# Urdu: Changed pronunciation of some Arabic letters



## tarkshya

I am learning Nastaliq script for the past few weeks, and I have noticed that many letters are pronounced differently in Urdu from their Arabic original sounds. For example..

ث is spoken as IPA /θ/ in Arabic, but as /s/ in Urdu
ض is spoken as /dˤ/ in Arabic but as /z/ in Urdu
ذ is /ð/ in Arabic and /z/ is urdu
ح is /ħ/ in Arabic and /h/ in Urdu

(I am giving all pronunciations as per IPA to avoid confusion and maintain accuracy).


This effect can be seen in the transliteration of many words like رمضان, which will be written as ramadaan by Arabs and ramzaan by Urdu speakers. Or  عثمان as Uthmaan by Arabs and Usmaan by Urdu folks.




Question..


1. Is this modified pronunciation considered correct by language experts, or is it just accepted (or rather tolerated) even though known to be inaccurate? In other words, was there any official directive from any Urdu language standards body that these letters will be pronounced differently from their Arabic originals?




I am asking this question from the perspective of a new learner of Urdu script. If I have to learn a new skill, I might as well learn it in the correct way. Why should a new learner knowingly pick wrong pronunciation of letters if he/she knows better. I have asked this question before too in a previous thread here http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2879580. Unfortunately, most native Urdu speakers seems to be taking the line that this is how we pronounce these letters in Urdu, and that's the end of it. I *know* this is how they pronounce these letters. What I want to know is why do they do it? Is there any good reason behind it?


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## Qureshpor

The answer to your question is very straight forward. The letters ث, س and ص are pronounced identically as are ذ, ز, ض and ظ۔.  

ت and ط are pronounced the same; so are ہ and ح . As I said to you before, this topic has come up before and if you were to do a little searching yourself, you will find the threads helpful.

Why are they pronounced the same? Well, practically all of Urdu's Persian AND Arabic vocabulary came into the language via Persian. By this time, the Persian speaking peoples had stopped differentiating between these various groups of letters and this is how Urdu speakers inherited them. The true sounds of these consonants are pronounced while one recites the Qur'an. Arab speakers (not all) would also pronounce them in their true mode. Some Urdu speakers do differentiate between ہ and ح as well as between ا and ع. Even these, if you pronounced as the same, no one will criticize you one tiny bit. So, stick to the pronunciation where these groups are pronounced the same. I hope you have a definitive answer.


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## eskandar

QP SaaHib is absolutely right. The "modified pronunciation" as you erroneously named it is considered correct by language experts. I even offered references to such language experts in the last thread, which you ignored. As French has historically played the same role for English that Arabic played for Persian, by your logic we should be asking: is the English "modified pronunciation" of the letter R considered correct by language experts? After all, it is pronounced [ʁ] in French, so why have we changed it in English, even for words like "reference" (for example) which come from French?

Would you tell a Hindi speaker who is learning English that they should learn [ʁ] as the _correct_ pronunciation of R? After all, "Why should a new learner knowingly pick wrong pronunciation of letters if he/she knows better" ?



tarkshya said:


> Unfortunately, most native Urdu speakers seems to be taking the line that this is how we pronounce these letters in Urdu, and that's the end of it. I *know* this is how they pronounce these letters. What I want to know is why do they do it? Is there any good reason behind it?


The reason is that Urdu and Arabic are two separate languages. Urdu happens to use the abjad it borrowed from Persian for writing, which originally comes from Arabic. In Persian, ث for example represents the sound whereas in Arabic it represents [θ]. Urdu pronounces all these letters the same way Persian does.

A writing system is a method of representing the sounds which exist in a language via symbols. ث does not have an inherent meaning that must always be [θ]. In classical Arabic the symbol ث represents [θ] but in Egyptian Arabic (and other dialects) it represents , as it does in Urdu, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and other languages. In Urdu--as in Persian, as in Ottoman Turkish, as in others--it would be _incorrect_ to pronounce ثواب as /θavaab/, and _correct_ to pronounce it as /savaab/. In Hausa (a language of West Africa written in the Arabic script), ث represents [tʃ] as in English *ch*op.

In the same way, R does not have an inherent value of [ʁ]; it is an abstract symbol that can be used to represent [ʁ] in French and [ɹ] in English and [ɾ] in Spanish and so on. If a French speaker took an English class and pronounced the first consonant of the word "reference" as [ʁ], they would be corrected by their English teacher. It doesn't matter that the word originally comes from French and that it's pronounced that way in the French _référence_. It is an incorrect pronunciation for English. Each language has its own set of rules concerning pronunciation.

As a final example, modern Turkish no longer uses the Perso-Arabic abjad; it instead uses the Latin alphabet. In Turkish, the letter C represents [d͡ʒ] as in the English *j*ump. This is despite the fact that C does not represent such a sound in any of the major European languages (English, French, etc.) which helped introduce this alphabet to Turkey. The fact is that C does not have an inherent value of [k] or [d͡ʒ] or anything else; it can be used to represent any sound, just as the letters of the Perso-Arabic abjad can be used to represent any sound.


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## marrish

My participation being redundant, still let me hasten to say that even in many Arabic dialects, those letters are not read as it is portrayed by the IPA transcription. In Urdu they have never ever been pronounced so but it is just a reiteration of what has been said before. The only exception are Arabic phrases which may be pronounced in a quite Arabic way... and the exception of ħ, which has been dealt with in the other thread.


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## mundiya

I have a question which I don't think has been asked yet but is relevant to this thread. For the most part, Persian pronunciations are maintained in Urdu, but the same cannot be said for Arabic pronunciations in Persian or French pronunciations in English.  Persian took the liberty of adapting and modifying Arabic words, just  as English did with French words, so why didn't Urdu do that with  Persian words?  Persian has sounds that were not present in Indic languages and presented difficulties for Indic speakers, just as Arabic has sounds not present in Persian.  So, what were the linguistic and historical factors that prevented Urdu from adapting and modifying Persian words?


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## marrish

It is an interesting question, in my opinion relevant to this thread. The only sounds I am able to think of from the perspective of other Indic languages excluding Urdu are x, Gh, f and z. Are these sounds the subject of your question?


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## mundiya

^Yes, you can also add q and zh (q was there in Classical Persian, right?).


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## marrish

I suppose it was there, q but now it has changed. zh occurs in a couple of words only.

My attempt to answer this question right off will be flawed with lack of information but I think it is due to Persian being the official language of parts of what is now Pakistan earlier and then Hindustan for nine centuries.


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## Qureshpor

mundiya said:


> I have a question which I don't think has been asked yet but is relevant to this thread. For the most part, Persian pronunciations are maintained in Urdu, but the same cannot be said for Arabic pronunciations in Persian or French pronunciations in English.  Persian took the liberty of adapting and modifying Arabic words, just  as English did with French words, so why didn't Urdu do that with  Persian words?  Persian has sounds that were not present in Indic languages and presented difficulties for Indic speakers, just as Arabic has sounds not present in Persian.  So, what were the linguistic and historical factors that prevented Urdu from adapting and modifying Persian words?


Although purely Persian consonants is not the topic of this thread, the Persian sounds which were incorporated into the Persian alphabet were four in number. p (*p*aak), ch (*ch*aman), zh (mi*zh*gaan) and g (*g*ul). Urdu speakers do pronounce these apart from *zh *which some speakers substitute with "y". A possible reason for this is that the sound is so uncommon. In Urdu, there are probably only half a dozen words with zh in them. In Persian, probably not many more. You will have noticed that three of the four Persian sounds are shared with Indic sounds.


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## mundiya

^ No, the consonants I am referring to are those in posts 6 and 7.  Urdu inherited them all from Persian without any adaptations or modifications.  While q is originally Arabic, it was in Persian use at the time Urdu inherited it.  For its part, Persian modified or adapted many Arabic sounds, including the different forms of h, t, z, and s, and now q too (I have Romanized these consonants in the Persian/Urdu pronunciation).  So, why didn't Urdu have the same approach towards Persian sounds that Persian had towards Arabic sounds (and likewise English towards French)?  After all, Arabic influence in Iran was similar to that of Persian influence in India.


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## Qureshpor

I see what you mean. x, Gh, f, z, zh and q.

I have already covered zh in my last post.

My understanding is that Persian variety that came into India was the Khorasani variety which was the type of Persian used in areas which are now Afghanistan and Tajikistan. In this Persian, q is pronounced as per Classical Arabic. In Urdu, q is also pronounced in this manner. Listen to Dilip Kumar speaking Urdu, for example.  But, as you no doubt know some Urdu speakers do pronounce q as k.

 The rest have not changed most likely due to their occurrence in the Qur'an. As a child one learns to read the Qur'an even before learning Urdu (or Persian for that matter). The Urdu script differentiates between x (xat) and kh (khaTTaa), Gh (Ghabn) and g (gol-maTol), z (zanjiir) and j (jaan) and f (fan-art) and ph (phan). So, these factors could be at play. Any more than this all I can say is that this is how it is. No language guru has presided over people to tell them how to pronounce these consonants. Those people who have grown up with Urdu as their written language never confuse b/v, s/sh, j/z, ph/f. x/kh, f/ph etc.


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## mundiya

^ As Dib babu once mentioned, script doesn't play much of a role in how one pronounces one's mother tongue (or a language one grew up with).  It has to do with how the language was spoken at home, the environment in which a person was brought up.  The Persian/Urdu script also has separate characters for the different forms of h, t, z and s, yet a distinction between those Arabic sounds is not maintained.  So, it remains an open question why Persian changed Arabic sounds, but Urdu didn't do the same with Persian sounds.


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## Qureshpor

^ I am sorry you will have to post your message in Punjabi. It is obvious that I have not been able to comprehend what you are saying. I might then be in luck understanding what exactly you are after.  Or, hopefully, someone else might be able to answer your query.

The script is Urdu. Persian does not have T, D, Dh, R, Rh, bh, ph, th, jh, chh, dh, kh, gh, lh, mh and nh


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## mundiya

Bringing Punjabi into the discussion will be off-topic since this is an  Urdu thread with reference to Persian and Arabic.  I will try again to make myself clear.  If you want any further  clarifications, you can send me a PM.

I didn't say anything about  the unique Indic consonants, so I am puzzled that you are mentioning  them.  By different forms of /t/ being the same sound I mean ت and ط, for /z/ I mean ذ, ز,  ض,ظ, etc.


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## Qureshpor

^ Actually, the thread is about Arabic consonants, as per the title and the first post. So, there is no need for PM and I shall stop here.


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## Sheikh_14

Qureshpor said:


> Urdu speakers do pronounce these apart from *zh *which some speakers substitute with "y". A possible reason for this is that the sound is so uncommon. In Urdu, there are probably only half a dozen words with zh in them. In Persian, probably not many more. You will have noticed that three of the four Persian sounds are shared with Indic sounds.



I was seeking to pick your brain on this, in that while the correct pronunciation of Zh is similar to the French J in bonjour or si sound in vision, why do some Urduphones insist on pronouncing Zhaala-baarii as yaala-baarii? Is this a ghalat ul a'aam which has caught on with some who find it difficult to pronounce the Zh sound? I have never heard the y sound be replicated when it's used in the middle of a word like NiZhaad (here the same folk will replicate a jeem sound). Quite often, at least in the news media you'll hear Yaala in lieu of Zhaala-baarii.

I have attached a link where both entrants have used the correct pronunciation, the second one being even clearer than the first. ژالہ باری pronunciation: How to pronounce ژالہ باری in Urdu. There's a good youtube video as well in case anyone needs it, do send me a private message instead. I'd be interested in how Urdu-phones such as yourself pronounce the letter.


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## Qureshpor

Sheikh_14 said:


> I was seeking to pick your brain on this, in that while the correct pronunciation of Zh is similar to the French J in bonjour or si sound in vision, why do some Urduphones insist on pronouncing Zhaala-baarii as yaala-baarii? Is this a ghalat ul a'aam which has caught on with some who find it difficult to pronounce the Zh sound? I have never heard the y sound be replicated when it's used in the middle of a word like NiZhaad (here the same folk will replicate a jeem sound). Quite often, at least in the news media you'll hear Yaala in lieu of Zhaala-baarii.
> 
> I have attached a link where both entrants have used the correct pronunciation, the second one being even clearer than the first. ژالہ باری pronunciation: How to pronounce ژالہ باری in Urdu. There's a good youtube video as well in case anyone needs it, do send me a private message instead. I'd be interested in how Urdu-phones such as yourself pronounce the letter.


Sheikh_14 SaaHib subH ba-xair. There is a saying in Punjabi, "جیہو جئے کوہنڑ آلے اوہو جئے کھانڑ آلے" which in Urdu translates as "جیسے ذبح کرنے والے ویسے کھانے والے" (jaise zabH karne vaale vaise khaane vaale). I am sure you know what I am saying. The answer to your question is very simple. Some people pronounce ژ as ی or ز because they themselves are unaware of its proper sound AND no one has taught them this sound. I certainly don't remember being taught its correct sound. I pronounce it as it ought to be pronounced, namely the way Persian speakers pronounce it and the way the "s" in "television" ought to be pronounced. 

Your first recording seems to be pronouncing it seems to be "y" to my ears. The second one is better.


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