# Hindi, Urdu: <jeem> to <ze> overcompensation



## panjabigator

How often is it that you hear a Hindi/Urdu speaker change a <z> to a <j> sound?  Fairly often, I'd imagine, and in India it's not _always _a marker of being an uneducated speaker at all, I'd argue.  But how frequently do you encounter the opposite, a sort of overcompensation by the unsure or weary interlocuter?

My example comes from my own conversations I've had in the Panjab.  I was having a conversation in Panjabi with a professor and then she switched to Hindi when a third member joined.  At one point, I distinctly remember her articulation as <izazat> and not <ijazat>.  It caught me off guard, and I honestly looked in the dictionary to see if it, in fact, was the correct pronunciation.  

I can't think of any other examples, and though I'd love to see more of them, WF rules strictly prohib lists, so if we are to discuss the subject, we must be attentive to strictly listing words. (I'm sure we're all aware of this, but given that one thread was closed several days ago, I just felt that added precaution and an informed first post would be helpful).


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## BP.

It happens very often if you have the exact same word pronounced differently in several languages you speak. The example of _izaazat_ you cited is specially interesting because it has both j and z in it, and lack of practice in switching languages can engender a situation like you quoted. Another example is z substitution in _samajhna_.


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## Faylasoof

One hears this often but good Urdu diction of course doesn't allow this interchange as Hindi does - originally there was no 'z' in Hindi. Good Urdu also doesn't allow the 'qaaf' vs 'kaaf' and 'sheen' vs 'seen' change, though many do this. I mentioned before in another thread about the Luckhnavi 'sheen'-'qaaf' emphasis. In [be 'izzati] you not only hear the 'z'-'j' [be ijjati] interchange but, incredibly, even the 'z'-‘s’ [besti – the ‘be’ pronounced as in ‘bay’], when you hear: [usne meri besti kharaab ki!!] Supposed to be: [usne meri ‘izzat kharaab ki] = be 'izzati ki.


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## Cilquiestsuens

Izaazat is a common example.

There is another irritating one, it is riwaaz (instead of riwaaj)...

Gator, I think in PK people laugh at the mispronounciation of ze / zal / zwad / zoe  as a jeem... This is a totally pindu and uneducated pronounciation.... Even in villages in Punjab half the people don't mistake a ze (etc.) for a jeem....


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## panjabigator

Cilqui, are you saying you don't hear <jyaadaa> in PK Panjab, or if you do, rarely?


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## lcfatima

Panjabigator, I wanted to say what Cilqui said, too. I have never ever heard any Pakistanis do either change you mention, unless they are from India, grew up in India and came recently to Pakistan and are also from an uneducated background like from Karachi in certain recent Indian immigrant colonies, etc. No native Pakistanis, no Punjabi Pakistanis do that, at least whom I have encountered. 

I have heard, though not witnessed, that Lahori Christians (who are commonly though not always from very poor backgrounds, sweeper backgrounds, etc) and also people from a certain red light district in Lahore do the zaal to jeem change, and also some people from rural poor backgrounds in Punjab. I haven't met many Lahori Christians (just a few working at beauty salons, but I didn't notice that difference in their diction), obviously never met anyone who works in a red light district, but I have spent time with people from rural areas in Punjab and I didn't ever hear them do that. So I can't confirm this, but that is what people have told me before.


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## Cilquiestsuens

Gator, it does exist, but it is much more rare than in India....

Well, Lahori Christians... Once more it depends on the level of education... I know some who pronounce correctly all the Ze and Khe and others who don't...


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## lcfatima

Yes, that is what I meant, Lahori Christians from poor, uneducated backgrounds, sorry if I explained in a convoluted manner. They are Punjabis and indigenous to Pakistan, supposedly from outcaste/untouchable backgrounds whose ancestors were converted by the British, but that didn't help their social status. Anyway, they supposedly have that accent. There are actually a lot of Christians of various backgrounds in Pakistan, even Goan colonies and so forth, but the accent is more contingent on lack of education and class-caste than being Christian.


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## Qureshpor

*My experience of Pakistani Punjabis is that even within the completely illiterate circle, they never ever pronounce a z sound as a j sound, a Gh sound as a g sound, a Kh as a kh and f sound as a ph. However, there indeed does exist the phenomenon of "over-compensation". Jum'ah is pronounced by some illiterate people as zuma, Jum'eraat as zumeraat, faujii (soldier) as fozii etc*.


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## panjabigator

For some speakers, it seems that jeem and ze are allophones of the same phoneme. I keep hearing "bheznaa," complete with falling tone.


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## tonyspeed

lcfatima said:


> Yes, that is what I meant, Lahori Christians from poor, uneducated backgrounds, sorry if I explained in a convoluted manner. They are Punjabis and indigenous to Pakistan, supposedly from outcaste/untouchable backgrounds whose ancestors were converted by the British, but that didn't help their social status. Anyway, they supposedly have that accent. There are actually a lot of Christians of various backgrounds in Pakistan, even Goan colonies and so forth, but the accent is more contingent on lack of education and class-caste than being Christian.



I know a Lahori family that was Christian. They claimed their family converted to Chritianity from Hinduism to avoid persecution from Muslims. But as you know, once an outcaste, changing religions doesn't really help it just moves to to another type of social outcaste. 

In any case, I think the main thing to understand there is that the Z and the Q etc are not Indic sounds. They are arabic/persian sounds (foreign), therefore, learning them requires concerted effort of the part of people who are raised primarily around only Indic sounds, and for the most part that means school, particularly Urdu schooling or education in Arabic or Farsi. I think we all know the plight of the school system in south Asia since ancient times so we shouldn't be too harsh in our viewpoint in any case. The Mughals didn't setup the kind of infrastructure that the English did.

I have wordering this same thing with the pronunciation of darj as darz.

This reminds me of a parallel thing in English where the highly educated attempt to pronouce French origin words according to their original pronunciation. (Often poorly so) I see this as a direct result of the Norman conquest.


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## panjabigator

How long must a phoneme be a part of a language before it becomes local? Z's are found in other Indic languages (Marathi is the only one that comes to mind). I think with Hindi, the issue is with the nuqta letters. I always laugh when I hear a proper retroflex "sh" from a speaker who only says "j."


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> In any case, I think the main thing to understand there is that the Z and the Q etc are not Indic sounds. They are arabic/persian sounds (foreign), therefore, learning them requires concerted effort of the part of people who are raised primarily around only Indic sounds, and for the most part that means school, particularly Urdu schooling or education in Arabic or Farsi. I think we all know the plight of the school system in south Asia since ancient times so we shouldn't be too harsh in our viewpoint in any case. The Mughals didn't setup the kind of infrastructure that the English did.
> 
> Your analysis for z and q (and this could be extended to Kh/Gh, f, Z) may be correct to a very small degree. If one takes the time span for the entry and usage of these consonants into account, then the distinction between Indic and non-Indic is no wider than the membrane allowing osmosis to take place!
> 
> I think, even more important than education, is the absoprtion in a particular linguistic environment. Faith is only important so far as the faith-related vocabulary is concerned. I am saying this because as I have indicated elsewhere in the forum, I have encountered many many people who can not write alif be (i.e are totally and utterly illiterate) but they pronounce f, Kh, Gh and z perfectly correctly. If a Punjabi/Marathi/Bengali etc grew up in the Lucknow of its heyday, I have no doubt they would speak like Wajid Ali Shah himself!
> 
> I have[been] wondering this same thing with the pronunciation of darj as darz.
> 
> A case of over correction! But I will say this much. A person who has grown up with the Urdu alphabet will never say "darz" because they would know the word is written with a jiim. In the same way, this person would never say or write "fool" for "phuul" (flower) because he/she would not have seen it written with a fe.


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## Faylasoof

QURESHPOR said:
			
		

> Originally Posted by *tonyspeed*
> 
> In any case, I think the main thing to understand there is that the Z   and the Q etc are not Indic sounds. They are arabic/persian sounds   (foreign), therefore, learning them requires concerted effort of the   part of people who are raised primarily around only Indic sounds, and   for the most part that means school, particularly Urdu schooling or   education in Arabic or Farsi. I think we all know the plight of the   school system in south Asia since ancient times so we shouldn't be too   harsh in our viewpoint in any case. The Mughals didn't setup the kind of   infrastructure that the English did.
> 
> Your analysis for z and q (and this could be   extended to Kh/Gh, f, Z) may be correct to a very small degree. If one   takes the time span for the entry and usage of these consonants into   account, then the distinction between Indic and non-Indic is no wider   than the membrane allowing osmosis to take place!
> 
> I think, even more important than education, is the absoprtion in a   particular linguistic environment. Faith is only important so far as the   faith-related vocabulary is concerned. I am saying this because as I   have indicated elsewhere in the forum, I have encountered many many   people who can not write alif be (i.e are totally and utterly   illiterate) but they pronounce f, Kh, Gh and z perfectly correctly. If a   Punjabi/Marathi/Bengali etc grew up in the Lucknow of its heyday, I   have no doubt they would speak like Wajid Ali Shah himself!
> 
> I have[been] wondering this same thing with the pronunciation of darj as darz.
> 
> A case of over correction! But I will say this   much. A person who has grown up with the Urdu alphabet will never say   "darz" because they would know the word is written with a jiim. In the   same way, this person would never say or write "fool" for "phuul"   (flower) because he/she would not have seen it written with a fe.


 In the Hindi syllabary the provision for Perso-Arabic sounds like kh / x, z, f, q were made long ago and I agree with QP SaaHib that it has to do with the environment! Incidentally we needn’t go back to the time of Wajid Ali Shah as my own experience tells me. When I was young our family had a number of _xidmatgaaraan_ (servants) nearly all of them illiterate, but all spoke _shushtah_ (شستہ) and _saliis_ (سلیس) Urdu with the usual distinction between _kaaf_ & _qaaf_, _siin_ and _shiin_, _xa_ and _k-ha_, _za_ and _ja_ etc. They were also well versed in the various idiomatic expressions that many now learn after years of study!

Just a couple of points more. Firstly, while the British were indeed more organised and thorough in setting up a system education the Mughals and their successor kingdoms all over India were not completely impervious to education needs (and there are people researching this). The system of _madaaris_ (plural of _madrsah_) no matter how imperfect did fill in the need for a _kind_ of education (and it really needed to develop further with time but didn’t!) at least ensured that those who attended it (for example Moti Laal Nehru – a family friend!) came out with all the required knowledge of language and literature that they were taught. Both Jawahar Laal Nehru (also a family friend) and Moti Laal Nehru spoke perfect Urdu and in fact, the former (Moti Laal) was also a scholar of Persian literature and spoke this language completely fluently, just like their friend Tej Bahadur Sapru, who ,btw, also composed poetry in Farsi. So it really does depend on the environment you grow up in! No chance of any overcompensation in these cases!

Secondly, in Urdu we distinguish between درج _darj_ and درز _darz_ (from which we get درزي _darzii_ !) so we need to be careful with this set of example but on the whole any overcompensation would be avoided if we had the right ambiance when we are learning the language.


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## tonyspeed

panjabigator said:


> I think with Hindi, the issue is with the  nuqta letters. I always laugh when I hear a proper retroflex "sh" from a  speaker who only says "j."



I think for Devanagari this is a lost cause. Due to what I  can only call consonant-prejudice many printers don't even write the  nuqta anymore. I once read an article with a man lamenting on how he  sent his draft to the printers with the nuqta and when he got the copies  the nuqta was gone!!! So in that case, one now has to memorise the  correct pronunciation on a word by word basis. If one did not memorise  correctly, we get overcompensation!!! 

(And yet in Devanagari we  still write the retroflex sh and we still treat the ri as if it were a  vowel and beleive it is a sin to omit the visarga.)

As far as the F vs ph issue, do you view this as over-compensation or influence from some other languages? I have often been mind-boggled trying to understand how we can avoid Farsi sounds an yet pronounce phool as fool and phul as ful. Or is this speech endemic to certain languages like panjabi?


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> I think for Devanagari this is a lost cause.  Due to what I  can only call consonant-prejudice many printers don't  even write the  nuqta anymore. I once read an article with a man  lamenting on how he  sent his draft to the printers with the nuqta and  when he got the copies  the nuqta was gone!!! So in that case, one now  has to memorise the  correct pronunciation on a word by word basis. If  one did not memorise  correctly, we get overcompensation!!!
> 
> (And yet in Devanagari we  still write the retroflex sh and we still  treat the ri as if it were a  vowel and beleive it is a sin to omit the  visarga.)
> 
> If it is indeed "consonant prejudice",  then it does appear rather selective. One still finds superscript dot  (as in the anusvara as well as the "chandra-bindu" dot) and the  subscript dot connected to D and Dh (as in Dol and DhiiT) changing  them to R and Rh (as in pakoRaa and aRhaa'ii). Some years back I had a  Hindi grammar book in English, published in India, in which the authors  actually recommended the avoidance of dots to represent f, z etc.  Perhaps they were following Balmukund Gupta's advice, the author of  "Hindi meN bindii"..
> 
> http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/shacklesnell/308gupta.pdf
> 
> But  the interesting thing is that these consonants need not only be Persian  and Arabic. f and z and Z are in English (Z as in vision), Kh (x) is in  German and Gaelic (Loch Ness Monster), Gh is Greek (as in the true  pronunciation of gamma  rays)....
> 
> As far as the F vs ph issue, do you view this as over-compensation or  influence from some other languages? I have often been mind-boggled  trying to understand how we can avoid Farsi sounds an yet pronounce  phool as fool and phul as ful. Or is this speech endemic to certain  languages like panjabi?
> 
> A very good  question. It might be "over-compensation" in some segments of Punjabi  but I believe there are other language speakers who intuitively  pronounce "phuul" (flower) as "fool" etc. Perhaps it is the Gujarati  language community. I am not certain.


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## panjabigator

kI think it's a number of things. I think an overwhelming number of urban Delhites would say "f" for "ph." Maybe people who follow in suite might do so due to mimesis? I come from a strong Hindi speaking family (as well as Punjabi), and I hear a strong aspirated "ph" from my mother quite often. In Lucknow, I NEVER heard a "f" for "ph," that's for sure.

I'm hesitant to deem one pronunciation correct and another one incorrect. I just look at variation and which group gets prestige. I'd be interested to see what formerly prestigious languages (now Hindi "dialects") like Awadhi or Bhojpuri do with these phonemes.


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## teaboy

The Christians I know in Faisalabad apparently speak a different Punjabi, too.  A Lucknowi friend said that it was very much like Sikh Punjabi, and this was perhaps because they are indigenous to the area, that is, they have been living in the area since before Pakistan was created and these "upstart" Mohajirs came in...  But as for J's and Z's, I cannot really recall anything, and if I did notice anything, I would just assume they were saying something in a Punjabi way or that I had misheard.


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## tonyspeed

panjabigator said:


> I'd be interested to see what formerly prestigious languages (now Hindi "dialects") like Awadhi or Bhojpuri do with these phonemes.



The book Indo-Aryan languages omits the f sound from the list of Bhojpuri consonants. The book Evolution of Avadi, makes a clear distinction between the Indic ph sound and the Persian F sound.


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## tonyspeed

Just for completeness, the census data of India also makes a clear distinction between f and ph in braj bhasha.


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## Qureshpor

panjabigator said:


> I'm hesitant to deem one pronunciation correct and another one incorrect. I just look at variation and which group gets prestige. I'd be interested to see what formerly prestigious languages (now Hindi "dialects") like Awadhi or Bhojpuri do with these phonemes.



I can understand your hesitation but there *are *a large number of "ph" words in Urdu/Hindi. If one pronounced them all with an "f", it would sound rather hilarious. If one individual is talking about the hood of a snake "phan", another might think the speaker is either talking about some art (fan) or is just having a good time "fun"!


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## Qureshpor

I would just like to extend the "environment" analogy a little further. In another (Urdu poetry) forum, a higly educated gentleman from Indian Punjab background makes the occasional "j>z" type error in his transliteration. He reads Gurmukhi, Devanagri and Urdu alphabets. However, as far as the Urdu script is concerned, circumstances are such that he reads it least often. Recently I noticed his use of "harz" for "harj" as in "is meN ko'ii harj nahiiN" (There is no harm in this).

I have always used the word "janaanii" for a woman. I have been chastised on occasions and instructed to use "zanaanii" but this is the way I have pronounced this word from a young age and I can't see my self changing now. Apparently, it has its origins in the Persian "zan" (woman) but I am not convinced.

Allama Muhammad Iqbal, the famous poet apparently used to pronounce the Urdu word "faaluudah" in his Punjabi as "phaluudah". This was pointed out to him by someone who in a state of great surprise enquired why he, an educated person, would make such an error. Iqbal replied, "My mother pronounced it as "phaluudah"!"


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## rahulbemba

panjabigator said:


> How often is it that you hear a Hindi/Urdu speaker change a <z> to a <j> sound?  Fairly often, I'd imagine, and in India it's not _always _a marker of being an uneducated speaker at all, I'd argue.  But how frequently do you encounter the opposite, a sort of overcompensation by the unsure or weary interlocuter?
> 
> My example comes from my own conversations I've had in the Panjab.  I was having a conversation in Panjabi with a professor and then she switched to Hindi when a third member joined.  At one point, I distinctly remember her articulation as <izazat> and not <ijazat>.  It caught me off guard, and I honestly looked in the dictionary to see if it, in fact, was the correct pronunciation.
> 
> I can't think of any other examples, and though I'd love to see more of them, WF rules strictly prohib lists, so if we are to discuss the subject, we must be attentive to strictly listing words. (I'm sure we're all aware of this, but given that one thread was closed several days ago, I just felt that added precaution and an informed first post would be helpful).



In general, Hindi speakers don't care much about the "j" or "z" sound and most of the time they speak "j" sound only. 

On the issue of so called "correct" pronunciation of words from Urdu, here you can read a very interesting article and viewpoint  [Link]


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## Qureshpor

rahulbemba said:


> In general, Hindi speakers don't care much about the "j" or "z" sound and most of the time they speak "j" sound only.



So, would aatish-baazii be aatish-baajii.......?

zang (rust) >>>jang (war)
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad >> Maulana Abul Kalam Ajad
aazaadii >> aajaadii
Dr.Zakir Hussain>>Dr.Jakir Hussain
Bahadur Shah Zafar >>Bahadur Shah Jafar
Gulzar>>Guljar
Zaheer Khan (the cricketer)>> Jaheer khan
zimmedaarii>>jimmedaarii
zabardast>>jabardast
zukaam>>jukaam
zanjiir>>janjiir
hazaar>>hajaar
zamiin>jamiin
mez>>mej
zaraa>> jaraa
zindagii>>jindagii
zor>>jor
ziyaadah>>jyaadaa
zaituun (olive) >>jaituun
zaruurat>>jaruurat
zaalim>>jaalim
guzarnaa/guzaarnaa>>gujarnaa/gujaarnaa

And English words such as..

zoo >> juu/Jew
zebra >>jebra
zip>>jip
zone>>joan
zoom>>joom
Zulu>>julu
zero>>jero


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## panjabigator

It is not a universal Hindi speaker phenomena to caste the "z" aside, though. Many of my family members and acquaintances speak with a crisp "z".


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## eskandar

QURESHPOR said:


> zindagii>>jindagii


This would be the most egregious example to my Persophone ears, since 'jinda' (jende) or جنده is a very vulgar word for prostitute...!


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## lcfatima

Personally, I hear a lot of Hindi speakers who pronounce /z/. I cannot say why, but some words one will almost always hear with a /j/ while in other words /z/ is maintained by many speakers.


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## BP.

QURESHPOR said:


> ...
> 
> Maulana Abul Kalam Azad >> Maulana Abul Kalam Ajad
> aazaadii >> aajaadii
> Dr.Zakir Hussain>>Dr.Jakir Hussain
> Zaheer Khan (the cricketer)>> Jaheer khan
> zimmedaarii>>jimmedaarii
> zabardast>>jabardast
> zukaam>>jukaam
> *zanjiir>>janjiir*
> hazaar>>hajaar
> zamiin>jamiin
> zindagii>>jindagii
> zor>>jor
> ziyaadah>>jyaadaa
> zaruurat>>jaruurat
> zaalim>>jaalim
> guzarnaa/guzaarnaa>>gujarnaa/gujaarnaa
> ...


You got it pretty much right, except zanjiir also becomes janziir, a double overcompensation.


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## rahulbemba

QURESHPOR said:


> So, would aatish-baazii be aatish-baajii.......?
> 
> And English words such as..
> 
> zoo >> juu/Jew
> zebra >>jebra
> zip>>jip
> zone>>joan
> zoom>>joom
> Zulu>>julu
> zero>>jero



Yes, Hindi speakers pronounce it "aatish-baajii" also. And the confusion is not with English words, which have "z" in them and are also pronounced with "z" - I was only telling about Urdu words which have come into Hindi - Hindi people often pronounce it as "j" instead of caring about "z", and it is not considered incorrect.


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## Qureshpor

rahulbemba said:


> Yes, Hindi speakers pronounce it "aatish-baajii" also. And the confusion is not with English words, which have "z" in them and are also pronounced with "z" - I was only telling about Urdu words which have come into Hindi - Hindi people often pronounce it as "j" instead of caring about "z", and it is not considered incorrect.




Any logical reason why Hindi speakers pronounce Urdu "z" words with a "j" but pronounce English "z" words with a "z"? Is there a perception that the Urdu and English zs are inherently different?


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## eskandar

My guess is that many Urdu words, like 'sabzi' for example, are not perceived to be foreign but are thought of by many Hindi-speakers as ordinary vocabulary, so pronouncing their 'z' with a 'j' doesn't stand out to them-- whereas English words stand out more as foreign and therefore they take more care to pronounce them 'properly'.


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## rahulbemba

eskandar said:


> My guess is that many Urdu words, like 'sabzi' for example, are not perceived to be foreign but are thought of by many Hindi-speakers as ordinary vocabulary, so pronouncing their 'z' with a 'j' doesn't stand out to them-- whereas English words stand out more as foreign and therefore they take more care to pronounce them 'properly'.



I think I would agree with this...


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## Qureshpor

eskandar said:


> My guess is that many Urdu words, like 'sabzi' for example, are not perceived to be foreign but are thought of by many Hindi-speakers as ordinary vocabulary, so pronouncing their 'z' with a 'j' doesn't stand out to them-- whereas English words stand out more as foreign and therefore they take more care to pronounce them 'properly'.




Prior to partition and even for some considerable time after it, Urdu's influence both in speech and writing helped to preserve the Kh (x), Gh (γ), q, f, and z phonemes irrespective of faith or ethnicity of the communities using them. Even illiterate persons in the right environment would articulate these consonants correctly.

Post partition mass education in Devanagri, aided by an indifferent attitude towards the preservation of these phonemes (whether deliberate e.g through avoidance of subscript dots* or otherwise) has created a society which is increasingly becoming alienated from this heritage. A clear manifestation of this can be seen in the speech of modern day Bollywood actors and actresses compared with the speech of their earlier counterparts. For some strange reason unbeknown to me, the "Hindi" film singers continue to pronounce these consonants correctly. How long this will last is anyone's guess.

As for the reason why English "z" is flourishing whilst Urdu's "z" and other phonemes are a thorn in the side must be sought in the very much "alive and kicking" English script in India and the possibly "breathing its last" Urdu script at the same location. When "z" is there in contrast to "j", there is no choice but to pronounce the "z" correctly in English. The Devanagri "ja" and other consonants without the subscript dot will only yield the sound they are meant to impart.

* See PG's post no. 12

"How long must a phoneme be a part of a language before it becomes local?  Z's are found in other Indic languages (Marathi is the only one that  comes to mind). I think with Hindi, the issue is with the nuqta letters.  I always laugh when I hear a proper retroflex "sh" from a speaker who  only says "j."                 

See also tonyspeed's post no. 15

"I think for Devanagari this is a lost cause. Due to what I  can only  call consonant-prejudice many printers don't even write the  nuqta  anymore. I once read an article with a man lamenting on how he  sent his  draft to the printers with the nuqta and when he got the copies  the  nuqta was gone!!! So in that case, one now has to memorise the  correct  pronunciation on a word by word basis. If one did not memorise   correctly, we get overcompensation!!! 

(And yet in Devanagari we  still write the retroflex sh and we still  treat the ri as if it were a  vowel and beleive it is a sin to omit the  visarga.)

As far as the F vs ph issue, do you view this as over-compensation or  influence from some other languages? I have often been mind-boggled  trying to understand how we can avoid Farsi sounds an yet pronounce  phool as fool and phul as ful."


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## souminwé

> For some strange reason unbeknown to me, the "Hindi" film singers  continue to pronounce these consonants correctly. How long this will  last is anyone's guess.



Many Hindi speakers pronounce their _z_'s properly. In fact, the only person in my family to pronounce /z/ as /j/ regularly is my Punjabi mother - and I've always associated "jajja-ing" with Punjabis.  It is the prestige pronunciation even if it isn't the mandated one, so of course you're going to find it in songs and poetry.
Since English is my very first language, I don't have a problem with /z/, but even I forget if its_ razaai _or _rajaai_. My mum always said _rajaai._ It seems like the right word to me, and I don't want to risk hypercorrection and say_ razaai_ (though now I am aware it's correct). Sure I could 'check' a dictionary - but I've seen the word_ jaana_  with a nuqtah mistakenly on it, why do I have any reason to trust  what's right? (Thankfully I can read Urdu now so that's an option lol). The word"Zanzibar" was never burnt into your childhood brain as "Janjibar" but _sabji_ might've been; I'd say it's these kinds of old, bad habits that the modern script is making worse - I mean no one's going to mispronounce _paRhna_ as _paDhna_, even if there is no _nuqtah_ underneath it, simply because it has never been mispronounced that way.

As for ph to f, I think it's just the natural direction of the language. This happened in Greek! Aphrodite went from "ah-phro-dee-tay" to "ah-fro-dhee-tee".

On another note, has anyone noticed people pronouncing /kh/ as /x/ ?? I've heard people say 'xaana' for food!


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## greatbear

I mostly utter the 'z' sound, but sometimes there are words which I've always heard with 'j' and hence take the 'j' sound (e.g., I say "janjiir", "mej" and "jukaam"; the rest of the words in QP's list, I speak with 'z') - if I know they should be with 'z', I try to say the 'z' (just like as I will now try to remember for these three words). For Hindi speakers, it has become a matter of confusion, especially as many books don't come with that dot below the 'j' letter.
As regarding English, there is no confusion of course, since we directly learn the English spellings, and most of the native Hindi speakers today have a greater vocabulary of English than Hindi (and many are at a greater ease with English, myself included).


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## Qureshpor

souminwé said:


> Many Hindi speakers pronounce their _z_'s properly. In fact, the only person in my family to pronounce /z/ as /j/ regularly is my Punjabi mother - and I've always associated "jajja-ing" with Punjabis.
> 
> This is where environmental factors come into play. People from the part of Punjab that I come from invariably pronounce the "z" words with a z, irrespective of age or educational background. But they don't pronounce the "q" as a matter of course.
> 
> It is the prestige pronunciation even if it isn't the mandated one, so of course you're going to find it in songs and poetry. Since English is my very first language, I don't have a problem with /z/, but even I forget if its_ razaai _or _rajaai_. My mum always said _rajaai._ It seems like the right word to me, and I don't want to risk hypercorrection and say_ razaai_ (though now I am aware it's correct). Sure I could 'check' a dictionary - but I've seen the word_ jaana_  with a nuqtah mistakenly on it, why do I have any reason to trust  what's right? (Thankfully I can read Urdu now so that's an option lol). The word"Zanzibar" was never burnt into your childhood brain as "Janjibar" but _sabji_ might've been; I'd say it's these kinds of old, bad habits that the modern script is making worse - I mean no one's going to mispronounce _paRhna_ as _paDhna_, even if there is no _nuqtah_ underneath it, simply because it has never been mispronounced that way.
> 
> "razaa'ii" and "sabzii" have always been "razaa'ii" and "sabzii" even before I learnt to read. As for "paRhnaa" not being confused with "paDhnaa", I believe given time, confusion is extremely likely because readers will begin to associate every D/Dh as D/Dh and not R/Rh in selective cases.
> 
> As for ph to f, I think it's just the natural direction of the language. This happened in Greek! Aphrodite went from "ah-phro-dee-tay" to "ah-fro-dhee-tee".
> 
> Is this so? Could this not be due to certain communities pronouncing ph as f, Marathis for example?
> 
> On another note, has anyone noticed people pronouncing /kh/ as /x/ ?? I've heard people say 'xaana' for food!
> 
> Yes I have but in Punjabi. I can't think of any examples right away but I shall update this post if I think of any examples.
> 
> Yes. "akhaaNR" proverb is occasionally pronounced as "Khaan".


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## tonyspeed

I think you may be on to something when talking about the ph vs f issue. Bombay and Delhi are two of the most prestigious "Hindi" speaking cities in India. Yet Bombay is heavily influenced by Marathi as well as English, and both languages use F primarily or exclusively. 
In Delhi we have a huge population of Indian Punjabi speakers (as opposed to Pakistani) which would also seem to pronounce ph as f. I could see how the F pronunciation would spread.


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## rahulbemba

tonyspeed said:


> Bombay and Delhi are two of the most prestigious "Hindi" speaking cities in India. Yet Bombay is heavily influenced by Marathi as well as English, and both languages use F primarily or exclusively. In Delhi we have a huge population of Indian Punjabi speakers (as  opposed to Pakistani) which would also seem to pronounce ph as f. I  could see how the F pronunciation would spread.



I don't believe in any such tag like "the prestigious Hindi speaking cities in India." In my opinion, this tag for two cities is oversimplification and would indicate lack of travel and assimilation within India. No one place becomes "most prestigious" for Hindi which is spoken amongst a variety of locations and people in India. 

Also, please correct your "Bombay" to "Mumbai", which is the city's current name. 

Now coming to your main argument above. 

You are saying that pronunciations like "f" for "ph" and "ja" for "za" have come into Hindi because: 

(1) In Delhi from Punjabi
(2) In Mumbai from Marathi
And from these two "most prestigious Hindi cities", these things "spread" to other parts! 

Nothing can be far from the fact and more political than this assertion, sorry to say. To say that Hindi in Mumbai is "heavily influenced by Marathi", as if Hindi and Marathi are so separate and distinct that one could influence the other, would be a wrong statement to make IMO. These two languages derive their common words and concepts from Sanskrit, and it is not that the common words have come into one of these languages from the other one. 

In fact Marathi and Hindi are sister-languages having come from Sanskrit. There are many words in Marathi, which are direct Sanskrit words, as it is the case with Hindi.

There is no special difference between the Hindi spoken in Mumbai and in  other places in India, when it comes to pronunciation of many words/parts like these. This remains true for Delhi or any other city. To try to put Hindi Vs Marathi and Hindi Vs Punjabi kind of "who influences which" debate is without true and honest grounds. Also plz read my reply to qureshpor in the below post, which tells more about Sanskrit:


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## rahulbemba

QURESHPOR said:


> Prior to partition and even for some considerable time after it.... Post partition mass education in Devanagri ... aided by an indifferent attitude towards the preservation of these phonemes ... has created a society which is increasingly becoming alienated ...



We don't need anyone's political lecture on partition of India (Bharat vibhajan) to understand a simple fact about Hindi. Hindi has come from Sanskrit. Does Sanskrit have such "zzz" sound in its words? I don't think so. Therefore, in most of the Indian languages which are sister-languages having come from Sanskrit, there are no such words/pronunciations too. As simple as that. 

Look at these Sanskrit verses. Do you find any word with "z" sound? It is always "j". 

-- 

Ijyaaddhayanadaanani tapah satyam kshamaa ghrina |

Alobh iti margoyam dharmsyashtavidhah smritah |

-- 

Avyahritam vyahritachchhreya ahuh, 

Satyam vadet vyahritam tad dviteeyam |

Priyam vaded vyahritam tat tritiyam,

Dharmam vadet vyahritam tachchaturtham |

--

Aakrushyamano nakroshenmanyurev titikshatah |

Akroshtaram nirdahati sukritam chasya vindati |

(verses from the great epic Mahabharata)

--

To wish that Hindi should also have "z" sound, or that Hindi speakers should also speak certain words in the same fashion as Urdu / Persian speakers speak, is at most a wishful thinking in my opinion. Also, I don't accept any of the political reasons given out so far in this thread by some members and found those unnecessary.


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## panjabigator

I don't know where to begin. I can't disagree more with Rahulbemba here.



> To say that Hindi in Mumbai is "heavily influenced by Marathi", as if  Hindi and Marathi are so separate and distinct that one could influence  the other, would be a wrong statement to make IMO. These two languages  derive their common words and concepts from Sanskrit, and it is not that  the common words have come into one of these languages from the other  one.



I don't think India is some unique case where languages that are either contiguous or in some form of contact with each other remain unaffected. Change is natural and to be expected. Hindi and Marathi DO exert some impact on each other, and though there is a link to Sanskrit, doesn't mean that sister languages can't exchange words here and there. We had a thread on this earlier. 



> We don't need anyone's political lecture on partition of India  (Bharat vibhajan) to understand a simple fact about Hindi. Hindi has  come from Sanskrit. Does Sanskrit have such "zzz" sound in its words? I  don't think so. Therefore, in most of the Indian languages which are  sister-languages having come from Sanskrit, there are no such  words/pronunciations too.



There is no logic in this. Languages change and adapt over time. One theory is that Sanskrit didn't have retroflex sounds until contact with Dravidian languages (Look into Madhav Deshpande's work for more info). Marathi, by the way, does have a /z/ sound as well as a /zh/ sound. Either Marathi is the wayward child of Sanskrit or you might need to rethink the rigidity of your ideas. I thought Hindi came from Prakrit (or was it Apabramsha), by the way, and not Sanskrit.


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## tonyspeed

rahulbemba said:


> In fact Marathi and Hindi are sister-languages having come from Sanskrit. There are many words in Marathi, which are direct Sanskrit words, as it is the case with Hindi.



First of all, while we can say that Sanskrit has had an enormous impact on Hindi, we cannot say that Hindi came FROM Sanskrit. Firstly, we have no written History because as you know
ancient India did not write down anything. Things were communicated verbally and memorised by rote. the first Sanskrit writings we have were recorded long after the hey-day of Sanskrit.
The earliest writings in India are recorded in Brahmi script. The edicts of Ashoka are in Prakrit not Sanskrit. And no one understands Harappan. 

As proof that one cannot simply say that Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, look at the flapped consonants: ड़ and ढ़ . Notice the sub-script nuqtah. What does that mean to you? Devanagrari
was a script created to write Sanskrit. When it was forced upon the Hindi language there was a problem that those sounds did not exist in Sanskrit. So they had to add a dot underneath to invent new characters to represent those sounds.
If these characters were not in Sanskrit and Hindi derives from Sanskrit why do common words such as साड़ी लड़का and पढ़ना  contain them? Did people just start flapping their tongue one day?
Languages do not evolve from one into another, they evolve from contact; just as Latin contacted the native languages of France and Spain and merged into what we now know as French and Spanish.
Similarly, the South Indian languages have no relation to Sanskrit, and yet their languages are chock full of adopted Sanskrit words, much more so than colloquial Hindi.  Why? Because Sanskrit was
a language of religious prestige, and Sanskrit has been a language of religious prestige for a very long time. So to say Marathi and Hindi come from Sanskrit is an over-over simplification.

The idea that all these languages evolved from Sanskrit is a religiously motivated idea promoted by Brahmins as if to say the Prakrits were degradations of Sanskrit. Because guardianship of Sanskrit 
was held firmly by the Brahmins and only they could speak it, it would be natural to look down upon the language of the common folk. But that does not tell us the actual ORIGIN of the Prakrits or Hindi.
But one can assume that just like every other language in the world, Hindi was created by the rubbing of languages together with very complex interactions.

Secondly, F is an Arabic and Persian sound. It does not exist in Sanskrit or Prakrit. So it's matter is very different from ja and za kee baat.


By the way, one website claims Marathi ph became F due to English contact! Not sure where they deduced this from but it is along the same lines I was thinking. English the cancer.


----------



## Qureshpor

rahulbemba said:


> We don't need anyone's political lecture on partition of India (Bharat vibhajan) to understand a simple fact about Hindi. Hindi has come from Sanskrit. Does Sanskrit have such "zzz" sound in its words? I don't think so. Therefore, in most of the Indian languages which are sister-languages having come from Sanskrit, there are no such words/pronunciations too. As simple as that.
> 
> Not quite I am afraid. Sanskrit itself has gained at least two consonants R and Rh from somewhere, so why should n't other languages? Whether Hindi has come from Sanskrit or whether it has come down from swarg itself, it is stuck with a large number of "f" and "z" words (amongst other consonants). This might not be so palatable for some Hindi speakers but there are other fair minded people in this forum who use them regularly. Here is what they had to say, in case you have forgotton.
> 
> It is not a universal Hindi speaker phenomena to caste the "z" aside,  though. Many of my family members and acquaintances speak with a crisp  "z".                 (panjabigator)
> 
> Personally, I hear a lot of Hindi speakers who pronounce /z/. I cannot  say why, but some words one will almost always hear with a /j/ while in  other words /z/ is maintained by many speakers.                 (Icfatima)
> 
> Many Hindi speakers pronounce their _z_'s properly. (souminwe)
> 
> I mostly utter the 'z' sound, but sometimes there are words which I've  always heard with 'j' and hence take the 'j' sound (e.g., I say  "janjiir", "mej" and "jukaam"; the rest of the words in QP's list, I  speak with 'z') (greatbear)
> 
> Look at these Sanskrit verses. Do you find any word with "z" sound? It is always "j".
> 
> Please tell me something I did n't know before! Sanskrit also does not have a number of other phonemes but this is irrelevant. Languages evolve with time. Sometimes new consonats and vowels are added and others get dropped. Marathi, it seems, has gained an f and a z. Punjabi has f, z, Kh and Gh. Careful Hindi speakers also employ these consonants. You might probably have heard of Ram Prasad "Bismil". One of his famous poems begins with the lines..
> 
> sar*f*aroshii kii tamannaa ab hamaare dil meN hai
> dekhnaa hai *z*or kitnaa baa*z*uu-i-qaatil meN hai
> 
> If you wish to be oblivious to this and pronounce the words as "jor" and "baajuu", its your choice. No skin off my nose! The Indian Army's national anthem has the lines...
> 
> ma*z*hab nahiiN sikhaataa aapas meN bair rakhnaa
> Hindii haiN ham vatan hai HindustaaN hamaaraa
> 
> Words like "zaraa", "hazaar", "kaaGhaz", "darzii", "baazaar", "zabardast", "zila", "guzarnaa/guzaarnaa", "aazmaanaa" "farsh" "faaltuu", "faa'idah", "fursat", "farq", "fuzuul", "faqiir" etc are everyday occurrences for Hindi speakers. So much so that people sometimes forget the true consonant and replace them with an "f" (phuul>>fool, phalii>>falii) or a "z" (ijaazat >>>izaazat)! Apparently, at least in Bombay, kids are invariably taught to read "ph" as "f".
> 
> If this is n't enough, there are many many place names within India with f and z consonants in them.
> 
> Azamgarh, Farrukhabad, Nizamabad, Hazaribagh, Ferozepur, Mirzapur, Muzaffarnagar.....
> 
> To wish that Hindi should also have "z" sound, or that Hindi speakers should also speak certain words in the same fashion as Urdu / Persian speakers speak, is at most a wishful thinking in my opinion.
> 
> You seem to be saying that it is OK to have English "f" and "z" words but not Urdu ones. Where is the logic in this? But, in any case, I don't need to wish for something that is already there. Long live all these consonants. Or should I use the word "zindahbaad"?!


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## souminwé

> Is this so? Could this not be due to certain communities pronouncing ph as f, Marathis for example?



Influence from Punjabi, Marathi, other sub-continental languages etc., is a likely factor in the progress of the sound change, but in those languages too it had to arise from somewhere; this could be Persian/Pashto influences, internal change, or, as is most likely, a combination of these factors and others. English may have had a hand, but English has definitely not been influencing Hindi-Urdu as long as Iranian languages have (1000 years under the Mughals, and much longer than that if you ancient included wars, invasions, settlers etc.). 



> Yes I have but in Punjabi. I can't think of any examples right away but I shall update this post if I think of any examples.
> 
> Yes. "akhaaNR" proverb is occasionally pronounced as "Khaan".



I've noticed people switching between 'kh' and 'x' within the same sentece, sometimes with the same word. Maybe the next sound shift of the century? 




> We don't need anyone's political lecture on partition of India (Bharat  vibhajan) to understand a simple fact about Hindi. Hindi has come from  Sanskrit. Does Sanskrit have such "zzz" sound in its words? I don't  think so. Therefore, in most of the Indian languages which are  sister-languages having come from Sanskrit, there are no such  words/pronunciations too. As simple as that.



Rg-vedic Sanskrit had "x" and "f" for awhile. Sanskri,t when it first arrived in India, likely had "ž"  too, which not even Urdu speakers pronounce despite having a letter for it.
I believe there is literature postulating that the Sanskrit of the Vedas was written down much later by people more influenced by either Prakritic languages or Sanskritic dialects (afterall, Sanskrit was first written down long after it had perished, as I am sure you are aware). You really cannot say Hindi comes from Sanskrit when what constitutes Sanskrit is so up in the air.

If the Romans did not speak the language of Cicero, I doubt the Indo-Aryans spoke the language of Panini.

At this point, saying "f" and "z" are not Hindi sounds because they are not (classical) Sanskrit sounds is akin to saying the retroflexes are Dravidian, and thus do not have a place in Indo-Aryan. 



> Also, please correct your "Bombay" to "Mumbai", which is the city's current name.



Officially, internationally it can be called either in English (and in most European languages, is immutably Bombay).



> There is no special difference between the Hindi spoken in Mumbai and in   other places in India, when it comes to pronunciation of many  words/parts like these. This remains true for Delhi or any other city.  To try to put Hindi Vs Marathi and Hindi Vs Punjabi kind of "who  influences which" debate is without true and honest grounds.





Mohtram Rahulbemba, please reflect on your words before speaking. They can easily become disrespectful to the opinions of others.

Firstly, Marathi and Punjabi might not be  influencing Hindi the way Persian once did, but no doubt they have influences on the Hindi language! Being beside one another is going to cause exchange. 
English is changing due to influences from all the second-language speakers. Bristol English of 2011 isn't Bristol English of the 1800's because influences of the prestige accent. Japanese dialects across the isles have all shifted towards Tokyo dialect. It is a well documented occurence.
As for Dehli's Hindi v. Lucknow's Hindi v. Bombay's Hindi - well, there's enough differences for there to be stereotypes based on the way people speak! 
And what is Bombay Hindi when only 11% of that city speaks the language?


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## eskandar

souminwé said:


> Sanskri,t when it first arrived in India, likely had "ž"  too, which not even Urdu speakers pronounce despite having a letter for it.


Really? (We are referring to the letter ژ here, correct?) I was under the impression that Urdu speakers pronounce ژ as 'zh' or like the 'si' in English 'vision' (at least, perhaps, in formal settings) in Persian-origin words like مژہ (muzha "eyelash") as well as English-origin words like ٹیلیوژن (television). If that is not the case, how is it actually pronounced in Urdu?


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## ihaveacomputer

Hindi most definitely evolved from "Sanskrit", but _not_ Classical Sanskrit, which was an artificial, polished form created by Panini after he noticed the growing influence of vernacular on the Vedic Sanskrit used in ritual. Tonyspeed, it is indeed safe to say that Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, with lots of other influences along the way! Languages change in and of themselves, even without foreign influences. Just think about the linguistic disconnect between the elderly and teenagers. Amplify that in a society where a "standard" is not reinforced due to lack of education, and you can imagine how quickly languages can change! The oldest Sanskrit used in the Vedas meant something to some group of _native_ speakers at some time, but the same cannot be said for Classical Sanskrit in a natural context. After all, even Esperanto has its native speakers!


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## souminwé

eskandar said:


> Really? (We are referring to the letter ژ here, correct?) I was under the impression that Urdu speakers pronounce ژ as 'zh' or like the 'si' in English 'vision' (at least, perhaps, in formal settings) in Persian-origin words like مژہ (muzha "eyelash") as well as English-origin words like ٹیلیوژن (television). If that is not the case, how is it actually pronounced in Urdu?



As 'z' . But, I'm not sure of formal settings. 
The only "zh" example that comes to mind is actually *ژوب,* which I've only ever heard pronounced as Zob on the (Pakistani) news.


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## Qureshpor

souminwé said:


> As 'z' . But, I'm not sure of formal settings.
> The only "zh" example that comes to mind is actually *ژوب,* which I've only ever heard pronounced as Zob on the (Pakistani) news.




ژ is indeed pronounced by Urdu speakers. Other words (besides the English sounds) are zhaalah, zharf, zholiidah, pazhmurdah etc


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## panjabigator

I know I'm guilty of going off topic too guys, but let's try and stick to the topic. If you want to start a polemic, be my guest but in another thread. I will delete off topic posts and responses from here on out.


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## rahulbemba

souminwé said:


> Mohtram Rahulbemba, please reflect on your  words before speaking. They can easily become disrespectful to the  opinions of others.



Please start by practicing it first before preaching. Much of what you  wrote in your post above would make you self-reflect on these lines prescribed for me. 



souminwé said:


> English may have had a hand, but English has definitely not been influencing Hindi-Urdu as long as Iranian languages have (1000 years under the Mughals, and much longer than that if you ancient included wars, invasions, settlers etc.).



Good point and I would agree that English is not at play here, but you may choose to do some reading to know how much of India was really under Mughal rule and for how long really. But I agree that their influence on local systems was very much in certain parts of India. 



souminwé said:


> Bombay's Hindi



May I request you to call the city Mumbai please?


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## rahulbemba

QURESHPOR said:


> You seem to be saying that it is OK to have English "f" and "z" words but not Urdu ones. Where is the logic in this?



I am only telling about the way "it is", rather than the way it "should be"...   



ihaveacomputer said:


> Hindi most definitely evolved from "Sanskrit"... it is indeed safe to say that Hindi evolved from Sanskrit, with lots of other influences along the way! ...



I agree...


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## greatbear

rahulbemba said:


> I am only telling about the way "it is", rather than the way it "should be"...



But you seem to have a wrong idea about what is; speaking Hindi would lose a lot of charm for me if I start pronouncing "z" as "j"! And it is not only me: most Hindi speakers use "z". Besides, they should be doing that, since that's correct Hindi: you cannot simply pronounce "jajbaat", that would be horrible!

Also, Hindi might have its remote origins in Sanskrit (which I don't know, but if you say so), but it has more words from Persian and Arabic, and English, than Sanskrit: I mean the Hindi we use. So where it originated from is quite meaningless to me.


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> Also, Hindi might have its remote origins in Sanskrit (which I don't know, but if you say so), but it has more words from Persian and Arabic, and English, than Sanskrit: I mean the Hindi we use. So where it originated from is quite meaningless to me.




Common concensus is that both Urdu/Hindi have one and the same ancestor in the form of the prakrit KhaRii bolii. In other words the "bread and butter" of both is KhaRii-bolii which has its ultimate origins in Sanskrit. The fact that Modern Hindi uses Sanskrit for its learned vocabulary does not take the language any closer to Sanskrit. This is of course true of Urdu too in respective of its learned vocabulary from Persian and Arabic. Both Urdu and Hindi are therefore sitting at a point equidistant from Sanskrit. duusre lafzoN meN, donoN kii saNskrit se rishtedaarii baraabar kii hai.


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## tonyspeed

rahulbemba said:


> Good point and I would agree that English is not at play here, but you may choose to do some reading to know how much of India was really under Mughal rule and for how long really.



It was not the Mughal Kings that created Hindi as we now know it. It was the interaction of the traders and the buyers in the bazaar that created Hindi. It was the need for bread and gold that created Hindi. It was the patronage of royalty and writers that standardised it.

It is that informal system of language exchange that created compensation (z to j) and over compensation (j to z). 

It is an education system that stops the flux between compensation and over-compensation and India has yet to have had an adequate system for the teaching of Hindi or Urdu that can reach the masses. Bollywood (Mollywood) can be credited for much of the accurate spread of Hindi.


----------



## tonyspeed

Question: Has any ever heard a case of over-compensation with a non-Perso-Arabic word? 

I'm wondering if in every case of over-compensation, the speaker assumes the word is Perso-Arabic and should be pronounced with a z instead.
I've noticed an enormous burden placed on many learners of the language (even children) of differentiating between Hindi and Urdu words. 
It seems to me that in the Indian Hindi-speaking community we hear a lot of arguments like
"that's not Hindi, that's Urdu" and learners are expected to remember which is which on every occasion.

As Urdu speakers do you ever get into such word-wars amongst yourselves? Do you every find yourselves saying to each other "That's not Urdu, That's Hindi"?


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## BP.

tonyspead, I can only talk about myself, and the wars I partook in were rather over pronunciation. Hindi words we often just add to our extant vocabulary as a synonym, sometimes remembering that 'hey we could use fulaanaa word of Hindi provenance here', obviously in Urdu speech. Recently this forum reminded me of a _bhiitar_ which must've gone out with the dinosaurs for us [urban?] Urduwaalaas but is alive in Hindi, and I've begun using it at home ever since. Nice alternative to the overused Persian _andar_.


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## lcfatima

I feel I have heard sarm-laaz for sharm laaj, but I can't be sure the person who said that was a native Hindi speaker (could have been Bengali (Bangladesh side) or Nepali and I feel j>z on Indic words are more common for them. I know for sure I have heard Nepalese use /z/ for Indic words with /j/ like Zyoti, zayesh, zavitri, zaifal, Sanzeev. I have seen their names represented in English orthography this way, too. I have heard Hindi speaking people say riti-rivaaz for riti-rawaaj. Rawaaj is from Arabic, but what about the 'riti' part of that compound, if compounds count. I have also heard j>z on foreign words. i.e. name Jessica becomes Zeshiika. Also, raajma (bean) as raazma. Rajma itself is a bean originally from the Americas and I don't know if the name raajma is originally Indic or foreign.

On the war question: I find the lines of Hindi and Urdu are blurred on a colloquial level in my experience in Karachi as people from all over India are using Urdu-Hindustani there and sometimes people use specific words that have surprised me. Once a magazine seller called out diidii to sell his wares and I was very surprised since usually it is baaji. I have also heard words like kaThin, DheeT, and many others that I learned as a student of Hindi/Urdu as being Hindi with common Urdu equivalents, but which I have heard regularly in Urdu. Literary words would stand out but many common words don't.


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## BP.

lcfatima said:


> ...
> I have also heard words like kaThin, DheeT, and many others that I learned as a student of Hindi/Urdu as being Hindi with common Urdu equivalents, but which I have heard regularly in Urdu. ...


D.hiit would be as 'regular' an Urdu word as any.
kaT.hin is usually pronounced kaT.han like many other native words that lose their diacritics to a in Urdu.


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## Qureshpor

lcfatima said:


> On the war question: I find the lines of Hindi and Urdu are blurred on a colloquial level in my experience in Karachi as people from all over India are using Urdu-Hindustani there and sometimes people use specific words that have surprised me. Once a magazine seller called out diidii to sell his wares and I was very surprised since usually it is baaji. I have also heard words like kaThin, DheeT, and many others that I learned as a student of Hindi/Urdu as being Hindi with common Urdu equivalents, but which I have heard regularly in Urdu. Literary words would stand out but many common words don't.




As BP SaaHib has indicated "DhiiT" is as much an Urdu word as any other. And so is kaThin. One only needs to flick through the pages of Urdu literature to find these words in black and white. DhiiT is very common in Urdu speech and I dare say kaThin is not completely absent either.

laalach-xorah DhiiT niDar hai
Daakuu se kuchh is meN kasar hai?

Isma'il Merathi (From a nazm entitled "kavvaa")

And to quote a lady poet for a change..

vuh nahiiN hai to bulandii kaa safar kitnaa kaThin
siiRhiyaaN chaRhte hu'e us ne yih sochaa ho gaa

Parveen Shakir


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## marrish

lcfatima said:


> I feel I have heard sarm-laaz for sharm laaj, but I can't be sure the person who said that was a native Hindi speaker (could have been Bengali (Bangladesh side) or Nepali and I feel j>z on Indic words are more common for them. I know for sure I have heard Nepalese use /z/ for Indic words with /j/ like Zyoti, zayesh, zavitri, zaifal, Sanzeev. I have seen their names represented in English orthography this way, too. I have heard Hindi speaking people say riti-rivaaz for riti-rawaaj. Rawaaj is from Arabic, but what about the 'riti' part of that compound, if compounds count. I have also heard j>z on foreign words. i.e. name Jessica becomes Zeshiika. Also, raajma (bean) as raazma. Rajma itself is a bean originally from the Americas and I don't know if the name raajma is originally Indic or foreign.
> 
> On the war question: I find the lines of Hindi and Urdu are blurred on a colloquial level in my experience in Karachi as people from all over India are using Urdu-Hindustani there and sometimes people use specific words that have surprised me. Once a magazine seller called out diidii to sell his wares and I was very surprised since usually it is baaji. I have also heard words like kaThin, DheeT, and many others that I learned as a student of Hindi/Urdu as being Hindi with common Urdu equivalents, but which I have heard regularly in Urdu. Literary words would stand out but many common words don't.


Thank you for interesting description. دیدی is used sometimes by specific speakers, کٹھن  and ڈھیٹ are so Urdu! (as has been said above). The wars are there not amongst Urdu speakers but maybe amongst the teachers who teaching Hindi, don't know Urdu and do what they have always been good at: _apnaanaa_. What is not done so, is said to be ''Urdu''.


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## mundiya

marrish said:


> Thank you for interesting description. دیدی is used sometimes by specific speakers, کٹھن  and ڈھیٹ are so Urdu! (as has been said above). The wars are there not amongst Urdu speakers but maybe amongst the teachers who teaching Hindi, don't know Urdu and do what they have always been good at: _apnaanaa_. What is not done so, is said to be ''Urdu''.



I'm choosing an old thread for my first post, but you gave wrong examples for _apnaanaa_.  kaThin, DheeTh,  and deedee were certainly not borrowed into Hindi from Urdu!  They are native words (with kaThina being a Sanskrit word itself) and not borrowings from Persian or Arabic.  They are all in fact more common in modern Hindi than modern Urdu.  If you gave an example of muhabbat being an Urdu borrowing into Hindi then you would not get any argument.  But what's wrong with borrowing words?  You seem to look down upon it.  BTW, has the exact topic of the thread even been fully answered?


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## Qureshpor

mundiya said:


> I'm choosing an old thread for my first post, but you gave wrong examples for _apnaanaa_.  kaThin, DheeTh,  and deedee were certainly not borrowed into Hindi from Urdu!  They are native words (with kaThina being a Sanskrit word itself) and not borrowings from Persian or Arabic.  They are all in fact more common in modern Hindi than modern Urdu.  If you gave an example of muhabbat being an Urdu borrowing into Hindi then you would not get any argument.  But what's wrong with borrowing words?  You seem to look down upon it.  BTW, has the exact topic of the thread even been fully answered?


Thank you for your contribution in this old thread. But the topic concerns the phenomenon where a word is actually a "j" word but is pronounced a "z" word.

As for "DhiiT" and "kaThin", I think you may have misunderstood. The point being made was that these words are just as much Urdu as they are Hindi. They are very common in everyday Urdu speech. Urdu words need not only be of Arabic or Persian origins. Indeed the vast majority of them are from Prakrit.


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## mundiya

Qureshpor said:


> Thank you for your contribution in this old thread. But the topic concerns the phenomenon where a word is actually a "j" word but is pronounced a "z" word.
> 
> As for "DhiiT" and "kaThin", I think you may have misunderstood. The point being made was that these words are just as much Urdu as they are Hindi. They are very common in everyday Urdu speech. Urdu words need not only be of Arabic or Persian origins. Indeed the vast majority of them are from Prakrit.



Yes, Urdu like almost every language is mixed.  But when words from Urdu have been borrowed into Hindi, they are generally Persian or Arabic in origin, which is why they are popularly labelled "Urdu" words.  Thus you may commonly hear that "zor", "jigar",and "muhabbat" are Urdu words, while "bal", "kalejaa", and "pyaar" are Hindi words.  That does not mean those terms are exclusive to those languages.  They are used in both to various degrees.  It simply points to the origin of the words as Persian/Arabic or Indian.  To get this thread back on track, the j to z shift in Hindi only appears in a few words of Urdu origin, like rivaaj to rivaaz.  I think the reason is a mistaken belief that the second term "sounds" like it is the original.


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## Qureshpor

mundiya said:


> Yes, Urdu like almost every language is mixed.  But when words from Urdu have been borrowed into Hindi, they are generally Persian or Arabic in origin, which is why they are popularly labelled "Urdu" words.  Thus you may commonly hear that "zor", "jigar",and "muhabbat" are Urdu words, while "bal", "kalejaa", and "pyaar" are Hindi words.  That does not mean those terms are exclusive to those languages.  They are used in both to various degrees.  It simply points to the origin of the words as Persian/Arabic or Indian.  To get this thread back on track, the j to z shift in Hindi only appears in a few words of Urdu origin, like rivaaj to rivaaz.  I think the reason is a mistaken belief that the second term "sounds" like it is the original.


Thank you. Yes, this could be one explanation.

Regarding the rest, once again I do not agree with your analysis of Urdu and Hindi. But..

vuh afsaanah jise anjaam tak laanaa nah ho mumkin 
use ik xuub-suurat moR de kar chhoRnaa achchhaa!

Sahir Ludhiyanvi


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## marrish

mundiya said:


> I'm choosing an old thread for my first post, but you gave wrong examples for _apnaanaa_.  kaThin, DheeTh,  and deedee were certainly not borrowed into Hindi from Urdu!  They are native words (with kaThina being a Sanskrit word itself) and not borrowings from Persian or Arabic.  They are all in fact more common in modern Hindi than modern Urdu.  If you gave an example of muhabbat being an Urdu borrowing into Hindi then you would not get any argument.  But what's wrong with borrowing words?  You seem to look down upon it.  BTW, has the exact topic of the thread even been fully answered?


QP's answer to your post is enough and I back it but let me take this opportunity and welcome you heartily to the forum! Normally this forum is a good thing because we can read all responses back and place them in the context. You will have noticed that I answered Icfatima SaaHibah's chunk of post which doesn't really pertain to the topic at hand and when she said she learned Urdu equivalents of kaThin etc. I said they were ''so Urdu!'' No question of borrowing from any language, as you said they are native words. Urdu is no exception, as a Indic language of long history, of having Prakrit vocabulary, and I wanted to say it was a myth that kaThin etc. were as to be not Urdu. The other point was about words gotten from Urdu but well integrated in Hindi (which you will see in older threads, so to say, were claimed to be Hindi or even Sanskrit) while other words are being frowned upon as being "na apnaaye'' - foreign, that is Urdu. But I hope this train of thought is foreign to you.


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## urdustan

Is "dowry" dahej or dahez?  I've heard both.


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## marrish

urdustan said:


> Is "dowry" dahej or dahez?  I've heard both.


We've got a separate thread on it if my memory serves me right and I think there were more variants mentioned in it.


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