Non EuroEnglish, sed Indo-english

[S Krishna]

Dominik vuyastk rites:
>Since INDOLOGY is centrally concerned with language studies, I thought
the following text which is "doing the rounds" would be interesting even
if not perfectly relevant. Enjoy!
>


 Veri veri enjoyabel, but u missed a veri valyubel development vich took
plase in India..you seem to think that the You-nighted Kingdum(b)
pioneered this, naah, not troo..the credit should go to India..er, I
mean Indiya( as an aside, why is it that the Brits never give the
Indians credit for anything:-)... the only way of explaining it is to
shrug ones shouders and remember the Latin pun "Non Angeli, sed Angli"(
They are not the Angels, they are ( afterall) the British)

            FYI,some of these spellings have been adopted in India on a
semi-official basis...I remember seeing one in Calcutta where a
government office called itself "Howsing opheesh" also, in some zoo( in
which city, I forget)I remember seeing the following notice- "Chilren,
keep away from munkees".In the Bay area, I'm told, there is an Indian
restaurant which has the following items on its menu:" Meet Sandwhich"
and "Gorebanzo beens kurry"...We have also gone a step further and
simplified the very odd English singular-plural business and
"standardized" them. The plural of mouse is mice, but plural of house is
houses...this has been changed to hice..."there are three hice on this
road; Which is your house?" is what was asked of a friend of mine. Also
note that the language spoken in Holland is Hollish, not Dutch- Afterall
in England, they speak English, in Poland Polish, so it is obvious that
they should speak Hollish in Holland, no? Last but not the least, the
correct spelling/synonym of attorney/barrister is liar, not
lawyer...."My uncle is a famous liar, he will become a judge soon" was
the boast of one of my friends in high school( There are parts of India
where lawyer is pronounced like "liar")..also makes everything more
meaningful....

      All those jokes apart I have two questions for you:
1. Isn't it true that English did lose a vowel in the 16th century i.e.
the vowels then were a,e,i,o,u and ae, which was eliminated for some
reason..anybody know why?


2. More importantly, in Skt, why do we find the alphabet having the "l~"
vowel that comes after r~ i.e. the alphabet runs formally as : a A e ee
u U r~ r~~ and then "l~" i.e. I don't think it was ever used( or am I
wrong here?)Can anybody please tell me more about the history of this
vowel?

Regards,
Krishna



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