# Hindi/Urdu: Pronunciation of word-final conjunct consonants



## tonyspeed

This is mainly a Hindi issue since only Hindi has conjunct forms built into the script, but conceptually it also
applies to Urdu or maybe Urdu speakers can give the perspective from their language. 
When a word ends with two consonants we have two options: 
1) end the word with an 'a', preserving the conjuct
2) insert an 'a' between the consonants

i.e. fikr could be pronounced fikra or fikar. 
itr -> itra or itar
janm -> janam or janma 
zikr -> zikar or zikra
putr -> putar or putra
pavitr -> pavitar or pavitra

Is there any general rule here? I know in Hindi, if the word is imported Sanskrit  we usually take path 1.
But what about all other words? What is the preferred method in Standard Urdu and Hindi?
Is there a rule for Arabic, Persian origin words?

(I know many Panjabis always take path two hence patr is putar instead of putra but I consider that Panjabi influenced Hindi)


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> This is mainly a Hindi issue since only Hindi has conjunct forms built into the script, but conceptually it also
> applies to Urdu or maybe Urdu speakers can give the perspective from their language.
> When a word ends with two consonants we have two options:
> 1) end the word with an 'a', preserving the conjuct
> 2) insert an 'a' between the consonants
> 
> i.e. fikr could be pronounced fikra or fikar.
> itr -> itra or itar
> janm -> janam or janma
> zikr -> zikar or zikra
> putr -> putar or putra
> pavitr -> pavitar or pavitra
> 
> Is there any general rule here? I know in Hindi, if the word is imported Sanskrit  we usually take path 1.
> But what about all other words? What is the preferred method in Standard Urdu and Hindi?
> Is there a rule for Arabic, Persian origin words?
> 
> (I know many Panjabis always take path two hence patr is putar instead of putra but I consider that Panjabi influenced Hindi)




As far as Urdu is concerned, final double consonants with any intervening vowels is incorrect and frowned upon. You mention the final a. In reality, this only applies to words of Sanskrit origins where there is an "inherent" a, e.g. putra. But in words of Arabic and Persian originsm there is no final a as such.

fikr, faKhr, farsh, 3arsh etc
sharm, narm, garm, abr (cloud) etc.

As for Punjabi, we have a free style! puttar, fikar, farash, garam etc


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## tonyspeed

QURESHPOR said:


> As far as Urdu is concerned, final double consonants with any intervening vowels is incorrect and frowned upon. You mention the final a. In reality, this only applies to words of Sanskrit origins where there is an "inherent" a, e.g. putra. But in words of Arabic and Persian originsm there is no final a as such.
> 
> fikr, faKhr,



I would argue that such words are impossible to pronounce without an intervening 'a' or an end 'a' sound. Even if the vowel sound is minute, it is probably still there. 
Without a vowel sound, one would not hear not consonant 'r' uttered because you need the vocal cords to move to carry the sound of the 'r'.
The only way this could happen is if the 'r' were made with the throat and not with the tongue, but to my knowledge this is not done in Urdu.


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## tonyspeed

QURESHPOR said:


> You mention the final a. In reality, this only applies to words of Sanskrit origins where there is an "inherent" a, e.g. putra. But in words of Arabic and Persian originsm there is no final a as such.



I thought of a possible exception to this recently. How do you feel about the word "shukr" as in "shukr guzaar". Do people speaking Urdu pronounce this, "shukar guzar/shukr guzaar" or "shukra guzaar"?  In my memory, in Hindi people
pronounce this as "shukra"; however, could this be because of the Sanskrit word spelled the same way but having a different meaning (shukravaar == Friday)?

---Maybe I am wrong about this in Hindi. According to a pronunciation on Forvo.com, someone pronounces this "shukar", not "shukra".


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## greatbear

QURESHPOR said:


> As far as Urdu is concerned, final double consonants with any intervening vowels is incorrect and frowned upon. You mention the final a. In reality, this only applies to words of Sanskrit origins where there is an "inherent" a, e.g. putra. But in words of Arabic and Persian originsm there is no final a as such.
> 
> fikr, faKhr, farsh, 3arsh etc
> sharm, narm, garm, abr (cloud) etc.



There is always an "a" at the end, otherwise how would your "r" be fully aspirated, as is the case with both Urdu and Hindi? I don't see any difference between pronouncing "putr(a)" and "itr(a)"!



			
				tonyspeed said:
			
		

> pavitr -> pavitar or pavitra



I don't think any "pavitar" exists!


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> I thought of a possible exception to this recently. How do you feel about the word "shukr" as in "shukr guzaar". Do people speaking Urdu pronounce this, "shukar guzar/shukr guzaar" or "shukra guzaar"?  In my memory, in Hindi people
> pronounce this as "shukra"; however, could this be because of the Sanskrit word spelled the same way but having a different meaning (shukravaar == Friday)?




Tony, first thing first. A Happy New Year to you!

Let me reitterate that as far as correct Urdu speech is concerned, words like fikr, shukr, farsh, 3arsh, Hukm are pronounced as I have written them and not as fikar, farash, Hukam as it is done in Punjabi speech. Regarding your other point about the unavoidable utterence of an "a", after "putr", "patr", fikr", shukr" and even Hukm, farsh etc, I must concede that I had not thought of it on these lines. Having said this, I believe that the resultant final "a" in pronouncing fikr, garm and the like is, at most, a "semi a". This might sound as if I have just invented this concept. No such luck, I am afraid. I remember reading in a book by a well known scholar on Persian and Urdu prosody about the existence of this semi a. I think, the symbol used in that book was an upside down "e". It would be interesting to hear views of BelligerentPacifist, Koozagar and Faylasoof.

I think the same argument will apply to shukr-guzaar. I hope I have answered your query.

Responding to greatbear's post, "pavit(t)ar" does exist in Punjabi speech. We pronounce "patr" as "pattar" (xat-pattar, a letter) and in the same way "pavitr" goes to "pavittar". I think a number of Sanskrit words do end up being pronounced with an intervening "a" in Urdu too but, at the moment I can't seem to recall any.


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## greatbear

QURESHPOR said:


> Responding to greatbear's post, "pavit(t)ar" does exist in Punjabi speech. We pronounce "patr" as "pattar" (xat-pattar, a letter) and in the same way "pavitr" goes to "pavittar". I think a number of Sanskrit words do end up being pronounced with an intervening "a" in Urdu too but, at the moment I can't seem to recall any.



However, tonyspeed had already discarded "Panjabi influenced Hindi".


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## marrish

QURESHPOR said:


> Tony, first thing first. A Happy New Year to you!
> 
> Let me reitterate that as far as correct Urdu speech is concerned, words like fikr, shukr, farsh, 3arsh, Hukm are pronounced as I have written them and not as fikar, farash, Hukam as it is done in Punjabi speech. Regarding your other point about the unavoidable utterence of an "a", after "putr", "patr", fikr", shukr" and even Hukm, farsh etc, I must concede that I had not thought of it on these lines. Having said this, *I believe that the resultant final "a" in pronouncing fikr, garm and the like is, at most, a "semi a"*. This might sound as if I have just invented this concept. No such luck, I am afraid. I remember reading in a book by a well known scholar on Persian and Urdu prosody about the existence of this semi a. I think, the symbol used in that book was an upside down "e". It would be interesting to hear views of BelligerentPacifist, Koozagar and Faylasoof.
> 
> I think the same argument will apply to shukr-guzaar. I hope I have answered your query.
> 
> Responding to greatbear's post, "pavit(t)ar" does exist in Punjabi speech. We pronounce "patr" as "pattar" (xat-pattar, a letter) and in the same way "pavitr" goes to "pavittar". *I think a number of Sanskrit words do end up being pronounced with an intervening "a" in Urdu too but, at the moment I can't seem to recall any.*


Especially in songs, at the end of a syllable cluster (in final position) this sound seems unavoidable, I would describe it as an after-sound schwa, or actually a break in the pronounciation. Phonetically this sound does not seem to have all the value of a Hindi/Urdu short -a. 
Some examples that I recollect immediately are dharam, karam, bharam, mantar, respectively دھرم۔ کرم۔ بھرم۔ منتر which are considered standard forms for Urdu, whereas I think it's not so in Hindi (leave Sanskrit alone).


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## tonyspeed

QURESHPOR said:


> Having said this, I believe that the resultant final "a" in pronouncing fikr, garm and the like is, at most, a "semi a".
> This might sound as if I have just invented this concept.



When you say "final 'a'" do you mean the semi-a comes *between* the last two consonants or *after* the entire word? : i.e. shukra vs shukar - where a is a semi-a

No, I have seen this before. In fact, Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary sometimes distinguishes a semi-a from a normal a by adding a curved-line above it.


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## marrish

greatbear said:


> However, tonyspeed had already discarded "Panjabi influenced Hindi".


I believe the case is not so simple as that. Punjabi is not the reason of any irregular phenomenon occurring in be it Hindi or Urdu. I have a feeling Punjabi is too many a times employed as a whipping-boy... Please consider numerous instances of breaking the syllables, thus resorting to the path two as per the original question, in the everyday speech of the vast Hindi and Urdu-speaking area, which speech many would haste to mark as uneducated and rustic. Without resorting to dialectology, this phenomenon can be easily consulted by looking into Platts' great dictionary.


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> When you say "final 'a'" do you mean the semi-a comes *between* the last two consonants or *after* the entire word? : i.e. shukra vs shukar - where a is a semi-a
> *
> After the word. shukr+ semi a.*
> 
> No, I have seen this before. In fact, Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary sometimes distinguishes a semi-a from a normal a by adding a curved-line above it.
> 
> *Good. I think that this "semi a" is pronounced at the end of garm, shukr and the like and a "full a" at the end of patra and pavitra and so on. *


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## marrish

As a general rule I've learned that Hindi drops the final short a, the "full a" which Sanskrit relishes. So I believe if there is any _a _in Standard Hindi at the end of the words it's definitely not the full one. That may occur in hyper-correct speech of some Sanskrit-knowers otherwise in a religious context. For me it sounds as a semi-a (or maybe something between a, u & i).


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## greatbear

Forget a full "a", there is not even a schwa at the end of "pavitra", "putra", etc.!

You could read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_languages


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> Forget a full "a", there is not even a schwa at the end of "pavitra", "putra", etc.!
> 
> You could read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_languages



I hope I have not been misunderstood by anyone. What I meant by "full a" is the short a, as in "ab", "jab".


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## tonyspeed

I can't find evidence of a semi-a pronounced after Farsi-orign words. If I do a Google search, shukar guzar comes up with many more hits than shukra guzar. Even in songs I am finding right now, including once called "Dil se shukar guzar", the semi-a is placed between the 'k' and the 'r'. I am still looking for the word in movie dialogue.


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## greatbear

QURESHPOR said:


> I hope I have not been misunderstood by anyone. What I meant by "full a" is the short a, as in "ab", "jab".



Yes, you are talking about the schwa: read the wiki article quoted above. "pavitra" ends at the sound of "r", and so on.


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## marrish

Very informative article, still there's an unavoidable "aftersound" at the end (not only in the languages concerned, also in English, Russian and many more) due to the limitations of the speech apparatus.
I can't agree with the following:
"The *schwa deletion or schwa syncope phenomenon plays a crucial role in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Maithili and several other Indo-Aryan languages, where schwas implicit in the written scripts of those languages are obligatorily deleted for correct pronunciation" since there are no implicit schwas in the written script of Urdu at least, and in also in Punjabi Shahmukhi at least (not sure about Kashmiri...*


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## greatbear

marrish said:


> Very informative article, still there's an unavoidable "aftersound" at the end (not only in the languages concerned, also in English, Russian and many more) due to the limitations of the speech apparatus.
> I can't agree with the following:
> "The *schwa deletion or schwa syncope phenomenon plays a crucial role in Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Maithili and several other Indo-Aryan languages, where schwas implicit in the written scripts of those languages are obligatorily deleted for correct pronunciation" since there are no implicit schwas in the written script of Urdu at least, and in also in Punjabi Shahmukhi at least (not sure about Kashmiri...*



I don't know about the Urdu script, but in Hindi, for example, if you write the word "razaamand" - रज़ामंद - there is the implicit schwa between "r" and "z". I don't know if that's the case with Urdu script or not.
As for the aftersound, I don't think there is one: it is just that the final consonant is apirated fully, which means we let the air escape out completely. However, there is neither a schwa nor a "full a" (of course!).


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## tonyspeed

greatbear said:


> Yes, you are talking about the schwa: read the wiki article quoted above. "pavitra" ends at the sound of "r", and so on.



As far as what I read, the schwa sound is not the same as the semi-a sound QP -sahab is describing. For example, the article says "रचना is Rachnā (not Rachanā)" 
The schwa sound that has been deleted here is the अ which is what we usually call the "inherent" vowel in English.

The semi-a as far as I can see only comes into play when a schwa is inserted into Hindi because of the "limitation of the speech apparatus", meaning - some vowel has to be pronounced or the word is impossible to enunciate clearly. It really is a अ sound that is quieter, has less emphasis and usually trails off as opposed to a full  अ. (Maybe it is even unvoiced?)

So the semi-a is just a weak अ sound we are forced to add; however in my opinion, whether or not it is a full अ is just a technicality.

If we look at platts, it gives the pronunciation of certain words in roman script: 

 پوتر पवित्र pavitra, vulg. pavitr 
 پتر पुत्र putra, putr, vulg. putar, puttar
 مانشيه मानुष्य mānushya
 فکر fikr
 ذکر ẕikr
 شکر shukr


Here it seems Platts thinks we can pronounce fikr without any schwa at all. This is also what Oxford Hindi-English suggests. I still hear a slight one however, but I think we can say for sure that words recorded as such don't seem to ever have any sound after them. I hear a minute अ before 'r' but maybe it is not enough to warrant mention?


However, for the Sanskrit words, we see a clear अ sound in the romanisation. Oxford Hindi-English confirms this but instead adds what we have been calling a semi-a instead of a full-a to show that the sound is very weak. : bhavishyă instead of bhavishya


Another thing to notice is that Platts labels the pronunciations of putar and pavitr as "vulgar", not sure in which sense of the word he intended and I do not have the full Platts pdf on me to try to find out. It also seems to distinguish between putra, putr, and putar. This is a bit confusing. I can only think the difference between putr and putar is one has a semi-a and one has a full-a.


A word in the Wikipedia article that suprised me was bharatiy- but this word is not in Platts at all, which only has  بهرتيا भरतिया bharatiyā, probably showing its dated nature.


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## Qureshpor

I agree with your summation of what we have been talking about.

In another forum, Platts' use of the word "vulgar" was brought up. The word vulgar can be defined as:

"Lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined:  "the vulgar trappings of wealth", as well as "Making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude:  "a vulgar joke". Platts had the first meaning in mind "3aam-bolchaal".

Could it be that in Platts' time, there was no "bhaaratiiya" to signify "Indian" (noun and adjective)? Perhaps one only had "bhaarat-vaasii". bharatiya means, "A worker in the metal called _bhart_, a brazier".


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## marrish

tonyspeed said:


> (...)
> If we look at platts, it gives the pronunciation of certain words in roman script:
> 
> (...)
> مانشيه मानुष्य mānushya
> بهوشيه भविष्य bhavishya
> 
> (...)
> A word in the Wikipedia article that suprised me was bharatiy- but this word is not in Platts at all, which only has  بهرتيا भरतिया bharatiyā, probably showing its dated nature.


I think it's not possible to follow the rules given in the above mentioned article in the case of final -ya, means to drop the final -a, otherwise it will give a long -ii sound in place of -y. 
BTW, the dropping of this final -a is the case in Urdu for the adjective bhar(a)tii بھارتی which is very standard. However I'm not sure this word is a direct borrowing from Sanskrit into Urdu, it's more of attaching the Urdu-Persian-Hindi suffix -ii to the proper name _bhaarat_.


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## Abu Talha

QURESHPOR said:


> Let me reitterate that as far as correct Urdu speech is concerned, words like fikr, shukr, farsh, 3arsh, Hukm are pronounced as I have written them and not as fikar, farash, Hukam as it is done in Punjabi speech. Regarding your other point about the unavoidable utterence of an "a", after "putr", "patr", fikr", shukr" and even Hukm, farsh etc, I must concede that I had not thought of it on these lines. Having said this, I believe that the resultant final "a" in pronouncing fikr, garm and the like is, at most, a "semi a".


 Qureshpor Sahib, by 'final "a" ' do you mean before the final consonant or after? In my experience, I've heard it before, mostly.

While I agree with Qureshpor that the correct pronunciation is fikr, etc. with the tiniest vowel one can manage between _k_ and _r_, I would say that hardly anyone [I know] speaks like that. 

But I think, this is harder to pronounce with some combination of consonants as compared to others. _mashq _is downright easy, and fikr and garm, I would say, are not as hard as, for example, words ending with _h_, like SubH, wajh, fiqh, fatH. SubH, in particular, is such a common word that I've heard subaa, suba, subah, subuh, suboh, and sub-ho. The only time you'll hear them "correctly" is if they are the first term in a izaafat construct, e.g., fatH-e makka. 

Some combinations are so easy that they would be pronounced together even incorrectly, like _marz_, which should be _maraz_.



> This might sound as if I have just invented this concept. No such luck, I am afraid. I remember reading in a book by a well known scholar on Persian and Urdu prosody about the existence of this semi a. I think, the symbol used in that book was an upside down "e"


Qureshpor Sb, I would be interested in knowing more about scholarly views, if you could give us a summary or reference. Thanks!


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## Qureshpor

marrish said:


> Some examples that I recollect immediately are dharam, karam, bharam, mantar, respectively دھرم۔ کرم۔ بھرم۔ منتر which are considered standard forms for Urdu, whereas I think it's not so in Hindi (leave Sanskrit alone).



Thank you for these examples. For ब्रह्मण, Urdu has "barhaman" as well as "barahman". KrishNRa is written as Krishan.


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## marrish

Definitely other instances you provided, Qureshpor SaHib are valuable since they occur so frequently in Urdu poetry as well. With regard to  ब्रह्मण it gets realised as bramman and bamman too, in speech.
For KriShNRa, one may find it realised as Kishan, too, but I'm not sure if it is the case with Urdu, though.


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## Qureshpor

daee said:


> Qureshpor Sahib, by 'final "a" ' do you mean before the final consonant or before? In my experience, I've heard it before, mostly.
> 
> I think you meant to write "...before.....or after....". After. To use the example of "fikr", after "r".
> 
> While I agree with Qureshpor that the correct pronunciation is fikr, etc. with the tiniest vowel one can manage between _k_ and _r_, I would say that hardly anyone [I know] speaks like that.
> 
> No, I was n't thinking of any intervening vowel between "k" and "r". When we say "fikr", I don't believe we add anything to k. Of course the incorrect "fikar" is a different matter.
> 
> But I think, this is harder to pronounce with some combination of consonants as compared to others. _mashq _is downright easy, and fikr and garm, I would say, are not as hard as, for example, words ending with _h_, like SubH, wajh, fiqh, fatH. SubH, in particular, is such a common word that I've heard subaa, suba, subah, subuh, suboh, and sub-ho. The only time you'll hear them "correctly" is if they are the first term in a izaafat construct, e.g., fatH-e makka.
> 
> I don't think vajh and subH are difficult at all. With your Arabic expertise, I am surprised that you feel there is some difficulty in their pronunciation.
> 
> Some combinations are so easy that they would be pronounced together even incorrectly, like _marz_, which should be _maraz_.
> 
> Has this got anything to do with ease of pronunciation? I would hazard a guess and say that people assume that because there are such words is "farz", qarz and 3arz, this word must be marz!!
> 
> Qureshpor Sb, I would be interested in knowing more about scholarly views, if you could give us a summary or reference. Thanks!
> 
> Do you mean about the "semi a"? The book in question is, "A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody: With Chapters on Urdu, Karakhanidic and Ottomon prosody" by Professor Finn Thiesen.


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## Abu Talha

QURESHPOR said:


> I think you meant to write "...before.....or after....". After. To use the example of "fikr", after "r".


Yes. Thanks for the correction.





> No, I was n't thinking of any intervening vowel between "k" and "r". When we say "fikr", I don't believe we add anything to k. Of course the incorrect "fikar" is a different matter.


That's interesting. I think the r may have some "roll" that becomes a vowel after it. But would you say that you pronounce "is matn meN..." as "is matən meN" or "is matnə meN"? I think I try to go for the former.





> I don't think vajh and subH are difficult at all. With your Arabic expertise, I am surprised that you feel there is some difficulty in their pronunciation.


Well, my Arabic (in)expertise notwithstanding, I have to say it is somewhat difficult for me. In Arabic, when stopping on the final consonant, _SubH_ is not too hard because it is a ح that comes from the throat. But _wajh_ is harder because it comes from farther down the windpipe. (Linguists would be appalled at how I've described these sounds...)





> Has this got anything to do with ease of pronunciation? I would hazard a guess and say that people assume that because there are such words is "farz", qarz and 3arz, this word must be marz!!


That could be it, I guess. Nevertheless, the _rz_ consonant conjunct is somewhat easier, I think, so that _3arz_, and _qarz_ are rarely mispronounced.





> Do you mean about the "semi a"? The book in question is, "A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody: With Chapters on Urdu, Karakhanidic and Ottomon prosody" by Professor Finn Thiesen.


Thanks! I'll try to look it up.


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## greatbear

I completely disagree with QP's differentiation in pronunciation based on where they come from: there isn't any difference between the pronunciations of "janm" and "sharm", in both cases there is no final any kind of "a".
Coming back to words like "putra", how many of the people here would say that there is any kind of an "a" at the end of Jean-Paul Sartre?


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## greatbear

tonyspeed said:


> So the semi-a is just a weak अ sound we are forced to add; however in my opinion, whether or not it is a full अ is just a technicality.
> 
> If we look at platts, it gives the pronunciation of certain words in roman script:
> 
> پوتر पवित्र pavitra, vulg. pavitr
> پتر पुत्र putra, putr, vulg. putar, puttar
> مانشيه मानुष्य mānushya
> فکر fikr
> ذکر ẕikr
> شکر shukr
> 
> 
> Here it seems Platts thinks we can pronounce fikr without any schwa at all. This is also what Oxford Hindi-English suggests. I still hear a slight one however, but I think we can say for sure that words recorded as such don't seem to ever have any sound after them. I hear a minute अ before 'r' but maybe it is not enough to warrant mention?



Simply because Platts inserts an "a" somewhere and doesn't at other places doesn't change the actual ways a word is uttered. I don't find any unvoiced or weak "a" in either of "shukrmand" or "putrvadhu".


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> I completely disagree with QP's differentiation in pronunciation based on where they come from: there isn't any difference between the pronunciations of "janm" and "sharm", in both cases there is no final any kind of "a".



janm and sharm will have identical voweling ONLY if janm has a हलन्त. If one is not written in (as is usually the case), then for the two words to be equal one must assume that it is there.


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## Qureshpor

daee said:


> Yes. Thanks for the correction.
> That's interesting. I think the r may have some "roll" that becomes a vowel after it. But would you say that you pronounce "is matn meN..." as "is matən meN" or "is matnə meN"?



We are splitting hairs here (muu-shigaafii) but I would go for matnə.


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## BP.

greatbear said:


> ...
> Coming back to words like "putra", how many of the people here would say that there is any kind of an "a" at the end of Jean-Paul Sartre?


I would notice the sound but won't call it an a, because its simply a schwa. Maybe someone could look up the flipped e symbol from the Ascii list to denote that on this board, it's a sound very frequently encountered esp. in 'proper' Hindi.


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## greatbear

BelligerentPacifist said:


> I would notice the sound but won't call it an a, because its simply a schwa. Maybe someone could look up the flipped e symbol from the Ascii list to denote that on this board, it's a sound very frequently encountered esp. in 'proper' Hindi.



Ah, I selected the wrong person, since I think English speakers pronounce a schwa at the end for Sartre! The French pronunciation is of course [saʁtʁ]. So forget the argument!


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## Illuminatus

We usually associate syllables with vowels, but while this is mostly true, it doesn't need to be so—syllables are usually interpreted by speakers based on peaks of sonority, and sufficiently sonorous sounds like [m, n, r, l] can also act as syllable nuclei (apart from vowels, which are most sonorous). Look at the pronunciation of the word bottle, for instance. Here [l] is acting like a syllabic consonant. Or the word button, where [n] is syllabic. 

So, it's pretty much possible to have words which end in [r] and where there is no audible schwa at the end despite the sensation of 2 syllables.

Also, as far as I know, itra, fakra etc. are all supposed to end in the schwa sound, so there is no issue in their pronunciation. However, many of these words also have a competing pronunciation with a vowel inserted between the conjunct pair. So, while itra exists, ittar/attar also exist.


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## tonyspeed

Illuminatus said:


> We usually associate syllables with vowels, but while this is mostly true, it doesn't need to be so—syllables are usually interpreted by speakers based on peaks of sonority, and sufficiently sonorous sounds like [m, n, r, l] can also act as syllable nuclei (apart from vowels, which are most sonorous). Look at the pronunciation of the word bottle, for instance. Here [l] is acting like a syllabic consonant. Or the word button, where [n] is syllabic.
> 
> So, it's pretty much possible to have words which end in [r] and where there is no audible schwa at the end despite the sensation of 2 syllables.
> 
> Also, as far as I know, itra, fakra etc. are all supposed to end in the schwa sound, so there is no issue in their pronunciation.



Thanks, I believes this adds some clarity to the issue I was seeing.

I assume you are talking about itr (perfume) and faXr (pride). This is strange, because I assumed they would be pronounced without any "a" at the end as per your syllabic consonant explanation.


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