# Hindi: paNkhaa



## marrish

Hi,

There is a recent article on BBC Hindi about the actor Sanjay Dutt. http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/india/2013/05/130516_sanjay_dutt_surrender_plan_pkp.shtml

The following sentence is for me difficult to understand:

अदालत ने पंखा उपलब्ध कराने की उनकी मांग मान ली है.
_adaalat ne paNkhaa upalabdh karaane kii unkii maaNg maan lii hai._

Please explain the use of the word "paNkhaa" here and the overall meaning of the sentence, if at all possible.


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## Chhaatr

The court has accepted his demand (request) that a fan (paNkhaa) be made available to him.

** fan - as in ceiling fan, table fan and not a celebrity fan


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## tonyspeed

marrish said:


> Hi,
> 
> There is a recent article on BBC Hindi about the actor Sanjay Dutt. http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/india/2013/05/130516_sanjay_dutt_surrender_plan_pkp.shtml
> 
> The following sentence is for me difficult to understand:
> 
> अदालत ने पंखा उपलब्ध कराने की उनकी मांग मान ली है.
> _adaalat ne paNkhaa upalabdh karaane kii unkii maaNg maan lii hai._
> 
> Please explain the use of the word "paNkhaa" here and the overall meaning of the sentence, if at all possible.




By the way, it is pankhaa, not paNkhaa. There is no nasalised vowel here.


pankhaa aur iilekTraunik sigaret. amiir mujrim aise hote haiN...


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## greatbear

^ tonsypeed, it is paNkhaa, not pankhaa!


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## Chhaatr

tonyspeed said:


> By the way, it is pankhaa, not paNkhaa. There is no nasalised vowel here.
> 
> 
> pankhaa aur iilekTraunik sigaret. amiir mujrim aise hote haiN...


TS jii, maiN samajh nahiiN paayaa.  PaNkhe meiN naak kaa upyog avashya hotaa hai. aap bataaeiN "pankhaa" kyaa hotaa hai kyuNkii mujhe pataa nahiiN. 

Dhanyavaad.

Edit: cross posted with GB


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## Chhaatr

Adaalat ne paNkhaa mayassar karaa ne kii un kii maaNg manzoor kar lii hai.

How would you say paNkhaa in Urdu?


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## tonyspeed

greatbear said:


> ^ tonsypeed, it is paNkhaa, not pankhaa!



If it is paNkhaa then the technically correct representation would be पँखा .

Is it possible that the colloquial pronunciation has drifted from the written representation?


GB, I know you personally hate dictionary usage, but Oxford does represent this as pankhaa, whatever that's worth. I will check my other dictionaries later.


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## marrish

Chhaatr said:


> Adaalat ne paNkhaa mayassar karaa ne kii un kii maaNg manzoor kar lii hai.
> 
> How would you say paNkhaa in Urdu?


_عدالت نے پنکھا میسر کرانے کی اُن کی مانگ منظور کر لی ہے۔ 
3adaalat ne paNkhaa muyassar karaane kii un kii maaNg manzuur kar lii hai._

paNkhaa is both an Urdu and Hindi word (unless it is really pankhaa in Hindi). In Urdu at least it is pronounced with a nasal vowel.

Thank you for the explanation. The sentence is very obvious but sometimes obvious things are difficult to grasp! The problem is that I didn't read the whole article before I made this thread. I didn't realize that _paNkhaa_ was nothing more than _paNkhaa,_ to be installed in a jail cel! I thought it had some other meaning which was unknown to me.


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## Alfaaz

Chhaatr said:
			
		

> Adaalat ne paNkhaa mayassar karaa ne kii un kii maaNg manzoor kar lii hai.
> 
> How would you say paNkhaa in Urdu?


 This is probably a bit off-topic since the thread is for Hindi, but here is a brief answer since you have asked:
Note: the correct pronunciation is muyassar. An alternative to muyassar, could be مہیا muhaiyyaa. An alternative to maaNg could be درخواست darxaast. 

پنکھا paNkhaa is also used in Urdu, perhaps more commonly than other words: بادزن ، بادکش ، ہوا کش - baad-zan , baad-kash , hawaa-kash


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## Wolverine9

tonyspeed said:


> If it is paNkhaa then the technically correct representation would be पँखा .
> 
> Is it possible that the colloquial pronunciation has drifted from the written representation?



No.  Both anusvaar and chandrabindu can be used for nasals.  There are many different forms of nasals.  Their alphabetic representations have generally been discarded in favor of the anusvaar.  McGregor uses chandrabindu for one specific nasal; the others are represented by the anusvaar.  The anusvaar, in fact, can also be used for the regular /n/ and the retroflex /n/.  paNkhaa is with a nasal /N/ and that is indicated by the dot above the n in McGregor's Roman transliteration.


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## tonyspeed

Wolverine9 said:


> No.  Both anusvaar and chandrabindu can be used for nasals.  There are many different forms of nasals.  Their alphabetic representations have generally been discarded in favor of the anusvaar.  McGregor uses chandrabindu for one specific nasal; the others are represented by the anusvaar.  The anusvaar, in fact, can also be used for the regular /n/ and the retroflex /n/.  paNkhaa is with a nasal /N/ and that is indicated by the dot above the n in McGregor's Roman transliteration.




In standard Hindi as specified by the Central Hindi Directorate the n in पंखा would never represent a nasalised vowel. ( see http://lawmin.nic.in/olwing/legal glossary/devnagari.pdf    p.739 under the heading "anuswaar tathaa anunaasiktaa chihn [chandrabindu]" section kha ) In the non-standard forms of written Hindi that don't follow the government standard, it could mean both.If you notice, most dictionaries, including Oxford, will always write the standard form because there is a different standard expected from dictionaries than from everyday communication. 

Your note about the n in Mcgreggor showing that the bindu in pankhaa is a nasalised vowel is wrong. The dot above the n symbolises that it is a ङ, the N-consontant that is pronounced at the same location as the ka, kha, ga, and gha. In Mcgreggor's Oxford dictionary, nasalised vowels are represented by an *m* with a dot, never an n. Please see the introductory pages of the dictionary for further information (page xvii) and notice his roman representation of the 5 nasal consonants.

I checked one of my Indian-origin Hindi dictionaries (prabhaat bRIhat hindi-angrezi kosh) and it also has पंखा as pankhaa with no nasal vowel. In that dictionary, the nasal vowel is represented by a ~ above the vowel.


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## Wolverine9

^ I simply said anusvaar can be used for a nasal.  I didn't say anything about nasalized vowel.  McGregor says on p. xv that anusvaar is used when nasal consonants precede plosives, which is consistent with saying the anusvaar represents a nasal sound.


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## tonyspeed

Wolverine9 said:


> ^ I simply said anusvaar can be used for a nasal.  I didn't say anything about nasalized vowel.  McGregor says on p. xv that anusvaar is used when nasal consonants precede plosives, which is consistent with saying the anusvaar represents a nasal sound.



Then I don't beleive you understood the point of contention. That point was paNkhaa vs pankhaa. We are talking about vowel vs consonant.

But I didn't understand much of the above post so I wrote to clarify.


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## Wolverine9

tonyspeed said:


> Then I don't beleive you understood the point  of contention. That point was paNkhaa vs pankhaa. We are talking about  vowel vs consonant.



So, in your opinion, it should be _pankhaa _instead of _paNkhaa_, just as it should be _hindii _instead of _hiNdii_?



tonyspeed said:


> But I didn't understand much of the above post so I wrote to clarify.



My post or someone else's?


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## tonyspeed

Wolverine9 said:


> So, in your opinion, it should be _pankhaa _instead of _paNkhaa_, just as it should be _hindii _instead of _hiNdii_?



Please refer to the standard notation used on this board as created by Marrish-saahib. It is posted as a sticky.
In there you will find that N represents a nasal vowel; whereas n represents a nasal consonant.


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## greatbear

Dots can represent both nasal sounds (paNkhaa, saNgeet, maaNg) as well as non-nasal ones (shantii, hindii): in any case, tonyspeed, it's paNkhaa in speech, invariably, across regions and accents and dialects. So I guess that would have answered your query (if the dictionaries give some other idea, I'd say it's a miss from them).


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## Chhaatr

TS jii vishvaas kiijie, fan ko paNkhaa hii kehte haiN.  agar aap pankhaa boleNge to sunne vaale ko aTpaTaa lagegaa.


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## tonyspeed

Thank you both. I will definately take your word for it. But hopefully, one day I will solve the mystery of the paNkhaa.


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