# Hindi: हरे कृष्णा



## humann

I have to create a logo and this is the only typeface I can use, so I'd like to ask the native speakers of the language if this phrase looks alright as it's written here:







I have noticed that the space between the second and third characters in the second word is usually smaller so I'd like to know if the larger space here affects the meaning or readability of the phrase, or if perhaps looks awkward or something.

Thank you very much for your time.


----------



## Au101

It looks alright, yeah. It doesn't affect the meaning and honestly fonts for Indian writing systems have come a long long way, people have put up with far worse than that for a long time.

It does look a bit low-effort though. Cheap. 'That'll do'. If you're creating a logo I don't really see why you can't correct this. Ideally the 'second and third characters' should form a ligature, i.e. they should ideally be joined together into one single character a bit like æ. A lot of older fonts and cheap newer fonts can't do that and it's not strictly necessary. But if you're creating a logo why can't you?


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

हरे कृष्णा

In the Devanagari system, isolated symbols have an implicit "a" / ə  sound when nothing is attached to them. 
Therefore, your second word reads "krSHana", not "krSHna".

Writing the letters together or separate is not a mere stylistic choice, it has spelling consequences.

IMO your example is wrong and does look akward.


----------



## Au101

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Therefore, your second word reads "krSHana", not "krSHna".



Not really MonsieurGonzalito sir because it is written with a half _ṣ_ ष्‍ and not with a full ष. The vertical line at the end of the ष character is missing so it would not really be reasonable to read it as krSHana. For that it would have to be कृषण.



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> IMO your example is wrong and does look akward.



Again I think this is much too strong. A quick google image search for हरे कृष्ण brings up plenty of examples where the ष्‍ is not joined to the ण as it ideally should be. In fact, in your very own post as seen on my computer we have a gap.






Now granted the gap in the OP's picture is quite large and the design of the letters makes it quite conspicuous, and that does impact readability a little bit perhaps, but then the OP's image is very zoomed in.

Ultimately the phrase doesn't look amazing in that font and if I were designing a logo then I would move the letters around a bit, because that is something you can do in logos...I mean the FedEx logo for example has the d and the E joined together in the logo. That's not a font thing, that's a logo thing... But the idea that it would be misread I think is not really tenable. In fact a lot of Indian writing systems were simplified to make it easier to print and type them.


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

Au101 said:


> Not really MonsieurGonzalito sir because it is written with a half _ṣ_ ष्‍ and not with a full ष. The vertical line at the end of the ष character is missing so it would not really be reasonable to read it as krSHana. For that it would have to be कृषण.


You are right!

I can't write the ष्ण conjunct separated, even if I wanted to ...


----------



## humann

Thank you for your highly useful input everybody! That was precisely the assistance I needed. 

As you can see in the new image I joined together the middle characters of the second word, does it look correct now?
I also reduced a little bit the space between the letters of both words as I thought that the logo will look a little better that way in general. Do they look condensed or anything?

If possible please have a look and let me know what you think; any advice would be very welcome!


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

It looks good to me.


----------



## Au101

As MonsieurGonzalito says it is quite correct.

For me personally, from an aesthetic point of view, I think I would actually leave a small gap. Smaller than the original, but I'd have a small gap. The reason for this is that it's (to my eye at least) quite obvious that the the two halves of ष्ण don't really fit together, it's not a very smooth join in my personal opinion. What you would ideally do is alter the shapes a little bit so that the two halves look like they belong together, as, for example, in this picture:





However I'm aware that that could be considered altering the font too much for your brief, so that being the case, it might be better just to have a small gap than a dodgy join. But that's just my opinion.

Also be sure you know what you are writing. In your title you have written हरे कृष्णा, notice the two vertical lines at the end there. In your image you have written हरे कृष्ण, with just the one vertical line. This second one, that you have in the picture, this is correct. But you should know that in Hindi कृष्ण (as in the god Krishna) is often pronounced Krishn or Krishan. The first option, कृष्णा, would be pronounced Krishna in Hindi, but that's a bit by the by as that isn't how the name is correctly spelt in Hindi or in Sanskrit. And it is a Sanskrit name and it Sanskrit it's pronounced Krishna. In Sanskrit कृष्णा would be a completely different word. It is one of the names by which Draupadi is known.



Learned members feel free to correct me, I'm primarily a Sanskritist and no expert in what I hope I may call Eastern religious traditions, nor any contemporary movements that may draw on them. I'm not aware, however, of anywhere where हरे कृष्णा is correct


----------



## humann

Thank you for your insightful reply *Au101*. 🙂

Indeed, the two halves of ष्ण didn't look very nice joint together like in the previous image so now I left a small gap between them and I also tried to join the two characters in a more smooth way:

1.





2.





I would be grateful if you could take a look and tell me what you think. 

As for the difference between the wording in the logo and the thread title, it is due to the fact that the latter was not typed by me but by somebody from the moderating team; the valid wording is the one used in the images.


----------



## humann

Thank you for your insightful reply @Au101 🙂

Indeed, the two halves of ष्ण didn't look very nice joint together like in the previous image so now I left a small gap between them and also tried to join the two characters in a smoother way:

1.






2.





I would be grateful if you could take a look and tell me what you think. 

As for the difference between the wording in the logo and the thread title, it is due to the fact that the latter was not typed by me but by somebody from the moderating team; the valid wording is the one used in the images.


----------



## Au101

Well from a language viewpoint both are perfectly correct. As for aesthetics, you're the artist. I think I prefer number 2, what do you think @MonsieurGonzalito?


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

Au101 said:


> what do you think @MonsieurGonzalito?


#2.  Conjuncts are supposed to look, well, conjunct.
I guess any profficient Devanagari reader would readily understand that #1 is still a conjunct, due to the lack of a vertical trace after the SHaa. But it would cause an unnecessary mental blip.

Honestly also, I don' t understand the need of all this image manipulation, the default rendering of the conjuncts by any computerized font is quite graceful. Just to to Google Input Tools/ Hindi, type "hare krshn" , and copy that!


----------



## Au101

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> #2.  Conjuncts are supposed to look, well, conjunct.
> I guess any profficient Devanagari reader would readily understand that #1 is still a conjunct, due to the lack of a vertical trace after the SHaa. But it would cause an unnecessary mental blip.



Well they are supposed to be joined together when it is possible to join them together, but plenty of Devanagari conjuncts are properly formed without any joining at all, for example ण्ट and श्क. Now in the case of ष्ण a join is possible, typical, and desirable, and the absence of a join is a flaw in the font, but it is very unlikely to cause people problems in reading a very common word like कृष्ण. Similarly I like to make my श्व like the one on the left, with a join, but I think there are certainly some who would prefer the one on the right!




Also, while ष्ण should be an easy one for most half-decent fonts, I'd be very interested to know how ष्प्र and ष्ट्र्य (_ṣpra _and _ṣṭrya_) show up for you? What about ब्भ्य (_bbhya_) and ब्ज (_bja_)?



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Honestly also, I don' t understand the need of all this image manipulation, the default rendering of the conjuncts by any computerized font is quite graceful. Just to to Google Input Tools/ Hindi, type "hare krshn" , and copy that!



Alas no, not any font, not any font at all. The ligatures add a lot of additional work and complexity to a font, by no means do any and all fonts handle even simple ligatures like ष्ण. It's likely that even the most rubbish fonts will go out of their way to provide common but special ligatures like श्र, क्ष and ष्ट्र, but providing all the possible combinations of ष् is a lot of work, work that won't necessarily be done when ष्‍ is close enough. You just don't get enough benefit out of all the extra work. And indeed, as a Sanskritist, I spent a lot of time finding very, very good fonts that have incredible ligatures like _ṅgdhve_ and _ddhrya_, but even these often use a disappointingly rough combination with the _i_ diacritic (e.g. त्स्नि) because it would be even more work again to provide bespoke characters for every combination with _i_. (Although what you could do is make all of your glyphs fit one of  a small number of sizes, like you could have ten possible sizes (say) for your glyphs and all glyphs in your font would have to be one of those sizes. Then you'd just need to make ten matching ‍_i_ shapes and you're good to go, but that would be quite restrictive). Anyway, as I say, some fonts do not have a bespoke ष्ण ligature. Lohit Devanagari is one:





And this is the standard Devanagari font for Ubuntu and was used by Wikipedia (Lohit fonts - Wikipedia). And if the OP is required to use a font that doesn't have it then OP is required to use a font that doesn't have it.


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

*ba + bha + ya*

In this forum: ब्भ्य
As printed in Microsoft word using fonts Nirmala, Mangal, Hind and Aparajita:





*ssa + pa + ra*

In this forum:  ष्प्र
In Word, with the above mentioned fonts:





*ssa + ta + ra + ya*

In this forum: ष्ट्र्य 
In Word, with the above mentioned fonts (none does a 4-letter conjunct).





*ba + ja*

In this forum: ब्ज 
In Word, with the above mentioned fonts:


----------



## Au101

That's really interesting @MonsieurGonzalito thanks! There are a couple of fonts there with some really impressive ligatures actually. I'm surprised how many have proper joins for some of those, I wasn't expecting that honestly. Nevertheless I'm sure you can see yourself that Mangal (Microsoft's default Devanagari font for however long) is a real weak link here.

For reference, here's what I get with (from top to bottom), Lohit Devanagari, Sanskrit 2003 and Siddhanta:


----------



## humann

Au101 said:


> Alas no, not any font, not any font at all. The ligatures add a lot of additional work and complexity to a font, by no means do any and all fonts handle even simple ligatures like ष्ण.



Exactly. 👍
I have very few Hindi fonts to work with and the one used here is the best looking one, however it seems to have several flaws in cases such as the one already mentioned. And these flaws can be corrected effectively only with manual work.

From what I understand the version #1 that I posted in my previous post is best one from a linguistic as well as an aesthetic point of view, therefore I guess I will settle with it. 

Thank you very much for your precious help @Au101 and @MonsieurGonzalito !


----------



## Empress Unicorn

As a Hindi speaker, the typeface looks totally legible.


----------



## humann

Thanks for your input @Empress Unicorn ! 
As a Hindi speaker, would mind telling me which one of the following two versions looks better to you?


----------



## Empress Unicorn

humann said:


> Thanks for your input @Empress Unicorn !
> As a Hindi speaker, would mind telling me which one of the following two versions looks better to you?


The first one


----------



## MonsieurGonzalito

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> *ssa + ta + ra + ya*
> 
> In this forum: ष्ट्र्य
> In Word, with the above mentioned fonts (none does a 4-letter conjunct).


Just out of curiosity, are there actual words containing the conjunct "Stry", or it is more of a theoretical excercise?


----------



## Au101

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Just out of curiosity, are there actual words containing the conjunct "Stry", or it is more of a theoretical excercise?


Not wishing to take us off-topic, but yes, from _Ṛg-Veda_ 10.165.3:



> हे॒तिः प॒क्षिणी॒ न द॑भात्य॒स्माना॒ष्ट्र्याम्प॒दं कृ॑णुते अग्नि॒धाने॑ ।
> शं नो॒ गोभ्य॑श्च॒ पुरु॑षेभ्यश्चास्तु॒ मा नो॑ हिंसीदि॒ह दे॑वाः क॒पोतः॑ ॥३॥
> 
> _3. Hetíḥ pakṣíṇī ná dabhāty asmā́n āṣṭryā́m padáṃ kṛṇute agnidhā́ne;
> Śáṃ no góbhyaś ca púruṣebhyaś cāstu mā́ no hiṃsīd ihá devāḥ kapótaḥ._
> 
> 3. Let not the Arrow that hath wings distract us: beside the fire-place, on the hearth it settle
> May, it bring welfare to our men and cattle: here let the Dove, ye Gods, forbear to harm us.



(Translation is Ralph TH Griffith's)

And here from _Ṛg-Veda_ 6.4.5 (although really it's the result of _saṃdhi _combination of two words here and _āṣṭrī_ (whence _āṣṭryā́m_ above) is hardly the most-frequent word in the entire Sanskrit corpus - in fact it's quite the opposite!):



> निति॑क्ति॒ यो वा॑र॒णमन्न॒मत्ति॑ वा॒युर्न राष्ट्र्यत्ये॑त्य॒क्तून् ।
> तु॒र्याम॒ यस्त॑ आ॒दिशा॒मरा॑ती॒रत्यो॒ न ह्रुतः॒ पत॑तः परि॒ह्रुत् ॥५॥
> 
> _5. Nítikti yó vāraṇám ánnam átti vāyúr ná rā́ṣṭry áty ety aktū́n;
> Turyā́ma yás ta ādíśām árātīr átyo ná hrútaḥ pátataḥ parihrút._
> 
> 5. Even he who cats his firm hard food with swiftness, and overtakes the nights as Vayu kingdom
> May we o'ercome those who resist thine orders, like a steed casting down the flying foemen.


----------



## Au101

Just for fun (as I was bored) here's how it should have looked:






(Sorry I've lost the ability to edit the old post)


----------



## Dib

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> I can't write the ष्ण conjunct separated, even if I wanted to ...


There is something more to say on this point. In the Upper Gangetic plane script culture, e.g. Hindi, ष्ण counts as 1.5 अक्षर (or आखर in the now dated tadbhava form) and not a single undivisible अक्षर. This contrasts with the Lower Gangetic plane script culture, e.g. Bengali, where the equivalent conjunct (as all conjuncts), ষ্ণ, counts as one अक्षर. There is a famous couplet (दोहा) of Kabir that illustrates it beautifully:
पोथी पढी पढी जग मुवा, पंडित भया न कोय।
ढाई आखर प्रेम का पढे, सो पंडित होय॥
"The world died studying books after books. Nobody got any wiser. One who studies the *two-and-a-half अक्षर* of प्रेम (love) obtains wisdom." (In Bengali counting, प्रेम/প্রেম is two अक्षर's).
There was also a Bollywood movie, called "ढाई अक्षर प्रेम के", with a title presumably inspired by the Kabir couplet.

Anyway, so what is the practical implication of these arcane अक्षर-counting conventions? It seems to affect how "divisible"/"separable" these conjuncts are perceived to be. In a running text, you'll never see them separated - whether in Upper or Lower Ganges, but what happens if the script is written in a vertical format? In this context, you may see (some) conjucts split up and written in two separate lines on the Upper Ganges if that leads to a more balanced look. The splitting is no-way mandatory, and I am not sure which looks better to the Hindi-phones, but this is a difference of script culture that stood out to me when I moved from Kolkata (where no such splitting is ever seen in Bengali) to Delhi (where the splitting is common in Hindi vertical text). 

The conclusion is that Hindi conjuncts - while not freely separable - do allow separation to a limited extent.


----------

