IndoPersica

Carton Network

2012-02-05T16:39:00.001+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com
Visit http://fon.gs/indopersica for more

Shop for purchasing old cartons and newspapers. Seen in Somajiguda, Hyderabad.

Learning Indian scripts based on shape similarity

2012-02-04T20:47:00.001+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com
Visit http://fon.gs/indopersica for more

“An Introduction To Tamil Script – Reading & Writing” was the book that helped me learn to read Tamil. I first picked it up more than 8 years ago, and made good strides thanks to its rather novel approach, effectively being able to read Tamil fairly well within a month.

This book, authored by two of the most respected names in Indian linguistics – Debi Prasanna Pattanayak and MS Thirumalai – and originally published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in 1980, uses a method we could call the ‘Shape Similarity Method’. Unlike the traditional method of teaching Indic alphabets – which involves teaching vowel letters followed by consonant letters, and then followed by the special forms of vowels when attached to consonants (vowel signs or mātrā) – this book starts off with letters that have the simplest shape, and slowly moves on to more complicated ones.

Also deviating from tradition, vowel signs / mātrā are taught before the individual vowel letters themselves. Here again, the books begins with the vowel signs that have the simplest shape and then goes on to the more complicated ones (such as signs that come before the consonant).

Renu Gupta in her paper “Initial literacy in Devanagari: What Matters to Learners” mentions that for members of the South Asian diaspora wishing to learn their heritage language, learning the script presents an additional hurdle. This is also true of Indians in India who would want (or need) to learn a script, for instance, the script used in the state or region they currently live in. On a related note, I constantly encounter a number of young people – almost all from urban areas, I should add – who are able to speak their mother tongue to a reasonable extent but are unable to read it well or at all.

In such a context, this shape-based learning methodology seems to be an extremely useful tool to help adult learners learn new scripts, for whom time is limited and similarities in shape can prove confusing if the script is taught the traditional way.

Though Gupta in her paper mentions that “[t]he effectiveness of the shape similarity method is not clear because the results have not been documented”, she goes on to say that “there may be some advantages in using this approach… [f]or literate adults”. I agree wholeheartedly with the latter statement, as I myself have been through this experience and can vouch for its effectiveness.

Unfortunately, it seems that CIIL hasn’t given Google Books permission to publish (even a part of) their wonderful publications on script learning, which is a pity, because the method used in these books is a highly practical and innovative one and has potential to help adults in the subcontinent become multi-scriptal instead of just multilingual – a huge practical benefit.

Here is a picture of the first page of the Tamil script book (I hope this isn’t a violation of copyright; it’s just one page!) –

Thankfully, CIIL has taken at least some of their script-teaching material online. Their Kannada script page, which also uses the Script Similarity Method, is available at http://www.ciil-learnkannada.net/ccck/webpages/contents/script.htm (you might have to create a user account and log in, and also download special fonts – it’s really unfortunate that a body like the CIIL has still not moved to Unicode).

Pragmatic South Asian Romanisation :: Khayaal aapka

2011-07-11T18:13:00.003+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

A few days ago, I’d blogged about the romanisation of Brahui and Balochi, which invariably brought up the topic of romanisation of South Asian languages in general. With such romanisation affecting our daily lives – at least in India – in a considerable way, it seemed like a good excuse to delve into the matter of why there seems to be so much uncertainty about how to write names and words of Indian or South Asian origin in the Roman/Latin script.

Note: The term ‘transliteration’ normally refers to a one-to-one replacement of characters of one script with those of another script, while the term ‘romanisation’ can mean (i) transliteration only into the Roman script, or (ii) a sound-based transcription into the Roman script, with no regard to the characters used in the original script. In this article, I have used ‘romanisation’ to mean point (i) above. I have used the word ‘transcription’ to describe any occurrences of point (ii) above.

The origins of romanisation in South Asia are of course traceable to the British Raj, and a system of romanising and/or transcribing local place names for surveying purposes was developed by one William Wilson Hunter. The resulting system therefore came to be known as the Hunterian system of romanisation.

While the Hunterian system was reasonably suitable for romanising Hindi and related Indo-Aryan languages – albeit with some uncertainties – it did not provide the means to unambiguously romanise certain characters belonging to scripts of Dravidian or Tibeto-Burman languages, or even of other Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali.

In 1894, the International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) was established, but was geared towards a lossless romanisation of Sanskrit – an extremely phonetic language, where the script matched the pronunciation almost completely.

This system, as its name suggested, was aimed at romanising only Sanskrit, and therefore failed to address the romanisation of characters not occurring in Sanskrit, such as some characters occurring only in the scripts of Sinhalese, Dravidian and Tibeto-Burman languages etc.

Also, since many modern South Asian languages that used Brahmi-derived scripts (also called Indic scripts) no longer had a one-to-one character-sound mapping, or in other words were no longer truly phonetic—due to inevitable evolution—their romanisation according to IAST threw up its fair share of issues, as it did with the Hunterian system.

The National Library at Calcutta romanisation (NLC) issued in 1988 expanded on the IAST to include missing romanisation for certain characters in the scripts of Dravidian and Eastern Indo-Aryan languages. However, it too did not provide romanisations for certain characters in Tibeto-Burman languages (Ladakhi, Dzongkha, Tibetan proper, Lepcha etc.).

In the meantime, there also appeared the UNGEGN (1972, focussing only on romanising place names), ALA-LC (1997 latest) and ISCII (1991) romanisation standards for various Indic scripts. Out of these, ISCII, the Indian Script Code for Information Interchange, was mainly designed as a system for representing Indic scripts on computers, but also addressed the issue of romanisation to quite an extent. It played a major part in the correlation and logical organisation of Brahmic script code points, on which the Unicode blocks for Indic scripts were later based, but it too had certain shortcomings.

More than a century after the IAST was invented, the ISO 15919 standard was introduced in 2001, which essentially tried to gap any holes present in any of the current romanisation systems, and by those standards, was very comprehensive. It even included proposed romanisations for characters derived from Perso-Arabic in Brahmi-based scripts.

For some reason though, the ISO 15919 system still fell short in terms of the aforementioned romanisations for Tibeto-Burman languages. Also, since the Devanagari version of Kashmiri was not codified till later that decade, romanisation for Kashmiri too did not find mention in this system.

It may be argued that most of the above systems addressed only romanisations for Indic scripts, i.e., scripts derived from the Brahmi script, and therefore, are not intended to address the romanisations of Perso-Arabic-derived and Tibetan scripts.

However, the Tibetan script is Brahmi-derived, and therefore, would logically have formed part of any such system (a possible reason I could think of as to why Tibetan has been left uncovered is the presence of alternate romanisation systems for it such as Wylie and THL).

None of the above systems make any provisions for scripts not based on Brahmi or Perso-Arabic, such as Ol Chiki.

Add to all this the fact that in addition to a character-for-character transliteration, there are other phonetic considerations (e.g. unpronounced or multiple-sound Indic characters) to be taken into account when coming up with a romanisation system. In some of these systems, such considerations are incompletely or not addressed.

These doubts essentially mean (i) these romanisation systems are employable only in certain restricted contexts, either academic, or when referring only to a select few languages and scripts, and (ii) there exists no consistent romanisation scheme usable for all South Asian languages in general, irrespective of origin or script.

A comparison of the Hunterian and ISO 15919 systems, along with UN & ALA-LC romanisation schemes as applicable for certain Devanagari-based languages can be found here.

1) Hunterian System :: accepted in Kurrachee, not in Cawnpore

Examining the positive and not-so-positive points of each of the romanisation systems mentioned previously, let’s have a look first at the Hunterian system. It –

a) tried to ensure a character-for-character romanisation (except for diphthongs, aspirate consonants and some other consonants, whose romanisations used digraphs)

b) represented long vowels with an acute accent (later changed to a macron in 1954) over the romanised vowel character:

आ /aː/ = á
का /kaː/ = ká

c) took practicality into consideration (e.g. represented long vowels at the end of a word without an acute accent/macron, since word-ending vowels in many Indo-Aryan languages are pronounced long irrespective of whether they are written as long or short)

d) drew inspiration from existing English character-to-sound mappings:

श् / ष् /ɕ ~ ʃ/ = sh
च् /t͡ɕ/ = ch
ज् /d͡ʑ/ = j
य् /j/ = y

It also –

e) did not (initially) distinguish between retroflex and non-retroflex consonants:

ट् /ʈ/ and त् /t̪/ = t
ड् /ɖ/ and द् /d̪/ = d
ळ् /ɭ/ (Marathi et al) and ल् /l̪ ~ l/ = l
ड़् /ɽ/ and र् /r/ = r

The Hunterian system seemed to have been supplemented later by underdots for retroflex characters, as can be found in some dictionaries published in British times, although I could not find any info on when exactly this happened and who was the first one to do so.

f) romanised vowel nasalization /◌̃/, the dental/alveolar nasal stop /n̪ ~ n/ and the retroflex nasal stop /ɳ/ all as n

g) did not distinguish between multiple pronunciations of a particular character in the same language:
Marathi and Nepali च्, representing the sounds /t͡ɕ/ as well as /t͡sʰ/, was romanised ch for both sounds, presumably since the two different sounds are unmarked in their native scripts as well

h) did not distinguish between multiple pronunciations of a particular character in different languages:

ज्ञ = Hindi /ɡjə/ vs. Marathi /dnʲə/ (cf. Eastern Nagari equivalent character জ্ঞ with Bengali pronunciation /ɡɡɔ/)

i) did not provide for clear-cut transliteration of certain sounds occurring in Dravidian languages (and scripts):
எ ఎ ಎ എ – short /e/ (as opposed to long /eː/) ஒ ఒ ಒ ഒ – short /o/ (as opposed to long /oː/) ழ் ഴ് – /ɻ/

In spite of these deficiencies, the Hunterian model, seemingly the first attempt at conjuring a logical romanisation system for Indian names and words, did usher in some sanity among all the orthographical madness. Most importantly, it provided the base for most other romanisation schemes that followed.

After all, if it were not for this system, we might still be referring to Pakistan’s largest city as Kurrachee, Scinde!

2) International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration :: takṣaśilā gets the nod, /koːɻikkoːɽ/ doesn’t

The International Alphabet for Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) intends to be a lossless romanisation for Sanskrit, and according to Wikipedia, for Pali as well.

This romanisation system, while obviously building on the Hunterian system, makes a few changes –

a) removes redundant or ambiguity-causing characters from digraphs in the Hunterian system:

ङ् /ŋ/ = Hunterian ng, IAST ṅ
च् /t͡ɕ/ = Hunterian ch, IAST c
ञ् /ɲ/ = Hunterian ny, IAST ñ
श् /ɕ ~ ʃ/ = Hunterian sh, IAST ś

b) specifies an underdot for retroflex character romanisations to distinguish them from non-retroflex ones:

ट् /ʈ/ = Hunterian t, IAST ṭ
ड् /ɖ/ = Hunterian d, IAST ḍ
ष् /ʂ/ = Hunterian sh, IAST ṣ

c) provides a unique romanisation for ऋ /r̩/ = ṛ

d) provides a unique romanisation for anusvara and visarga:

ं /◌̃m/ = IAST ṃ
ः /ɦ/ = IAST ḥ

e) uses the romanisation h to represent the glottal fricative as well as aspiration (for stop consonants), as did the Hunterian system:

ह /ɦ/ = Hunterian & IAST h
ख /kʰ/ = Hunterian & IAST kh
भ /bʱ/ = Hunterian & IAST bh

However, since this system was intended purely for the romanisation of Sanskrit (and the derived Pali), characters not present in Sanskrit are not covered by this system. Hence the romanisation of any non-Sanskrit characters, such as:

– Tamil ழ் and Malayalam ഴ് – pronounced /ɻ/
– characters for the Dravidian short vowels /e/ and /o/
– Tibetan ཚ /t͡sʰ/ and ཞ /ʑ/
– characters in various scripts for the nasaliser (chandrabindu) ँ /◌̃/, and
– new invented characters such as ऍ and ऑ, used to represent English /æ/ and /ɔ/

are out of the scope of this system.

Also, the IAST uses the romanisation ḷ for the character ऌ /l̩/ and its equivalents. This conflicts with the romanisation for ळ /ɭ/ — also ḷ — used in Pali and Vedic Sanskrit. I couldn’t find any info on whether there was an alternate non-conflicting romanisation provided for the latter.

In addition, if ever considered as a daily-life romanisation system for South Asian scripts, some may raise the following issues:

– how would the romanisation of scripts used for Indo-Aryan languages be affected by schwa deletion—a feature that is quite predictable in northern languages like Hindi, Punjabi et al, but not so much in southern ones like Marathi

– whether people can ‘adjust’ to the representation of च् /t͡ɕ/ = c, श् /ɕ ~ ʃ/ = ś and so on, since we are all ‘so used to’ च् /t͡ɕ/ = ch and श् /ɕ ~ ʃ/ = sh, due to English’s influence on our daily lives.

3) National Library at Calcutta System :: Truly national

The NLC romanisation system, issued in 1988, extends the IAST by the following characters:

a) எ ఎ ಎ എ – short /e/ (as opposed to long /eː/) = e
b) ஒ ఒ ಒ ഒ – short /o/ (as opposed to long /oː/) = o
c) ळ् ળ્ (ਲ਼੍) ଳ୍ ள் ళ్ ಳ್ ള് – /ɭ/ – ḷ
d) ற் ఱ్ ಱ್ റ് – alveolar /r, ɾ/ – ṟ
e) ன் – alveolar /n/ (as opposed to Tamil dental /n̪/) – ṉ
f) ழ் ഴ് – /ɻ/ – ḻ

The following modifications were made to existing characters in the IAST:

g) ए and its equivalents – /eː/ = ē h) ओ and its equivalents – /oː/ = ō

that is, e and o without macrons represented their short versions only.

I have not been able to find clear-cut specifications on the romanisation of the following characters according to the NLC system:

i) ड़् /ɽ/ and ढ़् /ɽʱ/

An article on French Wikipedia says that the NLC romanisations for these characters are d̂ and d̂h. However, it also provides ṛ and ṛh as possible NLC romanisations, which conflicts with ऋ = ṛ. Specific sources for this info are not provided in the article.

I did find this link to the ISCII romanisation scheme, though. There is a mention of d̂ and d̂h in it, but no mention of whether it forms a part of the NLC system or not.

In addition, I remember seeing a reference to ऋ = ṛ and ड़् = ṙ a long time (almost 10 years) ago, but was unable to find it again on the internet.

j) Chandrabindu ँ /◌̃/ = ◌̃, m̐, n̐?

k) No mention of transliteration of scripts of Tibeto-Burman languages. Sinhalese also does not find a mention, although I would imagine that it was excluded as the NLC system was designed with ‘Indian’ languages in mind.

Other links:
NLC chart at IIT Madras ‘Acharya’ project

4) ISCII :: Information and script interchange

The Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII, also known as IS 13194) released in 1991 was mainly a coding scheme for computers and related devices, which had a system of ‘code points’ onto which equivalent letters from various Indic scripts were mapped. Thus, the following characters – क ক ਕ ક க క ಕ ക – were all mapped onto the same code point, as they were ‘equivalent’ characters, all representing the sound /k/.

By changing the script specification, say from Devanagari to Gurmukhi, the Devanagari character would be ‘transliterated’ into the equivalent Gurmukhi character. What actually would happen is that the code point would remain the same; only the ‘rendering’ would change as per the script specified.

In other words, the code points were the deep layer, and the script itself was the surface layer. Changing the surface layer would provide a ‘transliteration’ of a particular character or string of characters.

To make up for the lack of characters in Devanagari that would be equivalent to certain Dravidian-script characters, such as Tamil எ /e/, ஒ /o/, ன் /n/, ற் /r, ɾ/ and ழ் /ɻ/, ISCII introduced ‘invented’ Devanagari equivalents for these characters, namely ऎ, ऒ, ऩ्, ऱ् and ऴ् respectively.

According to the Wikipedia ISCII article (retrieved 2011-07-09):

“One motivation for the use of a single encoding is the idea that it will allow easy transliteration from one writing system to another. However, there are enough incompatibilities [to prove] that this is not really a practical idea.”

According to the same article:

“ISCII has not been widely used outside of certain government institutions and has now been rendered largely obsolete by Unicode.”

The article also states that Unicode “largely preserves the ISCII layout within each block”, seemingly a useful legacy of ISCII.

Speaking of transliteration, ISCII did provide a romanisation scheme as well (see ‘Other links’ below), making use of diacritical characters and based on the NLC system. Some of the main points were –

a) included romanisations for some obscure, Sanskrit-only characters such as ऌ /l̩/ and its equivalents = ḻ

b) transliterated Tamil ழ் and Malayalam ഴ് – /ɻ/ = ẕ

This obviously contradicts the NLC system, which romanises ழ் and ഴ് as ḻ

Instead, ISCII uses ḻ as a romanisation for ऌ /l̩/ (see point a) above). I wasn’t able to find enough references to throw light on this conflict.

c) transliterated ड़् /ɽ/ and ढ़् /ɽʱ/ (and its equivalents) as d̂ and d̂h respectively.

As mentioned in the previous section on the NLC system, I wasn’t able to find sufficient resources to verify whether this was a specification of the NLC system or an invention of the ISCII.

d) provided transliterations for certain Brahmic characters used to represent certain Perso-Arabic sounds such as /z/, /f/, /x/ and /ɣ/

e) did not include transliterations/romanisations for Brahmic scripts used for Tibeto-Burman languages

The Romanisation of Brahui and Balochi :: more than just Gaddafi vs. Qadhafi

2011-07-01T23:09:00.009+05:30

While surfing Wikipedia, I came across the article on the Brahui language. This article stated that the Brahui Language Board (BLB) has approved a new Roman orthography for the language.

At first glance, the orthography seems to suit the sound system of the language quite well. And presumably so, because it’s a constructed one, unlike English orthography, which has turned out the way it has due to it having had too many cooks over the years.

However, what is particularly striking is the use of the accented or diacritical characters in the orthography. All such characters are either from the Latin-1 Supplement or Latin Extended-A subranges of Unicode.

This seems a rather pragmatic choice, as the characters in these subranges are used by a number of European languages and therefore, are present in many fonts available.

However, this also means that the orthography varies markedly from the general systems of romanisation used for South Asian languages (Hunterian, IAST, National Library at Calcutta romanisation (NLC), ISO 15919) in its use of diacritical characters.

Typically, these romanisation schemes feature a number of characters either from the Latin Extended Additional subrange, or that are not encoded separately in Unicode at all and need to be entered as a base letter + diacritic combination (see this link on ‘precomposed’ and ‘decomposed’ characters in Unicode).

The table below shows some of the variations present in the Brahui orthography as compared to one of the ‘standard’ transliterations for a particular letter/sound –

Roman Brahui	NLC, ISO 15919	IPA
ð	ḍ	ɖ
ŧ	ṭ	ʈ
ļ	ḷ	ɭ
ŕ	ṛ	ɽ
ş	ś	ɕ ~ ʃ
á	ā	a(ː)

If the letters in the first column above show up properly on your computer/device, and the ones in the second column don’t, then this probably vindicates the BLB’s choice of choosing letters that would show up correctly on as many already existing devices as possible.

Here’s where the spanner gets thrown into the works –

Apparently a system for romanising the Balochi language – a language spoken in the same region as Brahui, and with a very similar sound system – has also been decided upon (see this link). Curiously, all the diacritical letters chosen for Balochi romanisation are also from the Unicode subgroups used for Brahui, but different from the letters used for Brahui (and of course from any existing Indic romanisation system).

This scenario throws up two questions –

– Considering that Brahui and Balochi are spoken in the same region (Balochistan, Pakistan), have a large number of speakers bilingual in both languages and most importantly, share a very similar phonology, why couldn’t there have been more cooperation in choosing Roman orthographies for these languages? The result would most likely have been a single romanisation system suitable for both languages.

– What is the use of the various existing South Asian language romanisation systems, if they are being bypassed for individually tailored romanisations?

Brahui and Balochi aren’t alone in having faced romanisation woes. The various Turkic languages of Central Asia have had a similar story, and for a much longer time (see this Wikipedia article on how their orthographies have been tinkered with over the years).

However, most of these languages (Turkish, Azeri, Tatar) seem to have settled on more-or-less similar Roman orthographies, with the rebels being Uzbek and Turkmen.

Other links:
Brahui Roman Orthography
Brahui Language Board

Cast Away

2010-02-13T01:00:00.005+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

”/kʷʌnit̪əri aˑsəl/”, said the office boy to whoever he was speaking to on the phone – Marathi for “Someone will be there”.

Strangely, I’d heard the same two words being spoken by a visitor to our office a couple of days earlier. The only difference was, the visitor’s words sounded more like koˑɳiˑt̪əriˑ əseˑl.

The reason these two people pronounced the Marathi words ‘कोणीतरी असेल’ differently could be traced back to their social backgrounds. It so happened that the office boy belonged to the (historically) ‘lower caste’, and the visitor to the (historically) ‘higher caste’.

Marathi is pronounced in a variety of ways, depending on the speaker’s home region and social status. I’m somewhat familiar only with Puneri Marathi, as it’s not my mother tongue. But even within Puneri Marathi, there’s a noticeable difference between the pronunciation and vocabulary of speakers of different social strata.

Look at the following differences in the pronunciation of the same words between speakers of different social strata –

*Standard Written Marathi*	IPA - ‘Higher caste’	IPA - ‘Lower caste’	*English meaning*
होता	ɦoˑt̪aˑ	wʱʌt̪aˑ	was
मॅडम	mæˑɽəm	mjaˑɽəm	‘madam’
मध्ये	məd̪ʱeˑ	məd̪iˑ	in, middle
अलीकडे	əliˑkəɽeˑ	aˑliˑkəɽeˑ	this side
बॉल	bɔˑl	bwaˑl	ball
एक	eˑk	jək	one
कप	kəp	kəf	cup
फोन	foˑn	pʰwʌn	phone
बाहेर	baˑɦeˑr	bʱaˑjər	outside

While the speech of the ‘higher caste’ is better reflected by standard Marathi spelling, we can also establish a few patterns between the speech of the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ castes –

eˑ –> jə
oˑ –> wʌ
æˑ –> jaˑ
ɔˑ –> waˑ
f –> pʰ
ə at the beginning of a word –> aˑ
p at the end of a word –> f

An interesting one is the pattern
CVCʱV –> CʱVCV

and its derivations
CVɦV –> CʱVV

and
VɦV –> ɦVV

Consider the pronunciation of बाहेर ‘outside’.

If C = consonant, and V = vowel, then

baˑɦeˑr (CVɦV) –> bʱaˑeˑr (CʱVV)

Here’s another example. Consider the word पुढे ‘ahead, forward’ –

puɽʱeˑ (CVCʱV) –> pʰuɽeˑ (CʱVCV)

And another one. Here’s the word आहे ‘is’ –

aˑɦeˑ (VɦV) –> ɦaˑeˑ (ɦVV)

Vocabulary, too, seems to vary depending on speaker background, as can be seen here –

*Commonly used ‘higher caste’ word*	*Commonly used ‘lower caste’ word*	*English meaning*
पण pəɳ	बी biˑ	also
ऊन करणे uˑn kərɳeˑ	गरम करणे ɡərəm kərneˑ	to warm (food)
किल्ली killiˑ	चावी ʨaˑwiˑ	key (n.)
स्वच्छ swəʨʨʰə	साफ saˑf	clean (adj.)
उघडणे uɡʱəɽɳeˑ	खोलणे kʰoˑlɳeˑ	to open
मिळणे miɭɳeˑ	भेटणे bʱeˑʈɳeˑ	to find

Note to readers: It is not my implicit or explicit intention to categorise any social or demographic group as of a ‘high’ or ‘low’ status. These words (and their derivations) have deliberately been kept within quotes in the above text, where they refer only to a historical classification of social groups in Marathi-speaking areas and the rest of India. Follow the Wikipedia links to learn more about the Indian caste system.

Dogs Bastard

2009-11-28T13:11:00.002+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

Google has unveiled some new features for its Translate feature, including some for Hindi. Considering that they’ve introduced some amazing functionality over the last few months, including the Translator Toolkit, I decided to see how much their machine translation has improved.

Two of the new features include a) typing non-Roman-script languages in Roman script, which is then automatically transliterated into the correct script and b) translate-as-you-type.

So in went Dharmender Paaji’s trademark line. With translate-as-you-type, I got the following result –

Quite accurate, considering that it’s not easy for a machine to distinguish that कुत्ते /kʊt̪ːeː/ is not just the plural of कुत्ता /kʊt̪ːaː/ ‘dog’, but also the vocative case for this word.

I continued typing, and translate-as-you-type slowly came into its own –

While probably an appropriate representation of how Dharmender Paaji himself would have translated his famous dialogue into English – he once called Bobby Deol ‘a piece of his heart’ (cf. जिगर का टुकड़ा /ʥiɡər kaː ʈʊkɽaː/) – what intrigued me was why the same word was translated ‘fucking’, then ‘motherfucker’, and eventually ‘bastard’.

Maybe it was Google Translate getting rid of some deep-rooted frustration. I felt sorry for it and made its task easier by improving the punctuation –

Comma after कुत्ते /kʊt̪ːeː/ gave improved results. But it was still lacking the required effect. In went the exclamation marks –

Why the exclamation marks cause ‘dog’ to become ‘dogs’, and ‘you bastard’ to ‘bastard’, I’m not too sure.

Playing around a little more, I got rid of an exclamation mark, which gave me –

I still haven’t been able to understand when कमीना /kəmiːnaː/ means ‘fucking’, and when ‘bastard’.

PS: For those who can’t read Hindi, here’s that immortal dialogue in the IPA -
kʊt̪ːeː ! kəmiːneː ! mɛ̃ː t̪eːraː xuːn piː ʥaːũːɡaː !
roughly meaning -
‘Dog! Wretch! I’m going to drink your blood!’

This blog post (is) interesting

2009-08-19T15:12:00.001+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

While switching between my native Tamil and Hindi/Marathi, it often strikes me how Tamil seems more ‘compact’, not only in terms of agglutination, but also in eliminating words where not ‘necessary’.

Take for example, simple subject-predicate sentences such as “My name is …”. Tamil does not use the word ‘is’, known as the copula; instead, it is implicit.

On the other hand, in Hindi, it is obligatory to use the copula ‘is’. In Marathi, one can get away without using it.

It got me thinking whether there is a pattern to this phenomenon. I scouted the Net for samples from various subcontinental languages of the sentence ‘my name is …’ –

Starting off with the most widely spoken languages –

Hindi - मेरा नाम अरविन्द है
Urdu - میرا نام اروند ہے
Hindi/Urdu IPA - /meːraˑ naːm ɐrʋɪn̪d̪ ɦɛˑ/

lit. “my name Arvind is”, following the general SOV syntax sequence of South Asian languages

Further North –

Kashmiri - मॆ छु नाव अरविन्द
Kashmiri IPA - /me cʰu naːʋ ərʋin̪d̪/

lit. “my is name Arvind”, which makes Kashmiri the odd one out in following a SVO sequence

Moving westwards, we find that the scheme of things remains pretty much the same -

Panjabi - ਮੇਰਾ ਨਾਂ ਅਰਵਿੰਦ ਹੈ
Panjabi IPA - /meːraˑ nãˑ ərʋɪn̪d̪ ɛˑ/

Sindhi - منهنجو نالو اروند آهي
Sindhi IPA - /mũɦĩɟoˑ naːloˑ ɐrəʋin̪d̪ aːɦeˑ/

lit. “my name Arvind is”

Towards the western fringes of the subcontinent, the Iranian languages exhibit a very similar structure and syntax, with the -

Pashto - زمه نوم اروند دی
Pashto IPA - /zəma nuːm ɐrʋin̪d̪ daj/

Balochi - منى نام اروند انت
Balochi IPA - /məni naːm ɐrʋin̪d̪ en̪t̪/

lit. “my name Arvind is”

Outside the western edge of the subcontinent, Farsi (Persian), a language that has heavily influenced subcontinental languages over the years, shows some variance in structure and syntax -

Farsi - اسمم اروینده
Farsi IPA - /esmæm ærʋinde/
lit. “name-my Arvind-is”

Farsi (Persian) does not use ‘personal pronouns’ per se, but uses a sort of pronomial suffix system, where the appropriate personal pronoun is suffixed to the noun,

In this case, the noun is اسم /esm/ - ‘name’, and the suffix م- /æm/, signifying ‘my’.

The copula is the /e/ following ‘Arvind’, again a suffix.

Back eastward, Nepali seems to behave in a fashion similar to the other northern subcontinental languages.

Nepali - मेरो नाम अरविन्द हो
Nepali IPA - /meːroˑ naːm ɒr(ɒ)bin̪d̪ ɦoˑ/
lit: “my name Arvind is”

But as we move further eastward, we find the copula disappearing in such simple subject-predicate sentences. Take for example Bangla (Bengali), Asamiya (Assamese) and Odia (Oriya) -

Bangla - আমার নাম অরবিন্দ
Bangla IPA - /amaɾ nam ɔɾobin̪d̪o/

Asamiya - মোৰ নাম অৰবিন্দ
Asamiya IPA - /moɹ nam ɒɹɔbindɔ/

Odia - ମୋର ନାମ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ
Odia IPA - /morɔ namɔ ɔrɔbin̪d̪ɔ/

lit. “my name Arvind”

A similar disappearing act is observed as we move down south, but in a more gradual fashion. Gujarati and Marathi make it sort of optional to use the copula, i.e., you will be correct if you use or don’t use the copula (Of course, in complicated sentences, this might not always apply, but we’re only talking about simple subject-predicate sentences here) -

Gujarati - મારું નામ અરવિંદ (છે)
Gujarati IPA - /maːru naːm ərwin̪d̪ (cʰeˑ)/

Marathi - माझं नाव अरविंद (आहे)
Marathi IPA - /maːzʱə naːw ərwin̪d̪ (aːɦeˑ)/

Lit. “my name Arvind (is)”

Go further south and the copula disappears completely -

Konkani - म्हजें नांव अरविंद
Konkani IPA - /mʱɔɟẽ nãːw ɔrwin̪d̪/

Kannada - ನನ್ನ ಹೆಸರು ಅರವಿಂದ್
Kannada IPA - /n̪ɐnnɐ ɦesər ɐrəʋin̪d̪

Telugu - నా పేరు అరవింద్
Telugu IPA - /naː peːr ɐrəʋin̪d̪/

Malayalam - എന്റെ പേര്‍ അരവിന്ദ്
Malayalam IPA - /ʲende peːr ɐrəʋin̪d̪/

Tamil - என் பெயர் அரவிந்த்
Tamil IPA - /ʲẽ peːr ɐrəʋin̪d̪/

Sinhala - මගේ නම අරවින්ද
Sinhala IPA – /maɡeː namə arəʋin̪d̪ə/

Divehi - އަހަރެންގެ ނަމަކީ އަރަވިންދް
Divehi IPA - /aɦəreŋɡe naməkiː arəʋin̪d̪/

lit. “my name Arvind”

We can observe the following -

1) Towards the east and south of the subcontinent, the use of the copula ‘to be’ (in any of its conjugated forms) declines or is completely eliminated.

The absence of the copula is very characteristic of Dravidian languages such as Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil. And this absence of the copula seems to have influenced the Indo-Iranian Konkani, Sinhala and Divehi languages, which are spoken in areas in close geographic proximity to the Dravidian language areas.

In Indo-Iranian Gujarati and Marathi, the use of the copula verb ‘to be’ is more or less optional in the above examples. In Konkani, Sinhala and Divehi, not using the verb in such sentences is standard.

Indo-Iranian Bangla, Asamiya and Odia exhibit the loss of the copula, even though the copula is present in Tibeto-Burman and Mon-Khmer languages further east.

2) The general word order of most subcontinental languages is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), with the odd exception like Kashmiri. This phenomenon too cuts right across language family lines and is noticed in various languages, be they Indo-Iranian, Dravidian or even Tibeto-Burman in origin.

(Yes, I know that the above example sentences don’t really contain a grammatical ‘object’, but just a predicate. The SOV rule still applies.)

Can anyone help me with example sentences in Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman or Mon-Khmer languages, such as Tibetan (Tibetan proper, Balti, Ladakhi, Dzongkha), Boro, Kokborok, Meiteilon, Imar Thar and Mizo?

Loan Ranger

2009-06-28T19:36:00.002+05:30

Originally posted at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

It’s difficult for us sometimes to speak a sentence in our regional tongues without inadvertently throwing in an English word. And not just an English-derived word, but an actual, true-blue English word having its own place in the Oxford dictionary. And not because our vernaculars lack terminology for these things/ideas, but because the ‘native’ terminology simply hasn’t gained currency and the English word has stuck.

And thanks to the fact that our country was always a much sought-after tourist destination, even in historical times, we attracted people from the world over, including Persia, China, Greece, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Britain. Some of these people stayed on longer than expected, and left behind their legacy, in terms of architecture, cuisine, administration and of course, language.

While it may be common knowledge that our subcontinental languages possess a vocabulary deriving – to varying degrees – from these tongues, noteworthy is the morphing these words go through when being absorbed into the vernaculars.

The very reason this process of morphing came to my mind was when I noticed the presence of the same Portuguese-origin word in two unrelated languages – Tamil and Konkani.

What Tamil calls a ஜன்னல் /ɟənnəl/ and Konkani a जनेल /zɔnɛl/, is known in Portuguese as janela /ʒanɛlə/, and in English as ‘window’ :-)

These two Indian languages, spoken on different coasts of India, and belonging to two different language families, both use terms derived from the same Portuguese word, albeit with very different pronunciations as you can see above.

Tamil approximates the Portuguese /ʒ/ to /ɟ/, while Konkani approximates it to /z/. Also, the Portuguese vowel /a/ becomes /ə ~ ɐ/ in Tamil, while turning to /ɔ/ in Konkani.

Similarly, Arabic نصیب /nɑsˁiːb/ ‘fate’, is pronounced only slightly differently in Hindi/Urdu - /nəsiːb/, but quite differently in Marathi - /nəʃib/, and even more differently in Konkani - /nɔʃib/, after going through appropriate ‘naturalisation’ processes in each language. In fact, the Marathi and Devanagari Konkani spellings for this word reflect this naturalisation - नशीब

Let’s select an English word that is more or less found in most subcontinental languages today, in order to compare the phonetic metamorphoses that loan words go through in these various languages - Office

Hindi /ɔfɪs ~ aːfɪs ~ aːpʰɪs/, with the latter more likely to be found in rural areas

Urdu /aːfɪs/, since Urdu speakers seem to get around better with the /f/ sound. Not too different from Hindi

Bengali /ɔfɪs ~ ɔpʰis ~ ɔpʰiʃ/, again with the latter typical of a rural accent

Gujarati /ofis ~ opʰis/ – Was there ever any doubt :-)

Marathi /ɔfɪs ~ ɔpʰis/

Kannada, Telugu, Tamil /ɑːfis ~ ɑːpis/ – The open /ɔ/ is normally beyond the phonetic means of an average speaker of these languages

Malayalam /oːfis ~ oːpis/ – Malayalam is an exception among Dravidian languages in that the open /ɔ/ is replaced by closed /o/ instead of even more open /ɑ/, resulting in that characteristic ‘Mellu aaksend’!

Poor Microsoft must have had a hell of a time deciding how to transcribe ‘Microsoft Office’ into these languages during localisation.

While most of us can trace the ‘foreign’ origins of a word in our regional languages quite easily, in most cases when the word is from English or Persian/Arabic, the majority of us are oblivious to loan words that have come from other languages, such as -

Hindi चाय /caːj/, Marathi चहा /caɦaː /, Gujarati ચા /caː/, Kannada ಚಹಾ /caɦaː /, Urdu چائے /caːj/, Bengali চা /caː/ –
from the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese character 茶 /tsʰɑː˨˩/ – Tea

Tamil கக்கூஸு /kɐkkuːsɯ/, from Dutch kakhuis /kakhøjs/ ‘shit house’ – Latrine

Hindi चाबी /caːbiˑ/, from Portuguese chave /ʃaʋə/- Key

Marathi गरज, /ɡərəz/, from Arabic غرض /ɣɑrɑdˁ/– Need (n.)

The trouble with Goan Place Names

2009-03-29T21:19:00.006+05:30

Originally published at http://indopersica.blogspot.com

Sure, we’ve all heard of the ruckus created by the vandals of the MNS and Shiv Sena about changing the names Bombay and Poona to their Marathi equivalents. Their task is not yet complete though, with names like Sion, Parel, Sewri and Versova still waiting to be changed to शीव, परळ, शिवडी and वेसावे – in English I mean.

Since these organisations love to engage themselves in the occupation of name changes under the banner of getting rid of colonial vestiges, I wonder how they'd fare in Goa. Goa is rife with village names not just being spelled the Portuguese way, i.e., according to Portuguese spelling rules, but in some cases with names suitably modified to suit the Lusitanian tongue.

Take the classic case of the capital city of Goa, written पणजी in Devanagari and pronounced /pɔɳʥĩ/ in Konkani. The Portuguese of the 17^th century AD would quite obviously not have been able to pronounce the hard, retroflex /ɳ/ (written ण in Devanagari Konkani), and would have simply approximated it with a normal /n/ (represented न in Devanagari Konkani). Neither would they have been able to pronounce ज /ʥ/ very well, and would have replaced it with the sound /ʒ/, very common in Portuguese.

What they would have been able to pronounce rather easily is the nasal twang at the end of the word, with the –जी being spoken through the nose. Portuguese is full of such nasal endings (take for example the Portuguese word for ‎'yes' - sim, pronounced /sĩ/).

Taking into account all these phonetic conveniences, one would arrive at the new Lusitanised spelling of Pangim, pronounced /pɐnʒĩ/ the Portuguese way.

And a similar metamorphosis would have occurred with Goa’s second largest city, written मडगांव in Devanagari Konkani, and pronounced /mɔɽɡãw/ in Konkani.

Again, the hard ड or /ɽ/, would have proved a tongue twister to the descendants of Vasco da Gama, and therefore was suitably modified to a /r/. The /-ãw/ ending would conveniently be spelled –ão in Portuguese. Hence, one arrived at the new spelling of Margão, now pronounced /mɐrɡãw/.

This, however, was just the tip of the iceberg. With place names such as कांदोळी, कळंगुट, हणजुणें, म्हापशें, and पाळोळे next in line, one needs to be rather conversant in the Portuguese way of writing to figure out that these are the (now) famous locations of Candolim, Calangute, Anjuna, Mapuçá, and Palolem.

The region itself, known in Konkani as गोंय /ɡɔ̃j/, came to be rechristened Goa /ɡoə/ in Portuguese.

Goa passed on to Indian hands on the 19th of December, 1961 (since known as Goa Liberation Day). The place names with Portuguese-based spellings now came to be pronounced according to English spelling rules, resulting in a phonetic orgy –

Pangim, now morphed into Panjim, came to be pronounced /pʰændʒɪm/, nowhere close to the Konkani /pɔɳʥĩ/.
Candolim, originally /kan̪d̪ɔɭĩ/ in Konkani, turned into /kʰændəlɪm/, which might more or less be how you pronounce it!
The southern Goan taluk of केपें /kɛpɛ̃/, which the Portuguese spelled Quepem, now came to be called /kwɛpɛm/.

Below is a (growing) list of Goan place names in Konkani, Marathi, Portuguese and English, with the English names being pronounced according to English spelling rules in most cases, resulting in the 'funny' sounding names one seems to encounter in Goa today. The progress in most cases is clear, with the Portuguese name/spelling being derived from the Konkani name, and the English name/spelling being a corruption/derivation of the Portuguese name.

The list is available here. It should prove to be some sort of guide to how the place names are intended to be pronounced, irrespective of spelling.

Interestingly, Bombay too was an English corruption of the original Portuguese name, Bombaim /bɔ̃bãĩ̯/. Contrary to urban legend, this name had no connection with the original Marathi मुंबई.

I’m coming!!!

2009-01-27T20:24:00.002+05:30

‘Today I go,’ I said, almost in a whisper. ‘Today I leave.’

‘No goodbye,’ replied the Khazi, putting his arms around my waist and hugging me tightly. ‘Kalasha, no word, goodbye. You coming man again.’

- Jonny Bealby, For A Pagan Song

It isn’t just the Kalasha people it seems, but a whole lot of other people as well who supposedly don’t have a word for ‘goodbye’ in their vocabulary. A lot of us Indians too fall into that category. And at first glance, it seems to be more the peoples in the Deccan and south. Of course, hit me if I’m wrong.

I remembered a rather polite rickshaw wallah (a rare breed) from a few days ago, who was very chatty all the way and after dropping me home and having been paid, asked me in Hindi ‘आऊँ क्या?’ /aːũː kjaˑ/, literally meaning ‘Should I come?’ Though it’s rather non-standard usage in Hindi, it seemed to be a direct translation of the Marathi ‘येऊ का’ /jeːuˑ kaˑ/, ‘Should I come’. Quite obviously, since in Marathi culture, it’s impolite to tell someone that you’re going or leaving, which would imply that you’ve been dissatisfied with their company or that they’ve upset you in some way.

In other words, you have to specify that you are going to come back (eventually, but you’re coming back). So when you leave, you say that ‘you’re coming’!

Similar examples are found in Kannada and Tamil, which are somewhat familiar languages to me.

In Kannada, to the person who’s leaving, one says ‘ಬನ್ನಿ’ /bənni/ - ‘come’ and the person who’s leaving says to the person who’s staying ‘ಬರ್ತಿನಿ’ /bərt̪ini/ ‘I will come’. No sign of a ‘goodbye’ anywhere.

Similarly in Tamil -
Person who’s leaving - வரேன் /ʋərɛ̃ː/
Person who’s staying - வாங்க /ʋaːŋɡɔ/ or வாரங்க /ʋaːrəŋɡɔ/

Note that all these terms are considered to be used in a slightly formal/polite atmosphere. Your bum chum (at least in India) wouldn’t give a rat’s ass whether you said ’bye to him or not. If anything, you’d probably say something like ‘/cəl/’ (lit. ‘move’ or ‘run’, but in this context more like ‘OK then’) and leave.

I can think of similar such words in Gujarati (આવજો /aːʋ(ə)ɟoˑ/ ‘come’) and Telugu (వస్తాను /ʋəst̪aːnu/ ‘I will come’). But to me the whole phenomenon still seems a southern Indian one. Can’t think of, say, Hindi ‘आइए’ /aːi(j)e/ ‘come’ being a natural ‘goodbye’ word in that language. What about Bengali? And what about Sinhala or Tibetan? Any inputs?

Do note that all the aforementioned languages technically do have words for ‘goodbye’, such as the Sanskrit-derived /n̪əməst̪eˑ/, /n̪əməskaːr/ and their variants, or the Persian-derived /xʊd̪aˑ ɦaːfɪz/. However, I’d say that their usage on a day-to-day level in the southern Indian languages is relatively less than in northern Indian ones. For example, someone from UP would use /n̪əməst̪eˑ/ much more freely as a parting than someone from say, Andhra. Or for that matter, a Pakistani Punjabi would say /xʊd̪aˑ ɦaːfɪz/ much more naturally than a Bengali would.

Post a comment if you think otherwise.

To write or not to write

2009-01-10T20:03:00.001+05:30

I bumped into the Romany (Gypsy) language version of Wikipedia (http://rmy.wikipedia.org/) and saw the efforts to develop a writing system for this previously unwritten language. While most of the efforts at standardising a script seem to be targeted at developing a Latin script version, the Wikipedia employs a Devanagari equivalent as well, with the same content being displayed in both scripts on each page.

While this is an interesting idea, the reason behind which however is not yet known to me (though I presume it’s due to Romany being a South Asian language, so Devanagari being the ‘logical’ script for it), it seemed to me after reading a few pages (just reading, not understanding) that the Roman script served the purpose better than Devanagari for this language.

Of course, this is not to say that Devanagari cannot be a wonderfully phonetic script as well for this language, with the addition of just a few modifications (for example, modified letters to represent the /ts/ and /ʒ/ sounds). But in the present day scenario, I can’t help thinking that the Latin script would add to the spread of the language in a world where the Latin script is already the most widespread. Many widely spoken languages which are traditionally written in a non-Latin script have a Latin script equivalent as well -
Pinyin for Mandarin Chinese
Romaji for Japanese
RR for Korean

and some not-so-widely spoken languages too -
Dhivehi Latin for Divehi (Maldivian)

Arabic and Russian are two notable exceptions in not having one standard, widely accepted latinisation scheme.

It seems that it makes a lot of sense to have an official Latin script version for languages that do not have a script as yet, or for those which are written in another script.

Personally, I feel that the absence of such a Latin script equivalent for Indian languages like Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Tamil, as well as for Persian, has been a major hindrance in attracting learners. Learners of Mandarin Chinese and Japanese are not faced with the daunting task of having to learn to read and write all over again in a new script before they can actually begin learning to speak the language. With ad-hoc and non-phonetic transcriptions being used in learners’ books for Indian and Iranian languages, learners have no choice but to learn the native scripts for the language if they want to start pronouncing it correctly.

Like the speakers of Romany, I too come from a community which speaks a language that has no written tradition, though we have been very well versed in languages (Kannada, Tamil) geographically close to where our community was based. I wish to create a Latin script equivalent of our native tongue, whose grammar is based on Tamil and vocabulary largely on Tamil and to a lesser extent, Kannada. While the Latin script makes sense due to all the reasons outlined above, it also seems appropriate to have a Kannada script and Tamil script equivalent due to our community’s historical link to these languages. A word list yet in its infancy can be found here – http://fon.gs/hebbar, with transcriptions of words in Latin (Roman), Kannada and Tamil scripts, along with the IPA pronunciation.

Interestingly, many ‘minority’ Chinese languages, with speaker bases running into the millions, have also developed Latin-based scripts, such as Southern Min, Eastern Min, Zhuang and Hakka. Other languages like Cantonese have Latin-based transcriptions (“romanisations”), similar to Pinyin, in addition to traditional logographic scripts.

Ja, I go to ze Enimal Doctor, nicht ze Veterinarian

2008-12-30T16:44:00.001+05:30

One has often heard the German language being called rather ‘compact’. This is due to its ability to easily form compound words by adding them to each other to form a longer word for an object or idea, which in English would be described, maybe, by two or more words.

A good example is the word der Tierarzt.

This is made up of the words -
das Tier – the animal
der Arzt – the doctor

Therefore, der Tierarzt = the animal doctor

or, in other words, the veterinary doctor

Another example is die Vogelgrippe = the bird flu
Made up of the words der Vogel = the bird, and die Grippe = the flu

The French equivalents would be -
the veterinary doctor - le médecin vétérinaire (normally shortened to le vétérinaire = the veterinarian)
the bird flu -la grippe aviaire

Let’s have a look at the word formation (or term formation) of the equivalents for ‘veterinary doctor’ in all three languages in a little more detail -

German -
der Tierarzt =
das Tier (n.)
der Arzt (n.)

All commonly used German words

English -
the veterinary doctor =
veterinary (adj.) from Latin veterinarius
the doctor

Here we see that, instead of a prefix or a qualifying adjective like ‘animal’, the Latinised adjective form is preferred – veterinary

Similarly in French -
le médecin vétérinaire =
le médecin (n.) – the doctor
vétérinaire (adj.) – again from Latin veterinarius

Now, considering the fact that in French, the adjective normally appears after the noun, we again notice that the qualifying adjective is derived from a Latin root instead from the French l’animal, which is the normally used French word for ‘animal’.

Similarly for ‘the bird flu’ -
German -
die Vogelgrippe =
der Vogel (n.)
die Grippe (n.)

All commonly used German words

French -
la grippe aviaire =
la grippe (n.)
aviaire (adj.) – derived from the Latin avis ‘bird’
instead of using a form derived from the standard French l’oiseau ‘the bird’

Even in English, we sometimes see the form ‘avian flu’, ‘avian’ also being derived from Latin avis

Why do some languages prefer to borrow from ‘mother’ languages like Latin or Greek, while others look to themselves to borrow and thereby create new or derived terminology? Using a Latinised form of the word ‘animal’ to make up the word for ‘animal doctor’ would sound completely ridiculous in German, while being completely normal in French.

Similarly, using a commonly used word to derive certain adjectives in French would be rather non-standard and would sound strange, while in German, it would be the norm.

We see a similar situation in a lot of Indian languages, which mostly look to Sanskrit to borrow from. For other languages which have an Islamic influence like Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Balochi and Divehi (Maldivian), the ‘mother’ language is usually Persian or Arabic. Sinhala normally derives from Pali, itself a descendant of Sanskrit.

My personal opinion is that it makes more sense if a language ‘borrows’ from itself, rather than from a ‘mother’ or parent language. The derivations from the parent language can often sound artificial and ‘snobbish’, as does ‘avian flu’ in English instead of simply ‘bird flu’.

An example in an Indian language that immediately (and coincidentally) comes to mind is the Hindi word (adjective) for ‘artificial’. Standard Hindi uses बनावटी /bənaːʋəʈiˑ/ as opposed to the Sanskrit-derived word कृत्निम /krɨt̪rɪm/, which itself sounds highly artificial.

Venez-vous at 12 o’clock

2008-12-20T18:25:00.001+05:30

In a little restaurant on the outskirts of the industrial area of Jaysingpur, near the town of Sangli in south Maharashtra, as I was swallowing my early lunch of rice and dal – that costed me all of 17 rupees – I heard the head waiter telling a client, “/baːraː ʋaːzt̪aː bən̪n̪i/” - “Come at 12 o’clock”.

Now Jaysingpur, being quite close to the Maharashtra-Karnataka border, quite explicably experienced a sort of gradual linguistic changeover from Marathi to Kannada, which is also common on the Karnataka side, in the areas of Belgaum and Hubli-Dharwad.

What struck my attention were two things -
1) The tendency to code-switch, like one does between an Indian language and English.
2) The fact that the two languages in question were from two different language families.

With regard to the first point above, it’s true that one code switches very regularly in case of, say, spoken Tamil and English, with both these languages also being of different language family origins. But English being an international language that has invaded many regional tongues around the world, a Tamil speaker changing mid-sentence to English is not a surprising or unusual phenomenon.

I wondered whether a Tamil speaker would change mid-sentence to, say, Malayalam or Telugu, given that he would be at least partially conversant with the languages in question. Doubtful, I felt. Of course, I could be wrong since I haven’t really visited a border area between regions where the above languages are spoken.

Even code-switching between Marathi and Hindi is not that common, with switching between Marathi and English or Hindi and English being more likely. I, for one, usually don’t switch to Hindi if I am speaking to someone in Marathi, even if both of us are equally fluent in both these languages. I would switch very easily to English, though, and back.

Of course, Jaysingpur isn’t a particularly urban area, nor has it been influenced by international culture for its people to have felt the effect of English.

One thing to note so far, is that all these Indian languages are socially and economically more or less equal, with Hindi probably having a slight edge over the others, but not to the extent that English has. Marathi and Kannada in my example above are definitely on an equal footing in terms of status in society and in business.

I have to say though, that, to me, switching mid-sentence between Indian languages is still a rare(r) occurrence. Can anyone prove otherwise? Please bear in mind that we are talking about switching between relatively standard forms of the two languages in question, not a border dialect of sorts which incorporates words of both languages.

Also, does anyone have any examples to illustrate code-switching between two socially and economically equal non-English languages, with the speakers also not having any, or having extremely limited English knowledge?

Coming to my second point above, are there any examples of code-switching between languages of different families? The only example that comes readily to mind is -
- Swedish and Finnish – along the Sweden-Finland border?
Both official in Finland, and Swedish in Sweden. Finnish is Uralic, while Swedish is Indo-European.

Do leave your comments to add/contradict/correct anything what I’ve written.

P.S.: Some more examples of the unique Kannada-Marathi blend which I’ve heard over the years and which come to mind -

/doːn rupəj koɽi/ “Give two rupees”
Standard Marathi /doːn rupəj djaː/
Standard Kannada /ʲerəɽɯ ruːpaːji koɽi/

/kaːn̪d̪aː ləsuːn beːɽaː/ “(I want) No onions or garlic”
Standard Marathi /kaːn̪d̪aː ləsuːn nəko/
Standard Kannada /iːruɭi beɭɭuɭɭi beːɽaː/

Our example of /baːraː ʋaːzt̪aː bən̪n̪i/ above would be
Standard Marathi /baːraː ʋaːzt̪aː jaː/
Standard Kannada /ɦənnerɯɽɯ ɡʱəɳʈeɡe bənni/

Beet of a meex up (Read: Bit of a mix up)

2008-10-19T18:00:00.006+05:30

"Call Zaheed or call /ərwiːn̪d̪/", said my Gujarati client to his production person on the phone. He obviously was, in politically correct terminology, phonetically disadvantaged, in that he couldn't get himself to say /ɐr(ə)ʋɪn̪d̪/, which is how I prefer my name to be pronounced. Phonetically disadvantaged - maybe. Surprising - not in the least.

It's more or less common knowledge that Gujjus and Maharashtrians (by extension Konkanis) have trouble distinguishing between the long /iː/ and the short /i/. Instead, the /i/ is pronounced long or short depending simply on its location within a word.

If the word is monosyllabic with the only vowel being /i/, then it’s long.
If the word is polysyllabic with the /i/ in the first syllable, it becomes short.
If the word is polysyllabic with the /i/ not in the first syllable, it becomes long.

Some illustrative examples are the Marathi words /t̪iːn/ 'three' but /t̪israː/ 'third'. Compare with Hindi /t̪iːsraː/, with the same meaning.

And of course, some hilarious hypercorrections.

This may apply for the long /uː/ and short /u/ as well, but my personal observation is that while Marathi speakers tend to treat them just like the /i/, i.e., long or short depending on their position within a word and the type of word, whether monosyllabic or polysyllabic –

e.g. /d̪uːd̪ʱ/ 'milk'; /d̪ud̪ʱaːtsə/ 'of the milk (neut.)'

the Gujjus seem to deal with them a tad better.

As far as the /i/ is concerned, it seems all three of the above speaker groups are guilty of messing up long and short vowels, simply because they can't pronounce them they way they may be originally intended to. This is usually the case for tatsama words from Sanskrit -

e.g. Marathi /ɟənəhiːt̪/ in place of /ɟənəhit̪/'public interest'

As far as English imports are concerned, there seems to be a tendency to hypercorrect -

/bic/ 'beach'
/ʃiʈ/ 'sheet'
/ɖiːp/ 'dip' - usually meaning whether you want your idli/wada brought to you immersed in the sambar, as opposed to having the sambar brought to you in a separate bowl

The reason for writing this post is the numerous સ્ટેટ બેંક ઓફ ઈંડીયા /sʈeːʈ beːŋk oːf iɳɖiːjaː/ 'State Bank of India' signboards I encountered in Ahmedabad. It actually got me thinking whether the aforementioned languages should actually have one of the signs for short and long /i/ and /u/ eliminated from their script, since their pronunciation is dependent only on occurrence within a word, making two signs redundant.

Windows and Office Language Interface Packs in South Asian Languages

2008-10-09T11:39:00.006+05:30

While they've been around for a while now, not many people (at least not in India) know about the various Language Packs available for Windows and Office.

While these aren't completely translated interfaces, they at least provide a partially translated user interfaces, including menus and dialogue boxes.

I've tried out the following -

Marathi and Hindi Language Packs for Windows XP
Marathi and Hindi Language Packs for Office 2003
Marathi Language Pack for Office 2007
Hindi Language Pack for Windows Vista

and they seem to be pretty good. Of course, there exist a lot of chinks in the armour yet to be ironed out, about which I'll elaborate a little later.

Here are the links from where the Language Interface Packs can be downloaded (the site is in German, but the links are pretty much self-explanatory):

Windows XP | Office 2003 | Windows Vista | Office 2007

Coming back to the translation itself, I've tried out the Marathi interfaces of Windows XP and Office 2003 extensively, and can't help feeling that the translation's a bit over-the-top. By that I mean, sarkārī Sanskritised language. With 'Start' becoming प्रारंभ /pra:rəmbʱ/ and 'default' becoming नित्यस्थिती /nit̪jəst̪ʰit̪i/, it's still too artificial for my liking and I can't help feeling, these will never become layman's terms.

At least 'Desktop' has simply been transliterated into डेस्कटॉप /ɖe:skʈɔp/.

In Office 2007, ‘default’ has been changed to simply डिफॉल्ट /ɖifɔlʈ/.

Unfortunately, ‘computer’ still remains संगणक /səŋɡəɳək/ in all versions so far.

One finds that very often, the English terms for certain objects or ideas are much more popular than their original Marathi terms. Some words that come to mind are (quite randomly) –

ऍडव्हान्स /æɖwʱa:ns/ advance (in the sense of payment made in advance)
पार्टी /pa:rʈi:/ party (a political or other grouping)
डेंजर /ɖe:nɟər/danger (also used as an adjective in place of ‘dangerous’)
and of course, कम्प्यूटर /kəmpju:ʈər/ or कॉम्प्यूटर /kɔmpju:ʈər/ computer

Somehow, the general Indian (and South Asian, I'm guessing) mindset is that using loanwords from English compromises the sanctity of the language and one must use 'pure' words as much as possible.

Now, this would have some meaning if the so-called alternative 'pure' words were actually derived from the base language, i.e., Hindi or Marathi as the case may be.

What it practically means, is that the alternative 'pure' word will be derived from Sanskrit, very often resulting in these words being more confusing than the already-popular English terminology.

Somehow, it doesn't seem to matter that these terms are not even remotely in popular use. They are still supposed to be the 'correct' terms, with the result that the lovely idea of enabling the common man to use computers in his native tongue actually becomes an advanced level Sanskrit lesson.

Users of the Urdu LIP may replace Sanskrit in the above context with Arabic or Persian, and may thus identify with the situation as well. I've yet to try out the Urdu LIP, but I have a gut feeling it's not going to be much different, with simple terms like 'change' بدلیں /bəd̪̪lẽ̃:/ becoming تبدیل کریں /t̪əbd̪̪i:l kərẽ̃:/.

All said and done, these LIP’s are at least a start for us to start computing in our native tongues. We can indulge in the luxury of nit-picking later, when their use actually becomes widespread.

Linguistic Situation in the Subcontinent

2004-10-23T02:23:00.000+05:30

South Asia is a place like no other in the world, in many ways-

a 5000-year old civilisation
geographical variance from the highest mountains in the world to one of the most fertile plains in the world
a multitude of cultures and religions co-existing - sometimes peacefully, sometimes not-so-peacefully
unbridled population growth
40% of the population living on a budget of under $1 a day
home to one of the world's fastest growing economies (pretty contradictory to the above statement, huh?!)

... and also, home to thousands of languages - conservative estimates range to about 2000, including dialects.

Probably the only place which can draw parallels with South Asia is Europe.

BUT...

European languages today primarily employ the Roman script, with some modifications. Some employ the Cyrillic script, and the Greek language has its own script. View these scripts here.

So Europe uses three different scripts for its languages.

South Asia employs no less than fourteen...

Devanagari
Perso-Arabic
Bangla (Bengali)
Gurmukhi
Tamil
Telugu
Kannada
Malayalam
Gujarati
Sinhala
Oriya
Divehi
Tibetan
...and of course, Roman

And while Europe has coveniently chosen English in Roman script to be its official language, South Asia is faced with a much bigger problem.

While in India and Pakistan, Hindi-Urdu is the 'national' language, the other 5 countries have different national languages. (Hindi and Urdu are different names given to the same language. Hindi is heavily Sanskritised, while Urdu is heavily Persianised/Arabicised. They both come from the same mother language - Hindustani)

Here are the national languages of the 7 countries of South Asia, with their respective scripts -

Bhutan - Dzongkha, in Tibetan script
Bangladesh - Bengali, in Bengali script
India - Hindi, in Devanagari script
Maldives - Divehi, in Thaana script
Nepal - Nepali, in Devanagari script
Pakistan - Urdu, in Perso-Arabic script
Sri Lanka - Sinhala, in Sinhala script

Of course, English serves as a common language and also as a tool for international business and communication in all these countries.

In India, there have been people who have advocated English as the national language. But others say that it would be an insult, since we fought for 200 years for Independence from Britain, and more so, because Hindi is understood by 70% of the population.

The same argument is used in Pakistan.

The other countries are much smaller in size, and hence have only one language (or one main language) spoken there. So the choice of official language isn't tough for them.

But English is still widely used in these countries too. Mainly because like I mentioned, it helps in the international arena, and also because, at many times, the native languages fall short in either vocabulary or script-related complications.

Instead of fighting over which language is to take precedence over which, a better option would be to equip all the languages with some basic requirements, which ensure that they can hold their own in any field, in today's world -

A full-fledged vocabulary, ranging from technical to the abstract
Adequate support for the scripts required in the electronic world (DTP, computers, mobile phones etc.)

Let's tackle the issue of script.

Most of the South Asian scripts are multi-tier, in the sense that symbols may appear on top of one another, unlike in the Roman script, where each letter follows the previous one neatly in a line.

This is very convenient in the electronic world, because a linear script is much easier to process.

South Asian scripts hence require additional treatment -

suitable rendering and display on computers
a suitable input method, consistent with the structure of the script

Also, all South Asian scripts are not 'inter-transliteratable', i.e., every letter in a particular script, may not have an equivalent in another script.

I will try and deal with these two problems -

Developing suitable input methods for South Asian scripts
Developing equivalents for every letter in every script, so that ANY South Asian langauge can be written in ANY South Asian script.

Till next time...