It seems that native speakers of Hindi and related languages speak English with a certain lilt. Is this representative of a semantic feature of Hindi or is it just the way it's done?

I dunno, but I love it!

Is this representative of a semantic feature of Hindi or is it just the way it's done?

I always assumed (1) that it is an artifact of some phonological features of their first or native language, and (2) it also resulted from their mainly learning English from other non-native speakers and that the lilt was simply a new accent for a regional type of English.

On reconsideration of your question, I take it that you mean some phonological features, such as phonological tone in English can be used for syntactic purposes, e.g., turning a statement into a question by a rising tone on the final word or syllable. Or, affected a quality of voice, as in the sarcastic answer to somebody's question: "Yeah, right."

Also, I have not noticed any great difference in accents amongst speakers in the north, who in the main speak Indo-Aryan languages (such as Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujerati, etc.) and those in the south who speak Dravidian ones. They are really quite different groups of languages, genetically, phonologically, and syntactically.

One characteristic of India is a number of consonants pronounced with the tongue in the roof of the mouth - a t, a d, an s and an n. (They also have what we consider the standard versions of t, d, s, and n.) They are called "cerebral" consonants if I remember aright. When Sanskrit (at least) is transcribed into English, those cerebral consonants are written with a dot underneath. My Sanskrit teacher guessed that they came into Sanskrit from the Dravidian languages.

They are called "cerebral" consonants if I remember aright.

Yes, the Sanskrit term is mūrdhanya 'cerebral' (< mūrdhan 'head', cf. Old English molda 'top of the head' link). They are called retroflex consonants in Western phonology, because the tip of the tongue is turned back a bit to touch the palate or just behind the alveolar ridge. The dental (in Sanskrit called dantya) series is more like Romance dentals, with the tongue touching the back of the upper row of teeth, while the English dentals (e.g., t, d) are really alveolar consonants with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge above the teeth. It's interesting that most English loanwords in Hindi (and other north Indian languages) use retroflex phones to transliterate English alveolars rather than dental ones (e.g., इसटेषन isṭeshan 'station').

with regard to indian lilts here are couple of youtube clips. for maximum effect they should be listened to and not watched the first time through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRKDT_nW5u8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m4-ARSW2Ds

Thank you, latishya--those were great. (I did take your suggestion of listening only.) The first time I recall hearing English spoken that way was by the really cute guy in Short Circuit.

Now that you haveheard the links, you might enjoy seeing the Indians in question.

So the word Tamil has a retroflex T? Still hard for me to hear with certainty even after two years of Sanskrit...

In Hindi the word for Tamil is spelled with an unaspirated dental "t" त not a retroflex either aspirated ठ or not ट. I dont know about what the tamilians use but Kalki was expressing a view ive often heard from southie friends, an awareness of difficulty with some Hindi sounds. its really more about the superiority complex hindi has about its primacy in indian languages. after all hindi has no sound like the "l" in Tamil which should be really more 'zh' and sounds like this

The Tamil letter ழ் (transliterated as zh sometimes, but in the ethnonym Tamil, by l) is a retroflex approximant /ɻ/. Tamil phonology is quite different from Sanskrit (or Hindi) phonology. There are no aspirated stops, and each stop has roughly two allophones, one voiceless and the other voiced, depending on context. That having been said, Tamil does distinguish between dental-alveolar and retroflex stops த் /t̪/ (th in transliteration) and ட் /ʈ/ (t in transliteration). (It is the former letter/phoneme in the word Tamil.)

[Corrected mistake.]

thank you for the explanation zmjezhd. i have several southie friends fluent in hindi but none from the north who know any southie languages.

thank you for the explanation

You're welcome. I've spent a little over 5 weeks in Tamil Nadu in the past decade, surrounded by the friends and family of a good friend (and I see a lot of them here, too). While almost everybody, but the oldest, speak English, a lot of the daily speech around me was in Tamil, and while I've looked through dictionaries and reference grammars, I do not really speak or read it, but I do know what it sounds like. And, I must say, I am truly amazed at how young kids learn English in India. I found myself at various times speaking to and playing word games with kids as young as four, all the way up to 18 or 20. In fact, one of the youngest was suspicious of me that I did not seem to speak Tamil (besides telling taxi drivers ille "no"). She'd never met anybody who could not speak Tamil. LOL, or MDR as the French say.

Mettre de ris? Moi de ris?

Mojave Desert Racing

Mort de rire (link), i.e., LOL.

some people us LLOL but I guess the equivalent is not really an option with MDR, at least not more than once.

LLOL

I've recently taken to my personal acronym, ILLOLFS (I literally laughed out loud, figuratively speaking).