Talk:Hindi/Archive 2

Hindi is not a native Indian language

Hindi is of Persian origin. Then why was it adopted as an Indian language and official Indian language? When people fight so much to be Indian and buy Indian why did they adopt this language which is primarily of Islamic origin? (95% of Hindi is from Urdu)

Incorrect..Hindi derives from Sanskrit, persian and arabic. Urdu is derived from hindi with more arabic words.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.197.142.117 (talk) 09:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

what are you people talking about? Arabic is not even Indo-European. Also Persian-like languages existed a thousand years before Islam came into the scene. 66.171.76.138 15:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand who says that hindi is of persian origin. This is absolutely incorrect .

Hindi does originate from Sanskrit being an Indo-Aryan language, but heavily incorparates Persian vocabulary. Gizza^{Chat ©} 10:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The word 'Hindi' does not have any religious or regional connotation. Prior to the Moghul rule, the Indian sub-continent was preoccupied with multi-ethnic groupings, plenty of diverse languages, tribes and religions. There were many principalities and kingdoms all over the sub-continents which allowed the north-western neighboring kingdoms far across the river Indus to flourish in trading. It was only during the long Moghul Muslim period that the Indian sub-continent was brought under the rule of one command which now is called the present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Later some more territories were added during the British regime as well.

The official language of the Moghuls was Persian with Arabic as its script. To administrate the vast Indian empire with one official language the Moghuls faced many hurdles with its own subjects, especially the communication side. The Sanskrit was the predominant language of the natives whiles its Devanagari script acting as a unifying element of the many prevailing ethnic languages.

The other common trait among the non-Muslim natives was the idol (statues) form of religious worship or idolization of diverse religious beliefs. The meaning of idol in Persian is 'Hindi' and any discourse of idolization or people who practice idol form of worship were mostly called as 'Hindus'. Thus the word Hindus' become synonymous with the majority non-Muslim natives.

To make things more easy and simple for administration, the Moghuls went further to coin a two language communication strategy that is Hindi and Urdu. Thus 'Hindi' for Hindus in Devanagari script with Sanskrit as its basis, and for Muslims 'Urdu' became the language in the Arabic script with Persian/Arabic as its basis. The country affectionately also was called 'Hindustan' by its rulers and subjects equally.

In the beginning the two languages theory found no takers, but the speed with which the Moghul Empire was building and expanding forced the population towards coexistence. The respect among the subjects for togetherness multiplied while arts and architecture flourished to all corners of the Indian sub-continent.

Among the many reasons the Moghuls ruled India was due to the great ‘coexisting roots of togetherness’ found in the various communities of India irrespective of any religion. The British tried a lot to divide and rule but the bond of togetherness among the Indians was too strong which made them quit India for good finally.

As language Hindi becomes very common with all the communities of India especially northern part irrespective of any particular religion. After the divisions brought in by the British, Hindi went on to become official language of India and Urdu becomes that of Pakistan. The relationship never remained the same hereafter.

The two nation’s conflict between India and Pakistan made the languages suffer the most. Hindi lost its luster and Urdu was deserted by its patrons. Hindi got entrenched too much with Sanskrit to be unusable in the south and the common man shyly renamed the Bollywood language Urdu as Hindi out of fear of outclassing by the peers.

Help

I thought that the article may need a common phrases box so I found one. Could someone possibly fill the rest out (Hindi is not my native language, Tamil is).Bakaman%% 02:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hindi is not my native language, either, but I have tried to fill the rest out. I also made some corrections/clarifications (I might make more later). I can't remember how to ask for help, though!--Kuaichik 05:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

why hasnt khari boli yet merged

why hasn't the khari boli been merged to this article yet. it may be a different form from popular language, but it still surely doesnt deserve to be a separated entity. its just like Hinduism, where all the sects are merged together, khari boli is just a part of it.

nids 22:01, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Another daughter-page?

This article features an outstanding write-up on Hindi phonetics and linguistics. Would it be a good idea to devote a separate page to this, while providing a summary here? I think the detail and excellence of the section warrants this. ImpuMozhi 01:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

"I" have written these "excellent" sections. I have made a few additional (minor) changes to yours, but I think now they all conform better to NPOV and factual truths.Cygnus_hansa 09:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hindi & Urdu: Same or Different Languages

I can't believe it! I expected there to be a record of revert wars and flaming among the partisans of "same language vs. different language on here." But no. The Talk page is almost empty but that might be due to the high quality of the article.

The article does a very good job of maintaing NPOV and intelligently discussing the differnces of (credible) opinion and giving evidence. In terms of mutual intelligibility between speakers, Hindi and Urdu are almost always best seen as dialects of the same language. However, in terms of specialed vocabulary or contexts, they can diverge sometimes to the point of intelligibility; in terms of codes, they remain mutually intelligible but readily identifiable. The article might want to clarify that even among Indians who say "I only know how speak Hindi, not Urdu" 1) a large portion of their vocabulary will be "Urdu" (that is of Perso-Arabic origin) and 2) they will easily be able to have a conversation with a Pakistani who says "I only know how to speak Urdu, not Hindi." Interlingua 03:39, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

There are several discussions of that topic in the archive, though nothing so uncivilized as a revert war. -lethe ^{talk +} 04:08, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

The word 'Hindi' does not have any religious or regional connotation. Prior to the Moghul rule, the Indian sub-continent was preoccupied with multi-ethnic groupings, plenty of diverse languages, tribes and religions. There were many principalities and kingdoms all over the sub-continents which allowed the north-western neighboring kingdoms far across the river Indus to flourish in trading. It was only during the long Moghul Muslim period that the Indian sub-continent was brought under the rule of one command which now is called the present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Later some more territories were added during the British regime as well.

The official language of the Moghuls was Persian with Arabic as its script. To administrate the vast Indian empire with one official language the Moghuls faced many hurdles with its own subjects, especially the communication side. The Sanskrit was the predominant language of the natives whiles its Devanagari script acting as a unifying element of the many prevailing ethnic languages.

The other common trait among the non-Muslim natives was the idol (statues) form of religious worship or idolization of diverse religious beliefs. The meaning of idol in Persian is 'Hindi' and any discourse of idolization or people who practice idol form of worship were mostly called as 'Hindus'. Thus the word Hindus' become synonymous with the majority non-Muslim natives.

To make things more easy and simple for administration, the Moghuls went further to coin a two language communication strategy that is Hindi and Urdu. Thus 'Hindi' for Hindus in Devanagari script with Sanskrit as its basis, and for Muslims 'Urdu' became the language in the Arabic script with Persian/Arabic as its basis. The country affectionately also was called 'Hindustan' by its rulers and subjects equally.

In the beginning the two languages theory found no takers, but the speed with which the Moghul Empire was building and expanding forced the population towards coexistence. The respect among the subjects for togetherness multiplied while arts and architecture flourished to all corners of the Indian sub-continent.

Among the many reasons the Moghuls ruled India was due to the great ‘coexisting roots of togetherness’ found in the various communities of India irrespective of any religion. The British tried a lot to divide and rule but the bond of togetherness among the Indians was too strong which made them quit India for good finally.

As language Hindi becomes very common with all the communities of India especially northern part irrespective of any particular religion. After the divisions brought in by the British, Hindi went on to become official language of India and Urdu becomes that of Pakistan. The relationship never remained the same hereafter.

The two nation’s conflict between India and Pakistan made the languages suffer the most. Hindi lost its luster and Urdu was deserted by its patrons. Hindi got entrenched too much with Sanskrit to be unusable in the south and the common man shyly renamed the Bollywood language Urdu as Hindi out of fear of outclassing by the peers.

Reverting to the version on June 22

There have a lot of POV edits to the article after June 22. With due repect to all the bonafide edits after that version, I am therefore reverting to the version on 22 June by RMehra. I will gradually reverse all the bonafide edits since that date lost due to the revert. Czkwcm 14:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Gender

I changed the line about Hindi's inheriting the genders of nouns borrowed from Persian and Arabic because Persian nouns have no gender. (They're like nouns in Bangla: gender-free.) Arabic nouns do have gender but since Hindi-Urdu got its Arabic nouns from Persian and since Persian scrubbed them clean of gender, they had to be reassigned gender when they came into Hindi-Urdu. The result is that many original Arabic nouns have a different gender in Hindi-Urdu than they do in Arabic. BTW: It's not just "non-Hindi speakers" that have to learn the genders of nouns referring to non-animates things by heart. Everybody who speaks Hindi has at one time or another (as an infant, a youth, or an adult) had to learn the gender assignments by heart. But many (about half?) of these are predictable on the basis of meaning (all language names are feminine; all month names are masculine) or of morphology (ghanţaa vs. ghanţii, saundary vs. sundartaa, etc.) so the psychic burden is not so heavy. (This is in accord with what the article suggests.) --Peh6n 05:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Retroflex "T"

Yes, use of the majuscule is the usual way of representing retroflex sounds in the South Asian linguistics literature. I'll see if I can find something closer to what you have in the chart of consonants. --Peh6n 05:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Only in the ITRANS and related transliteration schemes, not in others like IAST.Cygnus_hansa 18:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Hindi is NOT the National Language of India.

This article states "A general belief prevails that Hindi is "the national language" of India"

Wasn't the goal of the Wikipedia to state facts. ?

Its a known fact that Hindi is NOT the National Language of India. It is one of the 23 Official languages of India.

The Constitution of India does not have any National language as of now.

This page reports incorrectly and it should be modified to have the latest information.

192.122.173.9 10:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Read the entire sentence, dear friend, before jumping up and down. NPOV is based on the antire stuff, not just a part of the phrase.Cygnus_hansa 18:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually Hindi and English are the 'official languages' of India. Official meaning - language used in official correspondence between the center and states or between states. All other major languages including the so called ‘regional’ languages fall under the ‘National’ language category.

three lookalike characters ड़, ङ and ड

The IPA for the three characters is given in // and explained in the brackets The chars are ड़ /ɽ/ (i.e. d with a hook in the bottom), ङ /ŋ/ (i.e. h with the right stem of n longer and turned towards left) and ड /d/ (i.e. the letter d)(this last one is Unicode 0921) The question is that What is the position of the charater ड in the Hindi letter chart? It is definitely a very important and much used symbol e.g. damroo, dabba etc.. Also if some expert/linguist could explain why the Unicode does not have the symbol for ड़ in the Unicode even though it is native hindi (unlike क़ which is mostly used in Urdu and Arabic..)? Also could somebody give examples of usage of ङ. Thanks. Saurabh Mangal 11:29, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I will use linguistics terminology. Simple ड without dot is the voiced retroflex plosive. It is used in words like डब्बा, डमरू, etc. Its symbol is ɖ. It comes in the ट ठ ड ढ ण series. It does NOT correspond to the English /d/. The consonant ङ is a velar nasal plosive (ŋ). It is a conditioned allophone of n, before क, ख, ग, घ. E.g., गङ्गा (गंगा). For simplification, its use has been dropped in the favor of the anuswar. As for ड़, it is an unaspirated retroflex flap. Its symbol is ɽ. I really dont know why Unicode does not have a symbol for it. My guess is that it is based on the slow and inefficient bureaucracy of the Govt. of India, whose Hindi officials did not even attend the Unicode meeting, but have sought some changes later. Probably Unicode might be having a separate symbol for the dot below, which can be used with any alphabet, who knows? Cygnus_hansa 18:18, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The ङ "velar nasal" exists in English as well (the 'n' of 'English,' 'thing,' 'song' etc) so there is no reason why the laxity of Indian bureaucracy should have resulted in no unicode. Also, I gather that the ङ syllable, which exists in English and the Indian languages only as a half-syllable, exists as a whole syllable in the languages of east Asia, including Korean. I am certain a unicode convention for it must exist. I think Saurabh's question is about the third 'ड', with no dot whatsoever. What is that about? ImpuMozhi 20:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

All three characters have individual codepoints in the Unicode chart (there is a 'dot below' diacritic too called Nukta). ङ - U+0919, ड - U+0921 and ड़ - U+095C (equivalent to ड + '़'). All nukta consonants used in Hindi are given separate code points (not that it makes any difference, but it's for alignment with ISCII). Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I do wonder about the history behind ङ ? Why does it not have a unique letter shape? Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Importance of Movie Dialects

The "To-Do List" asks:

are movie dialects that important, or should they be moved to bollywood

Damn important. I would say that movie dialects or language as used in popular movies is one of, if not the, most important factor affecting the development of languages in South Asia since independence. In 1947, people rioted at the idea of Hindi being declared the sole national language of India. Today, nearly everyone (under a certain age) across the subcontinent understands Hindi to some degree because of their exposure to Hindi-language movies. Movies have promoted pan-Indian acceptance of Hindi far more successfully than any political or nationalistic measures. Hmm. Maybe that should be in the article somewhere. Acsenray 17:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Just because movie dialects are important doesn't justify having such a lengthy list. Much better would be to say in a few sentances the effect movies have had and back that up with references. Without that, it needs to go, and the list needs to go anyway. - Taxman ^Talk 13:53, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Bengālī?

What is this "Bengālī"? In English, it's "Bengali." In Bengali, it's Bangla/Bānglā. Where does Bengālī come from? When I say it out loud, it sounds like I'm trying to talk in a fake French accent. Acsenray 17:56, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

It is how Bengali is pronounced in Hindi: /bəŋgaːliː/Cygnus_hansa 14:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Character Encodings

The section on "Social Status" refers to the situation wrt character encodings, mentioning in particular ISCII and Unicode. Reading it, I would get the impression that Unicode was the only encoding being used now. In fact, I would say _as an outside observer_ that the exact opposite is true: very few places use Unicode, and those that do are mostly outside India (e.g. VOA and BBC). Everyone else is using proprietary 8-bit encodings. I am however reluctant to edit this, because I might be wrong--the situation might have improved greatly since the last time I seriously looked at it (three years ago).

If I am (still) correct, I would suggest the following re-wording. (I am also unaware of the history of the Unicode standardization for Devanagari, but I am rewording it slightly to make it flow better. If I have erred, let me know.)

—————

The present encoding in Unicode was finally standardized only after significant deliberations. Indeed, the Hindi unicode standard was initially based on inputs from scholars hailing from Fiji and other countries. It is only when Unicode became the dominant standard for scripts of the world that a number of changes were sought by the Indian government. To this day, many—perhaps most—web sites in India use any of numerous proprietary 8-bit encodings, rather than Unicode. (The situation is different outside India, since many non-Indian web sites that are written in Hindi do use Unicode.)

One implication of this is that it is virtually impossible to use web search engines to search across the range of web sites written in Hindi in India, because the character encodings are incompatible, and encoding converters do not reliably cover many of these proprietary encodings.

—————

--Mcswell 14:51, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Origin of some common Hindustani words into this article

This proposal is an alternative to proposing the deletion of the article, Origin of some common Hindustani words. That article seems to be indiscriminate (i.e. no basis for which words were chosen for analysis) and maybe even original research. However, it did seem that it would be appropriate to include some of the information from that article in the "Hindi" article. Normally, I'd have been bold and merged the article myself; however, given how well written this article is and how little I know about Hindi, I thought doing the actual merge (if at all) should be left to those who actually know what they're talking about (in English or Hindi or whatever)! Agent 86 17:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is already too long and needs to be trimmed. That article seems salvageable, but it would take some research to back it up. An article on the evolution of Hindi words seems a legitimate one, and could use some researched examples to illustrate points instead of being an indescriminate collection and a title that makes it sound like an indescriminate collection. Does that sound like a reasonable approach? I'll try to go to a research library tomorrow and see if I can find some good sources. I'd like to find enough sources to get this article (Hindi) up to FA status. Short answer is I don't think this article would benefit from merging that in, but I will try to save it. - Taxman ^Talk 22:49, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the merger, as it would spoil this already long article. I already have a good book listing the origin of words, but I hav no time. Also, there is no need to merge Shuddha Hindi with this article.Cygnus_hansa 14:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I also oppose the merge. The Origin of some common Hindustani words article can be further developed and made into an informative and thorough article. This topic deserves an article of its own. For these reasons, I removed the merger tag. Now that this article has been categorized, I'm sure others will be able to see it and edit it. Thanks! Zulfikkur 01:17, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

• I suspected that it might not be prudent to merge the article into this one. However, I still don't think Origin of some common Hindustani words stands on its own or meets the criteria of WP:NOT and other policies, so I have nominated it for deletion. Please see the AfD discussion here. Agent 86 02:06, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Macrons

I understand why the macrons in the words for "Hindi", "Urdu", "Punjabi", etc., were added in the article, but I really feel that this is excessive and inappropriate for an article written in English. There are English names for these languages, and they don't have macrons over the long vowels. If the macrons need to be placed on the names, it should be done in parentheses in the article belonging to that specific language. Otherwise, it's just clutter that some browsers won't be able to pick up, and that don't exist in the English names for the words in question. Please respond in my talk page if you have a comment about this edit. --SameerKhan 04:42, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Even I agree. Cygnus_hansa 17:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

So once again, I have removed some macrons from the English words for "Hindi", "Urdu", etc. I totally agree that macrons belong in the transliterations of words in other languages when following the IAST, but they do not belong in the English translations of those words. It's confusing, I know, but the point is that "Hindi" and "Urdu" are English words, while hindī and urdū are representations of words in other languages put into an English-language article. It's like the situation with the words "French" and "German" as opposed to français and Deutsch. The italicized words representing the words in foreign languages can have all the diacritics and non-English spellings they wants, but the non-italicized English words "French" and "German" must stick to standard English spelling. The confusing part is that obviously "Hindi" and "Urdu" look so much like hindī and urdū that people think they are the same thing, when actually one set is English and the other set is composed of the names for those respective languages in those languages. Anyhow, in the future, please keep non-English spellings and diacritics in italics, and keep the English names accurate with regards to standard spelling. Thank you! --SameerKhan 09:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Bihari

The Bihari subsection of the dialects section of this article is a little misleading. The most respected sources on linguistic classification would not count these languages (Bhojpuri, Maithili, etc.) as dialects of Hindi. They're as close to Hindi as languages like Oriya and Bengali are, as the "Bihari languages" evolved from the same language as Bengali and Oriya (Magadhi Prakrit), and not from Sauraseni like most of the other Hindi dialects. I don't know much about Awadhi and other "Eastern Hindi" dialects, so I won't say anything about that, but I do know that the so-called Bihari dialects of Hindi are not actually related to Hindi any more than Assamese is related to Hindi. Of course, I understand why there still needs to be a mention of these languages in this article; many Indians, and probably many speakers of Bihari languages, feel that Bhojpuri, Maithili, etc., are variants of Hindi, due to the use of the same script, and the fact that many Biharis are to some extent bilingual in Hindi and their native language. Anyhow, we shouldn't promote this misconception, although we should acknowledge its existence. Please reply to my talk page if you have any comments or questions. --SameerKhan 04:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

It depends upon perceptions, as created by Grierson. At that time, Hindi as a language had no social status. Hindi is a linguistic continuum, and by social perceptions (those regions where standard Hindi is the literary and formal language), its boundary extends well into the Bengali borders, and not confined to Bihari borders. In a linguistic continuum, neighboring languages change very slowly. Coming from UP, I can assure you that Bhojpuri is very, very similar to Awadhi. If Awadhi can be considered under Hindi, why not Bhojpuri, and then Magahi and Maithili; Begali and Assamese are extremely different. My neighbor was a Bengali. Cygnus_hansa 18:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Please don't get too much into subjectivities. The count of Bihari languages, Rajasthani and Central Indian, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh etc. languages as "dialects" of Hindi is just a matter of coincidence. Coincidence due to political reasons, and also because the people in these states have accepted Hindi as the standard dialect. Linguists believe in an objective analysis. The classification of Awadhi is in East-Central Zone while Bhojpuri, Magahi, Maithili belong to Eastern Zone, within which they form "Bihari languages" while Bengali falls under "Bengali-Assamese". I am not sure whether Awadhi came from Sauraseni prakrit though. Considering Awadhi as a dialect of Hindi even though Hindi itself falls in Central Zone is pretty daring I would say.
I think that in general, in all the articles related to these languages, both linguistic and social views must be discussed even though linguistic must be stressed upon more, since it is an encyclopaedia and not something written for ideological satisfaction. Maquahuitl 00:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Indian Languages: Aspirated Consonants?

This article originally stated that "(t)he distinction between the aspirated and the unaspirated consonants is really very strong, not only in Hindi, but also in Sanskrit and all other Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages of India."

I have changed the word "all" to "many." Not ALL "Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages of India" have such a strong distinction. In fact, some do not even HAVE aspirated consonants. Let me provide a few examples here:

Malayalam has both aspirated and unaspirated consonants, but the aspirated consonants are often pronounced just like an unaspirated consonant. For example, the word "paThikkuka" (to learn) is usually pronounced "paDikkuka."

Tamil does not have any aspirated consonants. This is one reason why it has fewer letters than many other Indian alphabets.--Kuaichik 23:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually what I wrote was just meant as an approximate generalization. I also know about Tamil and Malayalam. Cygnus_hansa 05:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I remember learning about this in linguistics class, when we were doing a survey of the world's major language families. If memory serves, the aspiration distinction is a clear mark of (Indoeuropean) Indo-Aryan languages, as distinct from the Dravidian

languages, which mostly lack the distinction. In fact, Dravidian languages mostly don't have a voice distinction either, with the same underlying consonant being voiced or unvoiced, aspirated or unaspirated, depending on phonological context. This seems to be the original situation in Proto-Dravidian: just one oral stop (and one nasal) for each articulation position. Malayalam sometimes appears to be a modern exception, but this is due to the profound influence of Sanskrit on Malayalam in medieval times. I wish I had a good reference for these statements. ACW 19:44, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting to note here that Punjabi doesn't have voiced aspirates. Instead they are used to indicate tones. Also, at the beginning of words, the voiced aspirates turn to their equivalent voiceless unaspirates! Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 19:54, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

ACW, in fact, both Kannada and Telugu have aspirated consonants. (There are distinct letters for the sounds "kha, gha," etc. as opposed to "ka, ga," etc.) Whether or not they are often pronounced without an aspiration is not for me to answer. However, Tamil (apparently the oldest of all Dravidian languages?) certainly does not have aspirated consonants (though aspirated sounds are sometimes used in loanwords). And certainly Sanskrit did profoundly influence Malayalam during the Middle Ages, when poetry was often written in a highly Sanskritized version of Malayalam known as "Manipravalam" (maaNipravaaLam). Cygnus_hansa, thank you for understanding and for replying. And sorry about the long complaint! And Sukh, I never knew that Punjabi managed aspirated consonants so intricately. Thank you!--Kuaichik 04:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I think people are confusing "having aspirated consonants" and "having letters that in some way correspond to aspirated consonants". Most Dravidian languages, regardless of the fact that they might have "gha"/"dha"/etc. in their alphabets, do not have aspirated consonants in the actual languages (contrastively). To compare with another language, consider French - in the French alphabet, there is a letter "h", even though there is no consonant sound [h] in their language at all. The fact that the letter exists in the alphabet can be completely irrelevant if we're talking about sounds in real languages. --SameerKhan 12:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

This is not true of Kannada. ಮುಖ್ಯ mukhya, for example, is never pronounced ಮುಕ್ಯ mukya. The distinction between ಕ k and ಖ kh is a real one even in the spoken language. -- Arvind 13:53, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Sameer, I don't think anyone is confusing the two concepts besides me!! :) I'm sorry, what I meant to say was that both Kannada and Telugu have letters that correspond to aspirated consonants. However, the situation with Malayalam and Tamil is not quite like that of French. Aspirated sounds are sometimes used in Malayalam and Tamil (depending on the speaker and word in question). Arvind, mukhya may not be pronounced mukya, but is this always the case with Kannada? For example, is budhavaara (Wednesday) ever pronounced budavaara? (In Malayalam, the equivalent "buddhanaazhcha" is often pronounced "buddanaazhcha"). --Kuaichik 19:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The th/thh and dh/dhh distinction is a tough one to make, and is often glossed over in colloquial speech but it's supposed to be kept in formal speeech. Kannada DD newsreaders, for example, will observe the distinction. The distinction between k/kh and T/TH is usually kept even in colloquial speech. This simply reflects the fact that Sanskrit influence has run much deeper in Kannada and Telugu than in Malayalam. Malayalam has, in a sense, accepted Sanskrit strictly on its own terms - as someone once said, Malayalam words are written according to the orthography of Panini, but pronounced according to the phonology of Tolkappiyar. -- Arvind 23:02, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

How interesting! Thank you so much! Based on what I can recall from Keralapaniniiyam (the first Malayalam grammar book ever written in Malayalam), it seems to me that Malayalam has always had a very wavering relationship with Sanskrit. Sometimes Sanskritized Malayalam (Manipravalam) was favored, sometimes Tamilized Malayalam ("Paattu"?) was used, and quite often both were mixed together. Also, Malayalam pronounciation may vary quite significantly by regional dialect, social class, etc.--Kuaichik 23:19, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

By the way, if this discussion is getting out of hand (i.e. if I'm causing it to just drag on), please, please let me know!--Kuaichik 23:22, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Clearly the Dravidian languages don't form one monolithic bloc in this regard. Each one has a different phonological system, obviously, although they share a lot of features with each other that are not shared among Indic languages. Anyhow, either way, I just removed the reference to language types, keeping on the vague "in Sanskrit and many other languages of India", which is certainly not inaccurate in any perspective. --SameerKhan 09:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this edit. Thanks, Sameer! --Kuaichik 15:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Aspirated consonants are indeed a feature of Indo-Aryan languages. Proto-Tamil and modern Tamil do not have them, and afaiks, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada also dont use them in native words. In Sanskrit loanwords, which are massive in these three, aspirated consonants are used. They are shown in orthography but may or may not be realized phonetically. Cygnus_hansa 14:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think that the situation with Tamil is a bit more complicated than you suggest. Nowadays, I think, educated Tamilians (in particular) often use aspirated consonants when pronouncing some loan-words. Of course, my knowledge of Tamil is very limited, but I have a hunch that (in particular) the word "makaap pirapO" (the Tamil transliteration of "mahaprabho") would be pronounced "mahaaprabho" by educated Tamil-speakers. Also "Madras coffee" may be spelled "mathiraas kaappii" but is pronounced "Madraas kOfii" sometimes. In any case, I would be careful when saying that "(p)roto-Tamil and modern Tamil do not have [aspirated consonants]." --Kuaichik 21:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As long as we are having this collegial discussion (and I am enjoying it greatly) I should point out that there is another subtlety that is often missed when talking about these matters. What, exactly, do we mean when we say that a language "has" a sound? For example, would you say that English has aspirated consonants? In one sense, English certainly does. The p in pit is quite definitely aspirated in careful speech. "Ah," you might say, "but English doesn't have an unaspirated p sound." To the contrary, the p in spit is definitely unaspirated. Does English have aspirated stops? Despite the forgoing, I would still say "no", because the aspiration can be predicted from context. In the brain of an English speaker (if I may be so fanciful) there is only one sort of p; the aspiration is supplied by rule and is completely redundant. So while English may have p in both aspirated and unaspirated forms, this is merely phonetic; phonologically the distinction is not present. Arvind's example of mukya versus mukhya in Kannada, however, shows that (at least some register of) Kannada has a phonological aspiration distinction, unlike English. The example is a true minimal pair, one that could not be matched in English.

But to conclude. I think we have consensus that SameerKhan's edit was quite appropriate. The aspiration distinction is clearly native to Indic, and (I think we'll agree) rarer in Dravidian, and where we find it in Dravidian it is probably due to long cultural contact between the Indic and Dravidian language communities. And I think we'll also agree that the interaction between the two systems has produced some intricate and fascinating effects. ACW 04:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think we have a consensus as well. But, ohh, please, please, please be careful in your analysis of Arvind's example. This is only one example, and it is quite possible that there is an alternative explanation that you may or may not have considered, of which you may or may not have been aware: in some South Indian languages (certainly in Malayalam), letters preceding (and combined with) the sound "ya" must retain their original and formal sound. For example, in Malayalam, Madhya Pradesh would be pronounced maddhya pradESam and not madya pradESam. There is a special reason for this (in this particular case): maddhya means middle whereas madya refers to alcohol (the word madya appears to be related to the word mead; both may derive from Sanskrit madhu "honey." I know that "mead" is from "madhu.") --Kuaichik 05:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait a minute...I guess that only supports your point that "Kannada has a phonological...distinction!" Never mind! :-P --Kuaichik 05:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Or does it??? Sheesh, I never thought it was possible to confuse oneself so much and so quickly!!--Kuaichik 05:13, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

So it looks like the status of these sounds in Dravidian languages is similar to the status of sounds borrowed from Persian and Arabic into Indic languages. While most Indic languages make no phonological distinction between velar and uvular sounds, voiceless aspirated stops and their corresponding voiceless fricatives, voiced stops and their corresponding voiced fricatives, etc., there are some words where some speakers of some Indic languages make such distinctions. In the case of many Urdu and Hindi speakers, for example, these distinctions have reached the status of phonemic contrast (phonological distinction). In the case of many Gujarati, Oriya, and Bengali speakers, these contrasts do not exist at all. Even within languages, speakers differ, depending on many factors ranging from familiarity with the Persian and Arabic languages to the context of the speech act. At least in the case of Bengali (the language of all my current linguistic study), few would say that sounds like [z] or [x] are contrastive in the standard language, although some Bengalis may use them in borrowings. Typically, sounds such as these are described in paragraphs following the main phonemic inventory charts, or in footnotes. Similarly, the sound [x] is not included in the phonemic inventory of RP or American English, even if the sound has been borrowed in a number of words of Scottish, Yiddish, German, etc., origins. Many English speakers even have minimal pairs such as "lock" vs. "loch", but even so, this distinction is only marginally phonemic at best. Anyhow, I don't know very much about Dravidian languages, so maybe this is irrelevant or pointless... --SameerKhan 05:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Also - I know this is off-topic... but "mead" is cognate with "madhu", not from "madhu". Both words come from the same original Proto-Indo-European word, and were not borrowed one way or another. And that's the end of my random nitpicky comment, haha. --SameerKhan 05:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the long delay in replying. First, I apologize for the inaccuracy ("from madhu") :)

The status of aspirated consonants in Malayalam (the only Dravidian language I actually know) is, I would say, somewhat similar to the status of borrowed sounds in Hindustani (i.e. Hindi/Urdu). A "highbrow" speaker of Urdu or a singer would often pronounce a word like qayaamat with a uvular stop /q/. But in practice, many native-speakers of Urdu (or Hindi) might just pronounce the word as kayaamat, with a velar stop /k/.

Similarly, a "highbrow" speaker of Malayalam or a Malayalee singer would often pronounce a word like nakham (nail) with the aspirated stop "kh." However, most Malayalees would not (at least not in an everyday context). Interestingly, it seems that Malayalees usually do this without even realizing it. (Because there are separate letters for aspirates in the Malayalam alphabet, and Kerala has a fairly high literacy rate, many Malayalees are easily confused between spelling and their actual pronounciation. The spelling influences their perception of their own pronounciation. So they may think they pronounced a word like nakham with an aspirated stop, even though they just replaced the stop with /h/). --Kuaichik 14:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)