# Hindi/Urdu: <sambhālnā>/<samhālnā>



## Birdcall

Faylasoof said:


> Given that there is a range of meanings we are talking about then for mundane use I'd say:
> 
> _chalo bhaaii apne ko zaraa samhaalo* aur xud daarii / ghayrat mandi se kaam lo_
> [* the verb is
> سنبھالنا sanbhaalnaa pronounced as samhaalnaa ]
> Others will give you their own perspective.



Sambhaalnaa pronounced as samhaalnaa? I've never heard it without the bha sound. "gaaRii sambhaalke hii chalaao bhaaii"


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## panjabigator

Birdcall said:


> Sambhaalnaa pronounced as samhaalnaa? I've never heard it without the bha sound. "gaaRii sambhaalke hii chalaao bhaaii"



Must be a spelling error.


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## Birdcall

Are you say sambhaalnaa or samhaalnaa is a spelling error? Platt's Urdu dictionary says the word comes from the Prakrit sambhaar, so the bha version is the original, and the one that is current in India as far as I know (and the pronunciation I have heard in Bollywood songs as well, which lean towards Urdu pronunciation, like naadaan as naadaa.n).


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## Cilquiestsuens

Birdcall said:


> Sambhaalnaa pronounced as samhaalnaa? I've never heard it without the bha sound. "gaaRii sambhaalke hii chalaao bhaaii"


 
Well, In Urdu you can even spell it both ways, and I think it is preferably pronunced without *bh* but with *h*. Well, this is my observation.


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## panjabigator

Birdcall said:


> Are you say sambhaalnaa or samhaalnaa is a spelling error? Platt's Urdu dictionary says the word comes from the Prakrit sambhaar, so the bha version is the original, and the one that is current in India as far as I know (and the pronunciation I have heard in Bollywood songs as well, which lean towards Urdu pronunciation, like naadaan as naadaa.n).



Well, I thought the "h" one was an orthographical error, but:



Cilquiestsuens said:


> Well, In Urdu you can even spell it both ways, and I think it is preferably pronunced without *bh* but with *h*. Well, this is my observation.



This is news to me!  Can you provide some more info?


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## Cilquiestsuens

Sorry, my mistake. 

In Urdu you spell it with a bh only but it is in Hindi that I think I have both spellings, reflecting a varied pronunciation.


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## Todd The Bod

Birdcall said:


> "gaaRii sambhaalke hii chalaao bhaaii"



Translation?


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## Birdcall

Drive the car carefully (only), man. sambhaalnaa means to take care (of something) or to be careful, so it's like saying "gaaRii dhyaan se hii chalaao"


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## Todd The Bod

Birdcall said:


> Drive the car carefully (only), man. sambhaalnaa means to take care (of something) or to be careful, so it's like saying "gaaRii dhyaan se hii chalaao"


 
Sorry, I'm not a native.  Now I understand the first sentence, but don't understand yours, lol.


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## Birdcall

SO you understand "sambhaalke hii chalaao" but not "dhyaan se hii chalaao?" I think I made a mistake in my first sentence: it should be sambhalke, not sambhaalke (intransitive and not transitive). sambhaalnaa means to take care of someone/something, while sambhalnaa means to take care or to be careful.

dhyaan means attention, so dhyaan se means "with attention" or carefully (and dhyaan denaa means to pay attention). There may be an Urdu equivalent, but dhyaan is an extremely common word in Hindi. And gaaRii chalaanaa means to drive a car. That should clear it up.

And you probably know what hii means. It comes after what it is affecting, which is why Indian/Pakistanis tend to in English say "only" after words like "he is young only," a direct translation of "vo jawaan hii hai"


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## Cilquiestsuens

Birdcall said:


> There may be an Urdu equivalent,


 

Yes, and that is ehtiyaat (i7tiyaa6) *احتیاط *
*gaarii ehtiyaat se chalao*.



Birdcall said:


> but dhyaan is an extremely common word in Hindi.


 
In PK Urdu, it is also used a lot. Maybe under the influence of Punjabi....
*Dhyaan se kaam karo, Mai.n ne dhyaa nahii.n diyaa.*
You hear these sentences all the time...


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## panjabigator

We discussed <dhyān> over here, should anyone be interested.

Cilqui, would <tavajjoh> word in that sentence in lieu of <ehtiyāt>?


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## Cilquiestsuens

panjabigator said:


> We discussed <dhyān> over here, should anyone be interested.
> 
> Cilqui, would <tavajjoh> word in that sentence in lieu of <ehtiyāt>?


 
Yes, I am not sure it is right in Lucknowi Urdu, but I hear it around me all the time : *tavajjoh se yeh kaam karo*.

I think a number of 'non-standard' expressions have entered everyday's Urdu language, possibly influenced by Punjabii, such as :

*dhyaan lagaa kar kaam kiyaa karo*.

It doesn't sound correct Urdu to me, but these are definitely familiar words.


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## Faylasoof

Birdcall said:


> Are you say sambhaalnaa or samhaalnaa is a spelling error? Platt's Urdu dictionary says the word comes from the Prakrit sambhaar, so the bha version is the original, and the one that is current in India as far as I know (and the pronunciation I have heard in Bollywood songs as well, which lean towards Urdu pronunciation, like naadaan as naadaa.n).


 Birdcall, you are right it is from Prakrit and it is with *bh* – we even spell it that way in Urdu, سنبھالنا (_sanbhaalnaa_), but we have a full _noon_ preceeding it which changes the pronunciaiton!

 I can give you an explanation for this peculiarity of ours! Firstly, if you go to this thread, last post (# 19), you’ll find the explanation of how in Urdu, letters noon + be = meem sound! That only partly explains what we have. So it should be <_sa*mbh*aalnaa_ etc.>, but the reason why it ended up as <_samhaalnaa_> for us, I was told, had a lot to do with the pronunciation being perceived as light or heavy -- <_sa*m*-*h*aalnaa_> was considered lighter and so preferable to <_sa*m*-*bh*aalnaa_>. Many Urduphones do pronounce it as the latter, but we tend to go for the former.   



Birdcall said:


> SO you understand "sambhaalke hii chalaao" but not "dhyaan se hii chalaao?" I think I made a mistake in my first sentence: it should be sambhalke, not sambhaalke (intransitive and not transitive). ....



This is how we normally say it in this context.
 
This we tend to say a little different: (gaaRii) _chalaane par dhyaan do!_



Birdcall said:


> There may be an Urdu equivalent, but dhyaan is an extremely common word in Hindi. And gaaRii chalaanaa means to drive a car. That should clear it up.



 PG has already given the link to <dhyaan> so I shall not say much more here except that in our Urdu speech it is as common as it is in Hindi. Of course our Urdu-Arabic equivalent is _tavajjoh_ , as PG mentioned - also discussed in the same link.



Cilquiestsuens said:


> Yes, I am not sure it is right in Lucknowi Urdu, but I hear it around me all the time : *tavajjoh se yeh kaam karo*.
> 
> I think a number of 'non-standard' expressions have entered everyday's Urdu language, possibly influenced by Punjabii, such as :
> 
> *dhyaan lagaa kar kaam kiyaa karo*.
> 
> It doesn't sound correct Urdu to me, but these are definitely familiar words.


 
Both of your above sentences are real, idiomatic Urdu!


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## panjabigator

Cilqui, just thought I'd add, for completion's sake, a bit about Punjabi: have you heard سانبھنا <sāmbhnā> before for سنبھالنا <sambhālnā>?

Also, is it incorrect to write سنبھالنا with a _meem_?

This discussion about 'bh' versus 'h' makes me wonder about the <dehān> versus <dhyān> thread we had a while back.  It might be nice to revisit that.


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## Cilquiestsuens

sambhna never heard, could  be used though.

Well this discussion of noon / meem.

If you know Hindi, all the nasal 'n' before consonants are written with a dot on top of the line (called bindu), which is rendered by a noon in Urdu. Well, the rule simply says that before b and p, this nasal consonant is pronunce M and not N. It doesn't change the spelling though, while in Hindi you can write a cluster-M.

This small difference shows the organic differences between naagarii and nasta'liq. Naagarii is a purely analytic / phonetic writing system (if you use it for Sanskrit, you'll see how perfect this system is, it's an IPA before the IPA), while nasta'liq is more flexible and synthetic. 

Both systems are amazingly apt and have their own perfection.


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## Faylasoof

> Also, is it incorrect to write سنبھالنا with a _meem_?


 Yes! It is incorrect to spell it with a _meem_!


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## BP.

Cilquiestsuens said:


> ... Naagarii is ... an IPA before the IPA)...


Very accurately described sir, I noticed this while learning Hindi vowels a long time ago, but couldn't have described better than that.


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