You might be able to sneak it into Anaamika’s Hinduism - calling all Hindus, ex-Hindus, and those merely interested thread (until she tells you to go away and stop bothering her).
Eh, Hindi is a phonetic language. Spell it how you like. And I read/write/speak it, so I know!
Goodness And Nonviolence Did Him In
Not at all! **Auntbeast **is more than welcome in my thread. If you want to start another, I’ll join in there, too (if I can contribute).
**Auntbeast **you are also welcome to e-mail me at elenia25@gmail.com. However I don’t know too much about the caste system. I can tell you a fair bit about what is so euphemistically called eve-teasing, though. (What a silly name).
Oh, that’s easy – it’s the one that looks wrong.
:dubious:
I thought it was rhama rhama dhing dhong.
I think I disagree with that. There’s no direct mapping from English to Hindi, true (since Devanagiri has more symbols for consonants than English does). But there is a commonly accepted mapping from Hindi to English.
I had a full set of examples worked out, but whatever Devanagiri font is on my computer doesn’t agree with the message board. Bah. So I’ll leave you all with this: Apple’s dictionary throws up a spelling error when you spell the name “Ghandi,” but not when you spell it “Gandhi.”
“When I despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail, think of it — ALWAYS !”
Oy, what did I ever do to you?
Wait, what? I thought it was “Sugar…aw Hindi Hindi…you are my Gandhi girl…”
I want to pause a moment and welcome Zoe and Otto to the ranks of the Irredeemably Damned.
That’s what I expected too:
It’s a Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Gandhi, Dalai Lama…
Standard transliteration, yes. Devised by native speakers, no.
Hey, I’m all for spelling Gandhi’s name the way he wanted it spelt, but 'm not gonna claim any other way is wrong.
I thought it was the Dolly Llama
I kheed.
If you will excuse me, please, I must dash off in my kharmah.
H/not H is something can get you killed. I should know.
Sibboleth
Actually, I don’t entirely disagree with you. “Ghandi” in Hindi would indeed be spelled with a different letter, it would be “GH” instead of a plain old “G”. But honestly it’s so minor and the man’s dead anyway, and not worth this much hullabaloo. Besides, I have a much greater beef with the fact that this language (or whomever) changes the beautiful sounding “Ganga” to something that sounds like you caught it by going with that nice girl on the corner wearing stilettos; to wit, “Ganges”.
shudders
Whatever happened to his good friend, Pohkey?
/pokes SkipMagic
That was a 'orrible joke.
Woot! I found this thread! YAY! does a little dance
I’m reading A Suitable Boy, so bear with me.
Caste System: When asked casually of my husbands Indian co-workers they kind of shrugged it off. This is my theory. Castes are so established culturally that even if there is a public backlash about it, that somewhere, it may still matter more than folks are comfortable saying to silly americans. For example, everyone says it doesn’t matter, but when it comes down to who you marry, does it really? If you do marry someone outside of your caste is there a stigma about it? I did check a few indian dating sites and they do allow you to search by caste. I don’t know if it is for the parents benefit or what, but it does seem important.
Which brings me to my next question: Arranged Marriages. Is this still done commonly? From one dating website I found quite a few parents looking for matches for their children. Even if the parents are still all for it, do the kids kind of sigh and think it’s old fashioned? Or because of that being a cultural thing for them accept it as the way it is gonna go?
Eve Teasing- The Guys My Husband Works With: they shrugged this off as something unimportant too. That it may happen, but gee whiz, it isn’t that big of a deal.
The Arts: Someone brought up M. Knight Notevengonnatrytospellit as being fairly unusual in that he is in the arts and that is frowned upon. To say India has a rich history in the arts, I find this confusing. And god knows, someone in India is making a shitload of movies. Where do artists/musicians/performers fit into society?
Being an american southerner, I know there can be differences in what you say to outsiders than what you actually do. As I progress through this book, I’m certain I’ll have many more questions. Please understand, my major was Cultural Anthropology. So my desire to dig a bit deeper than a public facade is a feature, not a bug. 
crap, wrong thread. Mods, can you delete my previous post? The excitement got to me.
Let’s not rub my face in the fact the first sentence is I found this thread, which of course, was the wrong thread to be found.