One of the really confusing things upon my arrival was the asking of basic yes or no questions and getting answers I had to decipher.
Perhaps the most famous Indian manerism is the "Indian head roll," which is something like a diagonal head shake, or a bobble head movement. Hearing that this can be interpreted widely, encompassing yes, no, I don't know, and maybe, I felt a certain level of confusion when receiving it in response to questions like: Can I take this class?
My conclusions are that the Indian head roll is an affirmation, though it looks like one is shaking their head "no."
Another element of Indian speech is the ending of sentences with a "yes" or a "no." For example: You are a third year, yes? The store is this way, no? Only they say yes and no in Hindi. For no, this is pretty strait forward even to someone who doesn't speak Hindi: The store is this way, nay?
The yes, on the other hand, caused the same kind of confusion as did the Indian head roll: Can I take this class? haang. The problem was that haang (yes) sounds a lot like huh in english, which generally means I'll think about it.
I find now that my speech is changing to incorporate some of these speech patterns, but not yet fully. Instead, I find myself sort of halfway between Indian speech patterns and english. For example, where one might say: We're going to the market, haang? I find myself saying: We're going to the market, ya?
I obviously need to work on making the jump to actually speaking the hindi...
Perhaps the most famous Indian manerism is the "Indian head roll," which is something like a diagonal head shake, or a bobble head movement. Hearing that this can be interpreted widely, encompassing yes, no, I don't know, and maybe, I felt a certain level of confusion when receiving it in response to questions like: Can I take this class?
My conclusions are that the Indian head roll is an affirmation, though it looks like one is shaking their head "no."
Another element of Indian speech is the ending of sentences with a "yes" or a "no." For example: You are a third year, yes? The store is this way, no? Only they say yes and no in Hindi. For no, this is pretty strait forward even to someone who doesn't speak Hindi: The store is this way, nay?
The yes, on the other hand, caused the same kind of confusion as did the Indian head roll: Can I take this class? haang. The problem was that haang (yes) sounds a lot like huh in english, which generally means I'll think about it.
I find now that my speech is changing to incorporate some of these speech patterns, but not yet fully. Instead, I find myself sort of halfway between Indian speech patterns and english. For example, where one might say: We're going to the market, haang? I find myself saying: We're going to the market, ya?
I obviously need to work on making the jump to actually speaking the hindi...
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