Teacher Discussion Forums

I am trying to find audio resources on Indian-English accents. I am teaching a workshop on how to listen and understand Indian English to Chinese students. I would like to expose the students to the Indo-English accent so that the phone conversations between the two parties isn't so difficult to understand.

This website is pretty good but I need more material and heavier accents.
http://www.ku.edu/~idea/asia/india/india.htm

Any help is appreciated!

Marie

Hi Marie,

How about using some British movies and/or TV shows? You could use some clips from "East is East" or "Bend it Like Beckham", just to name a few.

Stromfi

The 'Kumars' from TV are great, sure it may not be true Indian, but sure is funny, and the phrases are also worth listening too.

Thanks for the advice!

I found a website that has voice recordings from countries around the world which is neat: http://www.ku.edu/~idea/asia/india/india.htm

Pride and Prejudice works well too--though I think the accents are still not heavy enough because I am able to understand everything!

Thanks!
Marie

Another British Indian programme if you can get it, is the BBCs Goodness Gracious Me - comedy, stereotypes and accents - a great combination.

I wonder if Indian English speakers (bilinguals and native or native-like speakers of English) find American or British accents 'thick'?

Does anyone know if there is some sort of ease of intelligibility scale for accents and versions of English? I've heard in popular media that Irish accents are well accepted all around. I also know that in international settings, especially with a native speaker or native-like speaker depending on an EFL speaker to speak English, people learn quickly to neutralize their accents to something more like an international global English accent (and yes, Americans and British and Australians do start to sound more and more alike when they do this, or so I think anyway).

Hi Marie

I'm trying to help a group of Spanish students to understand the Indian accent. The page link above looks excellent. All I had found until now was this page:

http://www.gazzaro.it/accents/files/accents2.html

which just has 1 Indian sound file. If I come across any more I'l post (if it's not too late that is).

Ben

Another possibility is to download podcasts. (I've done this recently to get Scottish accents.)

It may be possible to get transcripts, too - try googling newspapers/magazine/TV news with Indian cities as keywords, or something like 'India news podcast' or 'bollywood podcast'.

I think that, by doing this, you are more likely to get 'real' Indian accents, rather than TV actors who imitate Indian accents.