# Hindi, Urdu: pronunciation of "doctor"



## MonsieurGonzalito

Friends,

    What is the correct pronunciation of "doctor"?

In hindi I find it written as
डॉक्टर - Wiktionary
And my understanding is that the ◌ॉ  (chandra-o) sign usually indicates a short English /ɒ/ sound.


But @littlepond jii suggested that it is
/dɔːktər/
not
/dɒktər/

However, in Urdu there is only ڈاکْٹَر in the Lughat, not ڈوکٹر
Urdu Lughat
(the clip also sounds kile an "a" sound, without any tension or rounding of the lips to form an /ɔː/)

Is the word pronounced differently in Hindi than in Urdu?

Also, I would like to clarify the wider point of whether or not the chandra-o sign ◌ॉ means specifically a "short a"  (IPA /ɒ/ ), or it denotes simply a "loanword", with no clear pronunciation


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> But @littlepond jii suggested that it is
> /dɔːktər/
> not
> /dɒktər/


I am not well versed with the pronunciation symbols, so I didn't suggest anything like that, as you would recall. What you say may or may not be true regarding what I said.

What I did say was that the English word doctor is pronounced as "daukTar" (डॉक्टर) or "daakTar" (डाक्टर) in Hindi, not as "dakTar" (which would be spelt as डक्टर).



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Also, I would like to clarify the wider point of whether or not the chandra-o sign ◌ॉ means specifically a "short a"  (IPA /ɒ/ ), or it denotes simply a "loanword", with no clear pronunciation



The sign always signifies a sound of "au." The English "ball" in Hindi would be written as बॉल ("baul"). बॉल cannot and would not be pronounced as "bal" (बल), which would mean "might"!


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## desi4life

I think the wiktionary pronunciation is correct and many pronounce it that way. But keep in mind there is not a lot of difference between /ɔː/ and /ɒ/ other than length and many assimilate /ɒ/ (which is only in English words) to /ɔː/.


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## aevynn

I think ऑ is used to transcribe loanwords from English that have either a /ɔː/ or an /ɒ/ in RP (ie, the "standard" British English pronunciation). These two vowels collapse to /ɒ/ in dialects exhibiting the cot-caught merger. That includes most North American[*] dialects, and also Scottish dialects. (Incidentally, I think a lot of Britishers in India involved with administration of the Raj were Scotsmen...?)

Note though that /ɒ/ is not a phoneme of UH. The two closest HU phonemes are /aː/ and /ɔː/ (the former matches /ɒ/ in vowel height, and the latter matches /ɒ/ in backness and roundedness). Probably there's been a shift over time in which the the /ɒ/ phoneme of certain dialects of English used to be heard by UH speakers as /aː/ but is now mostly heard as /ɔː/. I've really only heard डॉक्टर / ڈاکٹر pronounced with an /aː/ in old movies (and I guess now the Urdu Lughat pronunciation clip!). Even my grandfather (who grew up in rural Punjab in the 1930s) uses /ɔː/ in this word. Probably there are still people out there who use /aː/ in this word (maybe even some of our forum friends...?!), but I haven't had any spoken personal interactions with them that I recall.

Probably orthographic conventions began to crystallize before this shift happened. The result is that the Devanagari grapheme ऑ used to represent the same UH phoneme as does आ, but now this grapheme represents the same UH phoneme as does औ. On the other hand, Urdu orthography uses alif, and this probably accurately reflected the HU pronunciation once, but loanwords such as ڑاکٹر now result in a situation where the alif grapheme can represent both HU phonemes /aː/ and /ɔː/ depending on the word.

--

[*]: Note that most American dialects also exhibit father-bother merger, causing /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ to both collapse to /ɒ/. But Devanagari transcriptions of loanwords that have an /ɑː/ in RP (eg, father) typically don't use ऑ (instead using आ). In other words, it's as though Devanagari transcription tries to reflect the pronunciation of English dialects that have undergone the cot-caught merger but not the father-bother merger.


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## desi4life

littlepond said:


> I am not well versed with the pronunciation symbols, so I didn't suggest anything like that, as you would recall. What you say may or may not be true regarding what I said.
> 
> What I did say was that the English word doctor is pronounced as "daukTar" (डॉक्टर) or "daakTar" (डाक्टर) in Hindi, not as "dakTar" (which would be spelt as डक्टर).
> 
> 
> 
> The sign always signifies a sound of "au." The English "ball" in Hindi would be written as बॉल ("baul"). बॉल cannot and would not be pronounced as "bal" (बल), which would mean "might"!



“au” is ौ and thus डॉक्टर is slightly different in pronunciation from डौक्टर for many people, but there are many who do assimilate ◌ॉ to ौ as explained in #3 and #4.


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## littlepond

desi4life said:


> “au” is ौ and thus डॉक्टर is slightly different in pronunciation from डौक्टर for many people, but there are many who do assimilate ◌ॉ to ौ as explained in #3 and #4.



For me, ौ is just very slightly "longer," but maybe I'm one of those who do the assimilation. Regardless, I am curious how you would transliterate डॉक्टर in this forum (I'm not talking of the IPA notation). It cannot be "dakTar," and if "daukTar" is also ruled out, how else?


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Come to think about it ... isn't डो॰  (with a closed /oː/, not  डौ) also a common abbreviation of "doctor" in Hindi?


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Also, चॉकलेट, रॉकस्टार will never be pronounced /tʃ*ɔː*klət/ /r*ɔː*kstɑr/, no matter how far into the  _cot_–_caught  _merger we are.
So we have to admit that the chandra-o is used to reflect different foreing sounds' realizations.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Come to think about it ... isn't डो॰  (with a closed /oː/, not  डौ) also a common abbreviation of "doctor" in Hindi?



I haven't seen such an abbreviation, but regardless of whether such an abbreviation exists or not, डोक्टर is how Gujaratis would pronounce the word, not Hindiphones.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Also, चॉकलेट, रॉकस्टार will never be pronounced /tʃ*ɔː*klət/ /r*ɔː*kstɑr/, no matter how far into the  _cot_–_caught  _merger we are.



It's "daukTar," "chaukleT" and "rauck-sTaar." The same in all of them: i.e., assimilating to औ. (And if some rare person is not doing so, then they wouldn't do in all of them.) I have no idea why you assumed chocolate and rockstar would be treated differently from a doctor.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

littlepond said:


> I have no idea why you assumed chocolate and rockstar would be treated differently from a doctor.


I didn't necessarily assume such thing. 
I gave those words as examples of words that were unlikely to be part of any caught/cot merger. 
And that was in order to question whether or not the variety of English the speaker knows would be a factor, as it might have been in, say,  डॉटर ("daughter"), which can be /ˈdɑː.t̬ɚ/  or  /ˈdɔː.tər/


But to the point of:


littlepond said:


> (And if some rare person is not doing so, then they wouldn't do in all of them.)


Are you totally sure about that?

I have seen फॉल ("fall" = inner lining), वाटरफ़ॉल ("waterfall"),  बॉय ("boy"), बॉयफ्रेंड, ("boyfriend")
Those "chandra-o" sounds, whatever their IPA (probably /ɔ/), are clearly not the same as the open /ɑ/ in 
बॉम्ब ("bomb"), डॉक्टर ("doctor"), वॉल्यूम ("volume").

Those are all words that I found in Bollywood songs, and I don't know to what degree they have been "indicized". Maybe they are careless Anglicisms. But they do not represent the same English sound; of that, I am sure.

So you are basicalli saying that an Hinduphone will tend to make  फॉल  rhyme with बॉम्ब, and that both sounds are akin to  औ ?


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## MonsieurGonzalito

aevynn said:


> In other words, it's as though Devanagari transcription tries to reflect the pronunciation of English dialects that have undergone the cot-caught merger


But if this were true (and the /ɑ/ sound is the "American", "future" trending point), then shouldn't we expect the  /ɔː/  sound being prevalent in older generations, and the /ɑː/ sound in younger ones?

Answers so far (including yours)  seem to indicate that it is the other way around ...


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## aevynn

Let me try to clarify. (Also, let me make the convention that I won't mark the lengthening /ː/ in IPA transcriptions since length is not phonemically contrastive in any of the relevant languages/varieties.)

There are three relevant RP phonemes: /ɔ/, /ɒ/, /ɑ/.
There are three relevant Devanagari graphemes: औ, ऑ, आ.
There are two relevant Urdu graphemes: ا, و.
There are two relevant UH phonemes: /ɔ/, /ɑ/.

(1) The function from RP phonemes to Devanagari graphemes is:
​/ɔ/ ↦ ऑ​/ɒ/ ↦ ऑ​/ɑ/ ↦ आ​​In particular, I think औ is not typically used when transcribing English words.​
(2) The function from RP phonemes to Urdu graphemes is:
​/ɔ/ ↦ ا​/ɒ/ ↦ ا​/ɑ/ ↦ ا​​It may be that there are a few words where و is used instead, and they are almost certainly words that have /ɔ/ or /ɒ/ in their RP pronunciation.​​(3) The function from the RP phonemes to the HU phonemes that I'm familiar with is:
​/ɔ/ ↦ /ɔ/​/ɒ/ ↦ /ɔ/​/ɑ/ ↦ /ɑ/​
(4) It may be that some people use the following function from RP phonemes to UH phonemes, and this may have been the more common function in the past:
​/ɔ/ ↦ /ɑ/​/ɒ/ ↦ /ɑ/​/ɑ/ ↦ /ɑ/​
In particular, note that one does not need the full three-way distinction of RP for any of (1) through (4). All of these can be generated from the two-way phonemic distinction made by English dialects that have undergone the cot-caught merger but not the father-bother merger. (Scottish English is one such dialect, and I was hypothesizing that this state of affairs might have something to do with the prevalence of Scotsmen in the Subcontinent during the Raj, but this is just a wild guess.)

In my experience, even young people in India who're quite familiar with American culture and might aspire to GA pronunciations will tend to use pronunciations of style (3), not realizing that the GA pronunciations are different. Stated differently, Indian English as spoken by many HU speakers exhibits the cot-caught merger but not the father-bother merger. It may be that this changes at some point under influence of GA, but this hasn't caught on yet (at least, not in my circles). And just to reiterate this point:


MonsieurGonzalito said:


> So you are basicalli saying that an Hinduphone will tend to make फॉल rhyme with बॉम्ब, and that both sounds are akin to औ ?


Yes, I think Indian English as spoken by UH speakers uses the same vowel in both "fall" and "bomb" (but uses a different vowel for "father"), and that common vowel is /ɔ/. It's the same vowel in "boy" and "volume" as well.



littlepond said:


> I am curious how you would transliterate डॉक्टर in this forum


It seems like we don't have a transliteration! Can I propose "Au" as in "DAukTar"...?


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## MonsieurGonzalito

OK, I think I understand now. Thanks, @aevynn!

One last thing: should something be induced from the fact that, even within the same dictionary, some received words retain the chandra-o and others don't?

For example, Bahri has डाक्टर but not डॉक्टर. But the same dictionary has some (few) words with chandra-o: क्लॉक, टॉनिक. 

Is this just some lexicographical inconsistency, or there is a deeper meaning to this?
As if  (I am just guessing here) some words are considered to have been "indicized" to a greater extent than others, and that might somehow affect pronunciation?


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> For example, Bahri has डाक्टर but not डॉक्टर. But the same dictionary has some (few) words with chandra-o: क्लॉक, टॉनिक.
> 
> Is this just some lexicographical inconsistency, or there is a deeper meaning to this?



I think you missed my first reply on this topic. Because _doctor_ used to be pronounced in the old days (and still is, by some people) as "daakTar" (rhyming with _master_, "maasTar"). Some other English words also show this two (or three) different styles of pronunciation: e.g., _locket_ ("laakiT," "laukiT," and, from @aevynn jii's suggestion, "lAukiT"). On the other hand, there is no "klaak" for _clock_.


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## Sheikh_14

In Urdu there are two prevalent ways in which the word is pronounced one mimics the English pronunciation in DokTar and the other has a pronounced aa sound as in DaakTar. The latter  was originally how most Urdu-phones pronounced doctor since its transliterated in Urdu script as ڈاکٹر. However, that pronunciation is going out of fashion and thereby I see no reason why it isn't written as ڈوکٹر instead or at least there should be the choice to alternate just as the alif is redundant in words like Studio or school. This discrepancy is an obsolete oddity that can be found in other languages too. For instance since Arabic doesn't have the letter چ it attempts to mimic the sound by prefixing words with the letter ت but hardly any modern-day Arabophones with even basic command of the English language pronounce the likes of Chicken as tashikan, and thence the ت in تشکن is redundant. Whereas shikan is how it would commonly be pronounced in Arabic.


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