# Urdu, Hindi: Pronunciation of vaaqaii, vakaii



## tonyspeed

Defined in Platts as P واقعي _wāqěʻī_ (fr. A. _wāqěʻ_), adj. Real, actual, true;—right, proper, due;—adv. In fact, really, truly,  verily, certainly, actually, _de facto_.


Is this word always pronounced vaaqaii ? I seem to have heard someone pronounce it vaaqyaa or something like that.

Are there alternate pronunciations?


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> Defined in Platts as P واقعي _wāqěʻī_ (fr. A. _wāqěʻ_), adj. Real, actual, true;—right, proper, due;—adv. In fact, really, truly, verily, certainly, actually, _de facto_.
> 
> Is this word always pronounced vaaqaii ? I seem to have heard someone pronounce it vaaqyaa or something like that.
> 
> Are there alternate pronunciations?


You might be thinking of vaaqi3ah/incident.

The word under discussion is pronounced more or less vaaqi3ii, with the 3 ranging from an a sound to the actual 3.


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## tonyspeed

QURESHPOR said:


> You might be thinking of vaaqi3ah/incident.
> 
> The word under discussion is pronounced more or less vaaqi3ii, with the 3 ranging from an a sound to the actual 3.



Maybe the times I have heard this, the person involved is confusing the two words. I guess that is possible.

But is that first 'i' supposed to be there? You wrote vaaq*i*3ii.


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> Maybe the times I have heard this, the person involved is confusing the two words. I guess that is possible.
> 
> But is that first 'i' supposed to be there? You wrote vaaq*i*3ii.


In Urdu spelling, the i is there, if the short vowels are indicated.


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## marrish

Regarding the pronunciation, not the spelling, Platts SaaHib is right in having had indicated the short [e], this is how I pronounce this word. The explanation by QP is of course valid as per 3.

Edit: I forgot to add that this applies to Urdu; when/if this word is used in Hindi, the pronunciaiton may vary.


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## greatbear

The word is pronounced as "vaaqaii" or "vaakaii" (indeed) in Hindi. "vaakyaa" (incident) is a completely different thing altogether, and I don't see how can any speaker confuse between the two.


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## Wolverine9

Although the meanings are different, the two words are etymologically connected though.  Maybe the person was saying _wāqěʻ_


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## UrduMedium

waaqi3ah and waaqi3ii are indeed related semantically also. waaqi3ah meaning an incident, or something that actually happened, implying reality. I know waaqi3ah is now used in the sense of a story, like qissah, but the meaning implies a true story. Idiomatically you may find "waaqi3ah kuchh yuuN hai ..." for "In reality it is ...". So waaqi3ii (indeed, real) is just an extension of waaqi3ah.


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## greatbear

Thanks a lot for the extra info, UM: I never thought about this semantic connection before.


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## tonyspeed

Wolverine9 said:


> Although the meanings are different, the two words are etymologically connected though.  Maybe the person was saying _wāqěʻ_



No, it's definately vakaii. The person uses it all of the time, but always the same strange  pronunciation.


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## lcfatima

I feel I also have heard people say vaakii in regular speech and not just vaakaii or vaaqa'ii.


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## marrish

It appears that I'm left out alone with the pronunciation of short [e] as in _wāqěʻī..._


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## kaushalsingh

I have heard people saying vakaii for implying something that is in reality,or in english as we say 'actually'!


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## Qureshpor

marrish said:


> It appears that I'm left out alone with the pronunciation of short [e] as in _wāqěʻī..._


No, you are not alone. This is the pronunciation in Urdu. All I meant to say was that it is written as vaaqi3ii in Urdu. The ě sound is the same as the modern pronunciation of the izaafat, which is indicated with a zer (-i-) in writing.


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## UrduMedium

^ I Agree. We need a way to transcribe the short e sound between i and e.


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## marrish

QURESHPOR said:


> No, you are not alone. This is the pronunciation in Urdu. All I meant to say was that it is written as vaaqi3ii in Urdu. The ě sound is the same as the modern pronunciation of the izaafat, which is indicated with a zer (-i-) in writing.


Thank you for reassuring me .


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## marrish

lcfatima said:


> I feel I also have heard people say vaakii in regular speech and not just vaakaii or vaaqa'ii.


That's interesting, it seems like a short-cut. I don't remember having heard something like this from native speakers though.


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## marrish

This previous thread which focussed on واقع, that is not precisely the word which has been discussed here, but its core form, might be useful.  There are references to Hindi and to Devanagari, that is why this link is considered by me to be justified.

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1625393


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## tonyspeed

I finally found more evidence of the existence of this pronunciation variant.  In,  Aspects of Hindi Phonology Manjari Ohala states on page 47 "[wakəya] (PA)  'in reality'".  Her maiden name is Agrawal and in the intro she states she "is a third generation native speaker of Standard Hindi".  I am assuming this means she is a Delhi Punjabi whose family migrated from Pakistan after partition.  This is interesting indeed since the other speaker who the thread is about is also a mother tongue Punjabi speaker.  The fact that Ohala seems to be ignorant of the real spelling is also surprising.


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> I finally found more evidence of the existence of this pronunciation variant.  In,  Aspects of Hindi Phonology Manjari Ohala states on page 47 "[wakəya] (PA)  'in reality'".  Her maiden name is Agrawal and in the intro she states she "is a third generation native speaker of Standard Hindi".  I am assuming this means she is a Delhi Punjabi whose family migrated from Pakistan after partition.  This is interesting indeed since the other speaker who the thread is about is also a mother tongue Punjabi speaker.  The fact that Ohala seems to be ignorant of the real spelling is also surprising.


I as a Punjabi speaker have never heard "vaaqi3ah" (vaakeya..in Punjabi) pronounced as "wakəya". In fact "vaaqi3ah" does n't mean "in reality".


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## tonyspeed

Qureshpor said:


> I as a Punjabi speaker have never heard "vaaqi3ah" (vaakeya..in Punjabi) pronounced as "wakəya". In fact "vaaqi3ah" does n't mean "in reality".



Maybe it's dialectal?


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## marrish

^Do you think "a" is used for a long "aa" [a:]?


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## Dib

marrish said:


> ^Do you think "a" is used for a long "aa" [a:]?



If you are referring to Manjari Ohala's transcription scheme, I am pretty sure it is, as "ə" is used for the "short" one. It seems, linguists are now increasingly analyzing the vowel length as a secondary feature in synchronic Urdu-Hindi phonetics, subordinate to vowel quality.


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## marrish

Yes, indeed my question was about this word [wakəya] and thanks for the explanation! I wish I knew what synchronic phonetics refers to but nevertheless I don't have any qualms with any theory or practice linguists follow.

If I understood properly what Manjari Ohala meant, it is [wa:kəya:] in IPA. Then, I am not familiar with this pronunciation, especially for "in reality". It must be some misunderstanding. She or he says it is for Hindi and tonyspeed SaaHib typed (PA) which I also don't understand what it stands for, but as debated in this thread, there are two words: waaqi3ah and waaqi3ii. In post no. 12 I gave the Urdu pronunciation (Standard) as _wāqěʻī _for the latter (sorry for mixing transliteration systems) and this word only would mean "in reality" whilst the former, _wāqěʻa_ doesn't mean that. In Hindi there is the lengthening of the final vowel to -aa and change from q to k so Manjari Ohala's is quite close to _wāqěʻa. _I leave the matter of v/w aside.


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## Dib

"Synchronic" as in reference to the current state of the language, as opposed to "diachronic" referring to the historic stages of the language.


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## marrish

^ That's clear, thanks! Adding to the previous one, the person Tonyspeed heard saying vaakiyaa (or anything to this extent) and attaching the meaning of "in reality" seems indeed to have been confirmed by M. Ohala. I would be wary though of taking for granted that it means "in reality" in the current state of Hindi language. An instant online search produced this in the first place (14 hrs. ago - quite contemporary) (I can't help it's all about Modi in India these days):

अगर मोदी प्रधानमंत्री नही बना तो क्या *वाकई* मे वो चाय बेचेगा? _agar Modi pradhaanmaNtrii nahii(N) banaa to kyaa vaakaii me(N) vo chaay bechegaa?

_In Urdu it is also said with _meN_at times but I think it is redundant actually.

So I don't believe वाकई can be transcribed or transliterated as having an -a at the end and retain its meaning. But to err is human!


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## tonyspeed

marrish said:


> tonyspeed SaaHib typed (PA) which I also don't understand what it stands for



Perso-Arabic


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## marrish

Thank you very much. Now that we know what it stands for we can conclude that some Hindi speakers take Urdu waaqi3ii to be waa3iyah but I have another theory that it is perhaps PAU _waaqi3_an_ which is written واقعاً  waaw alif qaaf 3ayn alif tanwiin in other words w-a-q-i-3-aa-n but the final "n" is somehow not pronounced by some Hindi speakers and alif was taken for a long -aa which is not the case here. It means "in reality" though, that's why this suggestion.


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