Whats in a name ?
Sometime back I was on a teleconference with an Indian colleague named Dipak at one end and a British colleague (Ian) and me at the other. Ian addressed Deepak as Di-pack.. like six-pack. At the end of the call, I told Ian the correct way to pronounce the name. Ian said that in that case why was the spelling not Deepuck instead of being Dipak ? I guess he had a point.
This is also the case with the English spelling of many Indian names. While , as Indians we correctly pronounce Indian names spelt in English, foreigners who don’t have an extensive knowledge of India , go by their own rules. There was a recent humorous case in the Cricket World Cup (which India won) where a British commentator kept on referring to Pandey as Pandi.
Consider Manmohan as a name. The instinctive British / US pronunciation would be say the first part as Man (as in man/ woman) the “mo” as in go, and “han” as in ban or tan. So a better spelling would probably be Munmohun.
Can anyone do a respelling for Venkata Subramanyam ?
By the way, the Hindi to English translation on google: for मनमोहन (Manmohan) the English translation came as PM !!!
My green is greener than yours I am a law abiding, tax paying eco-conscious Indian. I don’t jump traffic signals, indulge in robbery, murder or rioting, I pay my taxes, I don’t litter and so on. And at home and work I switch off electrical appliances/ lighting that are not needed, minimize the use of plastic packaging etc. but something happened recently that set me thinking about the behaviour of well-meaning citizens like me.
About 3 months ago, Supermarkets and stores in Bangalore started charging for carry-bags, between INR 2 and 5 depending on the size. Since they were earlier free , no one bothered to carry their own re-usable bags. But now suddenly I see about 50 percent shoppers carrying reusable bags (including me most of the time). What does this tell me about myself and others like me ? That we all need a little prodding to be better citizens ?
Sometime back I was on a teleconference with an Indian colleague named Dipak at one end and a British colleague (Ian) and me at the other. Ian addressed Deepak as Di-pack.. like six-pack. At the end of the call, I told Ian the correct way to pronounce the name. Ian said that in that case why was the spelling not Deepuck instead of being Dipak ? I guess he had a point.
This is also the case with the English spelling of many Indian names. While , as Indians we correctly pronounce Indian names spelt in English, foreigners who don’t have an extensive knowledge of India , go by their own rules. There was a recent humorous case in the Cricket World Cup (which India won) where a British commentator kept on referring to Pandey as Pandi.
Consider Manmohan as a name. The instinctive British / US pronunciation would be say the first part as Man (as in man/ woman) the “mo” as in go, and “han” as in ban or tan. So a better spelling would probably be Munmohun.
Can anyone do a respelling for Venkata Subramanyam ?
By the way, the Hindi to English translation on google: for मनमोहन (Manmohan) the English translation came as PM !!!
My green is greener than yours I am a law abiding, tax paying eco-conscious Indian. I don’t jump traffic signals, indulge in robbery, murder or rioting, I pay my taxes, I don’t litter and so on. And at home and work I switch off electrical appliances/ lighting that are not needed, minimize the use of plastic packaging etc. but something happened recently that set me thinking about the behaviour of well-meaning citizens like me.
About 3 months ago, Supermarkets and stores in Bangalore started charging for carry-bags, between INR 2 and 5 depending on the size. Since they were earlier free , no one bothered to carry their own re-usable bags. But now suddenly I see about 50 percent shoppers carrying reusable bags (including me most of the time). What does this tell me about myself and others like me ? That we all need a little prodding to be better citizens ?
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