Every person I have ever known whose mother tongue was one of the
languages of India has pronounced the English word "development" with
the primary stress on the third syllable and the secondary accent on
the first syllable.  It sounds like "devil-UP-ment."  I hear this even
among Indian-born Americans who have lived and worked here for years
and who retain very little accent in their speech.

I am curious to know what it is about this word in particular that
makes it sound right to Indians to reverse the stress even when they
have heard the pronunciation "de-VEL-opment" spoken a moment earlier by a
native speaker.  My question is:  *why* do they all say it this way,
even those whose English is nearly flawless and even in the face of
constant modeling of the correct pronunciation?

This is a matter of linguistic curiosity and nothing else.

Thank you,
Archae0pteryx

I read somewhere that the Indians acquired their distinctive English
pronunciations from the Welsh who, for some reason, proliferated there
during the Days of the Raj.

Here in the UK, we have many different regional pronunciations and
some like the Geordie (North East England) can be very hard to follow.

It is largely thanks to Hollywood that a 'Transatlantic English' has emerged.

Indian myself. I do think my pronunciation is as you mention
(de-vel-opment)!As most of the people I know! Maybe i never noticed a
difference, since its not my native lingo.

I was once told that pronunciation and general accent is largely
determined by the way one opens ones mouth and uses ones tongue
- hence the old 'marble in the mouth' trick

A slight grin, with lips held together, the tongue pushed towards the
top front teeth and the voice thrown towards the fron of the mouth, is
a pretty good way of achieving a 'Peter Sellers' impersonation.

Mostly however, Indian English (like other forms) is a slightly different language

Hi, hydcallin,

Thank you for your comment.  Do you mean to say that you do place the
stress on the second syllable--you say "de-VEL-op" and not
"DEV-e-LOP"--and so do your associates?  Interesting.  Where are you,
may I ask?--are you in the U.S., and if so, what region?

My question about a reason is looking for an answer something like
this.  Let's suppose you were the questioner, and you asked, "Why do
Americans pronounce the name 'Nehru' as 'NAY-roo' instead of the way
we say it, 'NEH-roo,' with the H softly sounded and the E short?"  To
answer, I might say, "We don't have any words in our language in which
we would pronounce an H if it occurred in that position, and in fact
most (maybe all) words in which we see an 'eh' combination are imports
from other languages.  It's simply not a native English form.  But we
do often use an 'eh' pairing as a rough phonetic rendition of the 'AY'
sound (which to most of us still rhymes with 'day' and 'way' and
'pay').  So when we see it in this name, we are inclined to give it
that treatment."  (This is just an example, you understand.)

So, similarly, when I ask why, or what is it about this particular
word, I am wondering what characteristics it has that lead native
speakers of Hindi, Gujarati, and other Indian languages to give it the
reading they do.

Probono, are you saying that the Welsh say "DEV-e-LOP"?

Frde, of course.  The question isn't about why people have different
accents or ways of speaking.  It's about the characteristics of a
given word as seen by a particular language group.

Archae0pteryx

<quote>
Frde, of course.  The question isn't about why people have different
accents or ways of speaking.  It's about the characteristics of a
given word as seen by a particular language group.
</quote>

My thesis is that syllable/consonent emphasis is determined by the
physical 'way one speaks'

arch,

Initially I was of the view that I did pronounce it as
"de-vel-opment", but now that you have split it further, I am not sure
if its "de-VEL-op" or
"DEV-e-LOP"! Thought over it a bit more than I should (colleagues were
wondering if I had gone nuts, mouthing development every few
seconds!:-D )
But right now, I dont seem to know where I split the syllables, either
one seems likely.
Will try and get one of my pals to have a look at this.
is there any way you could give another peek at how you split
this?(similar to how you gave for 'eh')

Agree with fred, its probably the way we speak.

Hi, hydcallin,

Thanks for your additional remarks.  Please tell me a little more. 
What is your native language?  And are you in the U.S.?  (If you're a
software engineer in the U.S., you are going to be muttering
"development" every few seconds anyway!)  I think you are suggesting
one possible explanation:  you don't hear the difference.  But that is
not enough by itself.

Frde's comment ("Mostly however, Indian English (like other forms) is
a slightly different language") may be true but is completely off the
mark for my question.  Again, I am not asking why there are
differences in how a language is spoken by its users.  That is hardly
a mystery.  And the suggestion that an individual speaker's manner of
forming sounds accounts for regional accents and dialects seems wildly
insufficient to me.

I can sit around a table with 20 other native speakers of English and
see and hear differences in their patterns of forming sounds (for
example, one speaks without parting his teeth very much, and another
speaks with a very thick S sound, almost a lisp, as if the sides of
his tongue were between his teeth), and those personal vocal traits
have *no correlation* with the fact that one speaks like a Texan, one
sounds like New Jersey, one has a faint echo of an accent from her
Chinese-born parents, and one comes from a Midwestern state near the
Canadian border.

But every one of those people, no matter how they form their words or
what accents they have, will say "de-VEL-op" with the stress on the
second syllable, in whatever way is consistent with their normal
speech.  The Indian at the table will not.

The Texan's treatment of vowels is part of the way English is spoken
in that part of the country, and I don't have to ask why they speak
that way.  But I might (if I chose) ask why they pronounce a
particular word as they do--for instance, why is "flowers" sounded as
"flares"?--and the answer will not have anything to do with where they
place their tongue.  It will have something to do with the evolution
of that accent in this country and how analogous sounds are treated.

But I am not asking for an explanation of a regional accent.  I am
asking why Indian speakers give the first and third syllables of the
specific word "develop" (or "development"--same thing) the
long-syllable treatment when native English speakers around them are
stressing the second syllable.

And maybe it is simply that they don't hear it.  But that still
doesn't tell me why, when confronted with the English word "develop"
even if they've never heard it spoken aloud, they pick the second
syllable to stress.  Is it like a similar word in an Indian language? 
Is there a rule in Hindi that says an initial "dev" (as in
"Devanagari") is a meaningful syllable that gets the stress?  Is there
a tendency to accent the last syllable of an English word and then
alternate backwards from there?  What is the pattern that applies to
this word?  What makes this word a candidate for applying that
pattern?  That's what I'm asking.

Tell me, where do you, yourself, personally, put the stresses in
"Mahabharata"?  It's determined by which kind of A--a full vowel or a
half vowel--occurs in each syllable, right?  And how do Americans
typically pronounce that word?  The same or different?  If you ask why
it's different, you will understand what kind of question I'm asking. 
I would say, first, that we are going to have to guess because we
don't have either a received pronunciation or a model for it.  We are
likely to follow some sort of analog, which may be Latinate, with its
rules about accenting syllables.  We don't have full and half vowels
in English.  Also we don't see the same syllabic units you do because
you know what characters are being transliterated.  For instance, you
recognize "bha" as a unit, a single character, where we have no such
sound in English.

Just to be clear on my conventions:  It is not just about syllabic
division.  I am asking about *emphasis*.  I am using capital letters
to show stress.  When I write "DEV-e-LOP," I am trying to render the
typical Indian pronunciation that I hear, in which the loudest or most
strongly spoken part of the word (the equivalent of a long-vowel
syllable in Sanskrit) is the first syllable, "DEV."  When we say it,
the loudest or most strongly spoken part of the word is the second
syllable, "VEL."

The harder this gets, the more curious I become. 

Archae0pteryx

Hi arch.

I reside in  India, techie, but dont quite mouth "development" all the
while (in fact the economists and politicos mouth it more than
developers!)
Native Lingo Kannada.

Umm, no I wasnt suggesting that I dont hear a difference, I was
saying, I would not know where to split it. Both ways seemed possibly
and very similar, if not the same!

(there are easily 8-9 varieties of "Indian" english spoken, with their
pronunciations not quite close - somewhat like what you said about the
native English speakers thing.)

quote -
But every one of those people, no matter how they form their words or
what accents they have, will say "de-VEL-op" with the stress on the
second syllable, in whatever way is consistent with their normal
speech.  The Indian at the table will not.
-unquote.

It probably has to do with the local alphabet, I am beginning to
think. There are variations centering around the phonetic "d/the" that
are frankly hard to reproduce in English.
I am thinking, the way you see it as syllables is different from what
we split develop as.


So "devenagari" roughly starts with a "they-va-na-ga-ri" with, va -
the first half of "wow", na is not "Nah", they rest are as they
appear.

development is quite a different word phonetically. If I would split
this, it would probably be "de-va-lop-ment" I think.
 
For, development..... I cant think of anything thats close in the
Indian languages I know (Kannada, Hindi, bits and pieces of Sanskrit),
I'll let you know If I can think of any.


quote-
"Is there a rule in Hindi that says an initial "dev" (as in
"Devanagari") is a meaningful syllable that gets the stress?  
-unquote

hmm, now you are taking me back to school grammar classes! :-D

I would need a few clarifications though, I did not understand the following

quote-
Is there a tendency to accent the last syllable of an English word and then
alternate backwards from there?  What is the pattern that applies to
this word?  What makes this word a candidate for applying that
pattern?  That's what I'm asking.
-unquote

Accent in which sense? 

Mahabharata, would be "ma-haa-bha-ra-ta" (half vowel in most places
except "haa"). I have no idea how Americans would pronounce it, but I
would believe its probably different, because we have "a's"(pronunced
and not a's.

You are right, half vowel and full vowel form a significant part of
our alphabet, as do different "tones" of nasal sounds.(for example, to
say "na" we might say "na" with a flat toungue, or roll it to form a
more nasal, emphasised "na" - I dont know how to bring it out in
english though)
Since you aware of the Bha, you would probably be aware of the "na" s
that I am talking of here.


quote-
Just to be clear on my conventions:  It is not just about syllabic
division.  I am asking about *emphasis*.  I am using capital letters
to show stress.  When I write "DEV-e-LOP," I am trying to render the
typical Indian pronunciation that I hear, in which the loudest or most
strongly spoken part of the word (the equivalent of a long-vowel
syllable in Sanskrit) is the first syllable, "DEV."  When we say it,
the loudest or most strongly spoken part of the word is the second
syllable, "VEL."
-unquote

Ah, emphasis. Now this puts a lot more clarity into it.
If I were to split development
then , from my native language's perspective,

the d, v, l, pm, (or equivalents) would be the emphasised consonants
with vowels added where necessary.


"The harder this gets, the more curious I become. "
U said it.

you might find this interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4328733.stm