# Urdu and Hindi: Romanized words and capital letters



## darush

Hello,
'Taang*N*aa, see*N*g, me*N*, kare*N*, tikka vs Tikkaa, etc, etc.
Thank you


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## Qureshpor

aaqaa=i-darush,

In most if not all languages of the Subcontinent (India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka/Nepal), there are some consonants which are called "retroflex". These are represented in this Forum by using capital letters.

T, D, Th, Dh, R, Rh

If you were sitting face to face with me, I would pronounce a t, d, r (as you pronounce them in Farsi followed by these. You would then be able to hear the difference. It is these sounds which gives a unique emphasis to our accents, until of course we begin to speak a foreign  tongue, (almost) as the natives do!

In siiNg (horn), meN (in) etc the N indicates that the n is nasalised (nuun-e-Ghunnah).


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## marrish

Thank you for asking the question aaqaa-ye-darush and for showing interest in Urdu and Hindi threads!

We have more or less agreed on a system for transliterating the words in Roman letters, not without any difficulty, and most of us here are following it for the sake of clarity.

All the capital letters indicate some sort of difference from the standard small letters in the pronunciation.

N we use for a nuun ن without a dot, ں, what we call a نونِ غنھ, that is a nasal sound a vowel preceding it gets. There has been a discussion which has pointed to the fact that in some period of the classical Persian poetry this sound was in vogue in Persian as well. It is a very common feature of Urdu and Hindi, not only in words of Persian origin, infact all the words you have quoted are Indic.

t versus T. In Urdu, we have two types of ''t'' (in pronunciation, in writing as you know we have ط as well but it is pronounced equal to ت, the same like in Persian). These two letters ''t'' are ت or ط that have the same pronunciation versus ٹ, which is a consonant not found in Persian as it is Indic. You pronounce it with the tip of the tongue directed upwards against your palate.

[Edit: QP SaaHib has been more جلد than me, so excuse me for overlapping!]


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## darush

Thank you QP Saa*H*ib(oh a capital H... you didn't mentioned it).


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## darush

marrish said:


> t versus T. In Urdu, we have two types of ''t'' (in pronunciation, in writing as you know we have ط as well but it is pronounced equal to ت, the same like in Persian). These two letters ''t'' are ت or ط that have the same pronunciation versus ٹ, which is a consonant not found in Persian as it is Indic. You pronounce it with the tip of the tongue directed upwards against your palate.
> 
> [Edit: QP SaaHib has been more جلد than me, so excuse me for overlapping!]


Thank you marrish Saahib. You answerd to my question(ٹ) befor asking it. it is occures in Baloochi too, am I right?
You made a good example for جلد thank you again.


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## Qureshpor

darush said:


> Thank you Saa*H*ib QP(oh a capital H... you didn't mentioned it).


H for Hikmat
h for har mard


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## tonyspeed

I should add that in Hindi (and Punjabi I beleive), there is also a retroflex N sound which is not found in Urdu. It is only found in direct Sanskrit borrowings like guN and praaN. It is pronounced by people who are fastidious pronouncers.

This exposes a hole in our transliteration scheme where N is ambiguous and could either be a retroflex N or a nasalized vowel (in Hindi).


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> I should add that in Hindi (and Punjabi I beleive), there is also a retroflex N sound which is not found in Urdu. It is only found in direct Sanskrit borrowings like guN and praaN. It is pronounced by people who are fastidious pronouncers.
> 
> This exposes a hole in our transliteration scheme where N is ambiguous and could either be a retroflex N or a nasalized vowel (in Hindi).


[  ]..retroflex N in Hindi or a nasalised vowel in Hindi and Urdu.


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## marrish

darush said:


> Thank you Saahib marrish. You answerd to my question(ٹ) befor asking it. it is occures in Baloochi too, am I right?
> You made a good example for جلد thank you again.


You are more than welcome, aaqaa-ye-darush. Yes, you are perfectly right, this consonant, T, occurs also in Balochi (we use ''o'', not ''oo/uu'') and Pashtu as well. In Pashtu, they write it ټ‎


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## marrish

QURESHPOR said:


> [  ]..retroflex N in Hindi or a nasalised vowel in Hindi and Urdu.


janaab, there are nasalized vowels in Hindi as well.

NR for retroflex n in Hindi and Punjabi
N for nasalization in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, wasn't it so?


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## darush

marrish said:


> Yes, you are perfectly right, this consonant, T, occurs also in Balochi (we use ''o'', not ''oo/uu'') and Pashtu as well. In Pashtu, they write it ټ‎


So it occurs in both Indic and Iranian languages.


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## marrish

darush said:


> So it occurs in both Indic and Iranian languages.


Once again, you are perfectly right. But not in Persian (پارسی)


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## darush

marrish said:


> Once again, you are perfectly right. But not in Persian (پارسی)


Yes, not all Iranian languages.


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## marrish

darush said:


> Yes, not all Iranian languages.


Perhaps only in those two of them out of many!


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## darush

marrish said:


> Perhaps only in those two of them out of many!


Reasonable, both exist in the Subcontinent(and what about Parsi people?).


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## marrish

darush said:


> Reasonable, both exist in subcontinent(and what about Parsi people?).


Both of them can be found in the Subcontinent but not only there! In the Iranian province of Sistan/Baluchestan and in Afghanistan which are not part of the Subcontinent, they are also there. I don't know much about Parsi people who reside in the Subcontinent of Pak-Hind, except for a single acquaintance from the Pakistani city of Karachi. I believe all of them, that is the greatest part who reside on the shores of India around Bombay (Mumbai) and Gujarat state are fluent in the local languages who do have the feature of T and I am not really competent to say anything about their knowledge of any form of Persian.


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## darush

marrish said:


> Both of them can be found in the Subcontinent but not only there! In the Iranian province of Sistan/Baluchestan and in Afghanistan which are not part of the Subcontinent, they are also there. I don't know much about Parsi people who reside in the Subcontinent of Pak-Hind, except for a single acquaintance from the Pakistani city of Karachi. I believe all of them, that is the greatest part who reside on the shores of India around Bombay (Mumbai) and Gujarat state are fluent in the local languages who do have the feature of T and I am not really competent to say anything about their knowledge of any form of Persian.


You know, borders are only on papers and in our minds(especially for Balooch People who pass it whenever they want).


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## marrish

darush said:


> You know, borders are only on papers and in our minds(especially for Balooch People who pass it whenever they want).


I agree very strongly, especially with your statement about the presence of borders in our minds. I hope this forum can be seen as a good example of an opposite state of mind and your having shown interest in the Urdu and Hindi threads is a proof thereof!

(Regarding Baloch People, believe me, they would love not to have to cross any border whatsoever!)


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## Wolverine9

I believe the retroflex sounds are only in the Iranian languages that have entered the subcontinent, namely Pashto and Baluchi.  Incidentally, the language isolate Burushaski, spoken in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, also has retroflex sounds, as do the Munda and Dravidian languages (including Brahui).  There are works by scholars available speculating how this peculiar phenomenon spread.

For Baluchi, if I am not mistaken, the retroflex sounds are only present in the eastern dialect (in Pakistan), and not in the western dialect (in Iran).  This would corroborate the presence of the retroflex as a uniquely subcontinental sound.


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## marrish

Wolverine9 said:


> I believe the retroflex sounds are only in the Iranian languages that have entered the subcontinent, namely Pashto and Baluchi.  Incidentally, the language isolate Burushaski, spoken in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, also has retroflex sounds, as do the Munda and Dravidian languages (including Brahui).  There are works by scholars available speculating how this peculiar phenomenon spread.
> 
> For Baluchi, if I am not mistaken, the retroflex sounds are only present in the eastern dialect (in Pakistan), and not in the western dialect (in Iran).  This would corroborate the presence of the retroflex as a uniquely subcontinental sound.


For Balochi, there are different dialects within Pakistan but perhaps due to the movement of people and family relations (well, don't forget Balochi is spoken in Afghanistan as well) I've come across T in the province Siistaan-Baluchistaan as well. Still, I'd tend to agree upon the Indic (so to say) origin of this sound. Good post.


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## darush

Thank you SaaHib marrish and regards to Balooch People.
I am watching _' Rang Laaye Ga Shaheedon Ka Lahoo' _by _Noor Jahan _now, really nice song(thanks to Alfaaz SaaHib).


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## marrish

darush said:


> Thank you SaaHib marrish and regards to Balooch People.
> I am watching _' Rang Laaye Ga Shaheedon Ka Lahoo' _by _Noor Jahan _now, really nice song(thanks to SaaHib Alfaaz).


I am going to watch it as well since any recommendation by Alfaaz SaaHib has proven to be fruitful.


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## darush

You much welcomed! Allfaaz SaaHib sent me the link for better underestanding Urdu pronuncitions.
Best wishes


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## tonyspeed

Wolverine9 said:


> as do the Munda and Dravidian languages (including Brahui).



Brahui also has 'kih' which is distinctly non-Dravidian, but that's a different subject.


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## marrish

tonyspeed said:


> Brahui also has 'kih' which is distinctly non-Dravidian, but that's a different subject.


I've always believed (not beleived) Brahui to be Dravidian!


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## fdb

There is a well-established scholarly system of representing Indian sounds in Latin script, e.g. with a subscript dot for the retroflex consonants like ṭ, ṣ, ṇ, ḍ. These characters are available on Unicode, so there is really not excuse not to use them.

Retroflex consonants are what we call an areal feature in languages of the Indian subcontinent of different families. They are indigenous in Dravidian, occur in Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan mainly (but not exclusively) in Dravidian loan words, and in Pashto, Balochi and Munda/Khasi mainly (but again not exclusively) in loanwords from Indo-Aryan. I think therefore that it is reasonable to say that they originated in Dravidian and subsequently spread to other languages of the subcontinent.

And yes, Brahui is a Dravidian language, but it has borrowed extensively form Balochi.


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