagethe link, and my response to it, are at http://deponti.livejournal.com/917833.html I think that whether native tongues survive or not, English itself, as it gets spoken globally, will acquire local overtones, and fracture into as many dialects, as there arelanguages now.I can already say that the language spoken by the Geordies, the Cockneys, Singaporeans, Bengalis, and so on, are all very different from each other, and as proof that every thought I think has been thunk before (and better expressed). Alan Jay Lerner said famously, in My Fair Lady, that they haven't used English in America for years. Deepa.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Jun 3, 2012 7:23 AM, Deepa Mohan apeedna...@gmail.com wrote: I think that whether native tongues survive or not, English itself, as it gets spoken globally, will acquire local overtones, and fracture into as many dialects, as there arelanguages now.I can already say that the language spoken by the Geordies, the Cockneys, Singaporeans, Bengalis, and so on, are all very different from each other, and as proof that every thought I think has been thunk before (and better expressed). Alan Jay Lerner said famously, in My Fair Lady, that they haven't used English in America for years. Definitely true, I adore Singlish, and am amused at Afrikaans words sneaking into South African English (lekker, braai). Indian English has a distinctive vocabulary that some Indians I've talked to have been surprised that I considered non-standard like prepone and avail as a synonym for to make available In Uganda and Rwanda the pronunciation has shifted in ways I find charming but that are completely different from other shifts I've heard. -- Charles
[silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
Shashi Tharoor on The Master. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/20/classics.pgwodehouse It was at the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature a few years ago that I realised with horror how low the fortunes of PG Wodehouse had sunk in his native land. I was on stage for a panel discussion on the works of the Master when the moderator, a gifted and suave young literary impresario, began the proceedings by asking innocently, So how do you pronounce it - is it Woad-house or Wood-house? Woadhouse? You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather, except that Wodehouse himself would have disdained the cliche, instead describing my expression as, perhaps, that of one who had swallowed an east wind (Carry On, Jeeves, 1925). The fact was that a luminary at the premier book event in the British Isles had no idea how to pronounce the name of the man I regarded as the finest English writer since Shakespeare. I spent the rest of the panel discussion looking (to echo a description of Bertie Wooster's Uncle Tom) like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow. My dismay had Indian roots. Like many of my compatriots, I had discovered Wodehouse young and pursued my delight across the 95 volumes of the oeuvre, savouring book after book as if the pleasure would never end. When All India Radio announced, one sunny afternoon in February 1975, that Wodehouse had died, I felt a cloud of darkness settle over me. The newly (and belatedly) knighted Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves and of the prize pig the Empress of Blandings, was in his 94th year, but his death still came as a shock. Every English-language newspaper in India carried it on their front pages; the articles and letters that were published in the following days about his life and work would have filled volumes. Three decades earlier, Wodehouse had reacted to the passing of his stepdaughter, Leonora, with the numbed words: I thought she was immortal. I had thought Wodehouse was immortal too, and I felt like one who had drained the four-ale of life and found a dead mouse at the bottom of the pewter (Sam the Sudden, also from that vintage year of 1925). For months before his death, I had procrastinated over a letter to Wodehouse. It was a collegian's fan letter, made special by being written on the letterhead (complete with curly-tailed pig) of the Wodehouse Society of St Stephen's College, Delhi University. Ours was then the only Wodehouse Society in the world, and I was its president, a distinction I prized over all others in an active and eclectic extra-curricular life. The Wodehouse Society ran mimicry and comic speech contests and organised the annual Lord Ickenham Memorial Practical Joke Week, the bane of all at college who took themselves too seriously. The society's underground rag, Spice, edited by a wildly original classmate who was to go on to become a counsellor to the prime minister of India, was by far the most popular newspaper on campus; even its misprints were deliberate, and deliberately funny. I had wanted to tell the Master all this, and to gladden his famously indulgent heart with the tribute being paid to him at this incongruous outpost of Wodehouseana, thousands of miles away from any place he had ever written about. But I had never been satisfied by the prose of any of my drafts of the letter. Writing to the man Evelyn Waugh had called the greatest living writer of the English language, the head of my profession, was like offering a souffle to Bocuse. It had to be just right. Of course, it never was, and now I would never be able to reach out and establish this small connection to the writer who had given me more joy than anything else in my life. The loss was personal, but it was also widely shared: PG Wodehouse is by far the most popular English-language writer in India, his readership exceeding that of Agatha Christie or John Grisham. His erudite butlers, absent-minded earls and silly-ass aristocrats, out to pinch policemen's helmets on boat race night or perform convoluted acts of petty larceny at the behest of tyrannical aunts, are familiar to, and beloved by, most educated Indians. I cannot think of an Indian family I know that does not have at least one Wodehouse book on its shelves, and most have several. In a country where most people's earning capacity has not kept up with inflation and book-borrowing is part of the culture, libraries stock multiple copies of each Wodehouse title. At the British Council libraries in the major Indian cities, demand for Wodehouse reputedly outstrips that for any other author, so that each month's list of new arrivals includes reissues of old Wodehouse favourites. In the 27 years since his death, much has changed in India, but Wodehouse still commands the heights. His works are sold on railway station platforms and airport bookstalls alongside the latest bestsellers. In 1988, the state-run television network Doordarshan broadcast a 10-part Hindi adaptation of his 1923 classic
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 1:03 AM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: Shashi Tharoor on The Master. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/20/classics.pgwodehouse\ We will have to accept that there is a whole world of readers out there who do not know their Plums from their peaches. I feel that Plum's world is like another writer in Tamizh that I know of...his pen name is Marina, and his plays deal with the leisurely world of the Brahmin community in Chennai, a community, like the members of the Drones Club, that no longer exists. Has anyone read Marina's work? Deepa.
Re: [silk] How the Woosters captured Delhi
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Deepa Mohan apeedna...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 1:03 AM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/20/classics.pgwodehouse\ We will have to accept that there is a whole world of readers out there who do not know their Plums from their peaches. Isn't it wonderful to live in a world where one can watch with pleasure someone reading Plum for the first time? I feel that Plum's world is like another writer in Tamizh that I know of...his pen name is Marina, and his plays deal with the leisurely world of the Brahmin community in Chennai, a community, like the members of the Drones Club, that no longer exists. Has anyone read Marina's work? I haven't read Marina's work. But I always thought Thuppariyum Sambu was the closest equivalent in Tamil. Perhaps because it was set in the same inter-war years as most of Plum's fictional universe. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! Sudhakar ChandraSlacker Without Borders
