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english_south_asia · India

Indian English

english_south_asiaadvanced

India · General Indian (supraregional)

Indian English is, by population, the most-spoken English variety in the world -- and modelling it as one preset necessarily flattens enormous real regional variation, shaped by which of India's many first languages (Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi, and dozens more) most influences a given speaker; that gap is stated explicitly rather than implied away. Like Nigerian English, the rhythm is syllable-timed rather than stress-timed, and FACE/GOAT are realized as monophthongs rather than diphthongs -- both widely documented (Wells 1982 vol. 3; Sailaja 2009, *Indian English*). This preset is modelled as rhotic, the commonly cited general pattern, though rhoticity genuinely varies by region and substrate. This app's schema has no field for the single most iconic Indian English consonantal feature -- retroflex realization of /t d/ (a genuine place-of-articulation difference from the alveolar /t d/ every other English preset in this app uses, not a th_realization-type change) -- so it is documented here as a real, cited feature this engine cannot yet mechanically render, rather than approximated into a field that doesn't actually describe it.

Syllable-timed rhythm (not stress-timed like RP/GA)FACE and GOAT realized as monophthongs, not diphthongsRetroflex /t d/ -- documented, not yet renderable by this engineCommonly rhotic (varies by region/substrate)A supraregional label over enormous real regional variation

Live example

Transformed live against this preset's phonetic matrix.

Transforming…

Hear it

A/B where you're starting from against this accent, for the same sentence. That first clip is your own accent when you've said how you speak, and your language's reference variety when you haven't — the player says which.

Compare — Where you're starting from vs. the accent you're building

Synthetic/robotic voice (espeak), not a native speaker.
Reading the vowel system…

Active features

Every phonetic parameter that deviates from this schema’s diffing anchor, with a plain-English gloss.

FeatureValueMeaningDrill
LanguagelanguageenDrill
Mixed Languagesmixed_languagesDrill
S Treatments_treatmentstandardDrill
D Intervocalicd_intervocalicstandardDrill
D Finald_finalstandardDrill
R Infinitiver_infinitivestandardDrill
R Initialr_initialapproximantDrill
N Final Velarizationn_final_velarizationNoDrill
Final Consonant Dropfinal_consonant_dropnoneDrill
Vowel Reductionvowel_reductioncrisp_openDrill