I am a frequent visitor to the website

http://www.deals2buy.com/

This is a really cool site that posts deals on other sites. Most of the electronics stuff I bought were from pages linked from deals2buy.

As a disclaimer, I should say my pronunciation is not perfect. I have multiple accents, well actually three, Keralite, American, and American-Keralite. These variations are a result of the natural tendency of the brain to follow what it is getting accustomed to – a kind of short-term adaptation. I have noticed my sister speaking with a south Keralite accent when she speaks to my cousins in South Kerala. Kerala itself has several accents, varying through layers of social and economic classes, religion and geographic location.

A more macroscopic level of variation is seen when looking at Indian accent. A Keralite accent is much different form a Bengali’s and this makes it difficult to define Indian accent. However there are certain characteristics common to all variations of Indian accent the most noticeable of which, is perhaps the use of retroflex consonants. Retroflex counterparts of are formed when you pronounce the consonant with your tongue flexed backward to touch the roof of the palate. For example, ‘tt’ in ‘vettam’ (light), is a retroflex consonant.

The primary focus of this article is on Keralite accent though it shares a lot of similarities with other variations. Whenever a non-Keralite says, ‘well he has got a mallu accent’. I really don’t know what they mean but for sake of explanation, let us say it is different from other accents. Not that Mallu accent is bad and if you do think we have a weird accent, what’s your point? Even you have an accent. This is a counter-attack device. The fact is everybody has an accent and we really don’t know what should be the gold standard for an accent. It could be British accent with RP(Received Pronunciation) or American accent. And if thought rationally, why not our own Mallu accent? We are educated people. As world economies are heavily dependent on the US, American English is gaining an important place as the Lingua Franca of trade, technology and practically all spheres of life. Hollywood industry has an immense effect on younger generations in accent acquisition. So let us make a comparison of Mallu accent with American accent.

Accent has various elements and it can loosely be broken down into intonation, stress and of course right pronunciation. Intonation is rise and fall in pitch. This is probably best acquired through exposure to native speakers. Stress is a rise in sound level or amplitude of certain syllables. Any word can be broken down into syllables. There are two kind of stress in English – the primary stress and the secondary stress each occurring at most once in every word. There are certain thumb rules for stress placement that you can safely follow. In words ending in ‘tion’, ‘ity’ and ‘al’ the primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable. The secondary stress is not very discernible and can conveniently be ignored. Primary stress is represented by an apostrophe before the syllable on which the stress falls. The third element is the hardest to get used to as it requires a great deal of effort.

Schwa

Schwa is a cute little fellow occuring at the beginning of words most starting with ‘a’. This sound is halfway between ‘a’ in ‘attam’(end) and ‘e’ in thettu(wrong). The IPA representation of schwa is /ə/.

O - Thou art a road block

Most Keralites don’t get their ‘o’ right. What Keralites don’t know is that ‘o’ is never pronounced like ‘o’ in ‘orma’ (memory). This is because we have just two ‘o’s in Malayalam and these two are pure vowels. So we tend to substitute every ‘o’ in English with our ‘o’. American English has both pure ‘o’ and diphthongs. A diphthong is a sound that consists of two vowels one transitioning to the other in a smooth glide. Pure ‘o’s in American English are the vowel sound in ‘cause’ or ‘law’ ( /kɔz/ , ‘/lɔ/) and the o in cot or God. The latter is in fact closer to ‘a’ in ‘father’ than the conventional ‘o’ sound. The IPA representation of this sound is /ɒ/. So ‘God’ sounds like ‘gaad’ /gɒd/. In British English, the sound is halfway between the long ‘o’ in Malayalam and ‘a’ in father. If you have ever wondered whether the Malayalam word ‘kallu shaap’ is pronounced right and told yourself that it should be ‘shop’ with the vowel like ‘o’ in ‘orma’, stop for a moment and read this paragraph again. That happens to be one of the rare cases in which we Keralites have got the ‘o’ right! In fact the word ‘shop’ is pronounced like ‘shaap’ in American English (/ʃɒp/). Although /ɒ/ is used to represent both American and British sounds, they are pronounced differently in American and British English - a sound between ‘o’ in Malayalam world ‘orma’ and ‘a’ in ‘father’ in British English and a sound that is pretty close to ‘a’ in father in American English. There is only one impure ‘o’ (diphthong) in English. In British English this is roughly like the last vowel in the Malayalam word ‘kathu’ (letter), called ‘schwa’, followed by a short ‘u’ as in ‘mutte’(knee). In American English the first vowel of this diphthong is a short ‘o’ as in ‘onpathe’ (nine). The impure ‘o’ in British English is /ə ʊ / and /oʊ / in American English. The word ‘no’ in British and American English are pronounced as /ə ʊ / and /oʊ/ So let us conclude the story of o with golden rule – Never pronounce ‘o’ like the vowel sound in Malayalam.

The reason I am writing this is that the same woman I saw two weeks ago, on a friday evening, is here. Very few people visit the library on friday evenings. This woman, the central point of all my thoughts and conjectures, is back. Everytime she walks past me to take printouts of what look like dates, I feel a pang of pain in my heart. She is a perfect symbol of helplessness and abandonment. Somehow her actions bear a frightening similarity with my own follies and stupidity. I fail to understand or make a rational theory to explain why she should need those printouts with nothing but dates printed on them. She must have taken it at least twenty times - the same monotonous tables of dates. Perhaps she is planning something or perhaps she is insane. Her dull sunken eyes and unsteady gait are suggestive of a recent illness. Last time when she could not get some of those papers printed, I helped her. She neither smiled nor thanked me. This has to be the strangest thing in New York, considered to be the most polite city in the world. The fragrance of flowers and the songs of birds wiped off my uneasiness. It's back again. Ah there she is with files of paper - papers carrying meaningless tables of dates.It's evening. She is still here taking those vicious printouts. There is anger fuming in me partly fanned by my curiosity and partly by her stupidity.