So, I listen to several podcasts by people who are the children of Indian immigrants to the US, and I swear there's a very slight accent feature, where the K sound is closer to a G. So, e.g collection is closer to gollection, or company is toward "gompany." Is this a thing? Possibly it's actually a California accent, since most of them are in the Bay Area, but I don't think I've heard it elsewhere.
In general, is there a study of kids-of-immigrants' linguistic features?
@ZachWeinersmith
[I am not a linguist, but...]
I believe it's the difference between aspirated (puff of air coming after the sound) and unaspirated. We do this in English, but only in some combinations - eg the difference in the "p" in "pot" vs "spot".
My understanding is that Proto-Indo-European distinguished between these sounds, but European languages don't anymore. I guess some Indian languages still do (or nobody would know the distinction ever existed).
In any case, I guess the Indian speakers you're hearing are using the unaspirated sound when you're used to hearing the aspirated sound. They're not saying "bot", they're saying "spot" without the '"s", and your brain never learned* to distinguish them.
[*or rather it forgot how to distinguish them, since I believe babies start off hearing more distinctions and then prune them back.]
Zach Weinersmith
Michæl La💤