# Hindi: समय



## James Bates

Is the Hindi word samay "time" spelled समय or समै? The reason I'm asking is that it is always pronounced as though it were समै. I don't think I have ever heard it pronounced समय.


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## mundiya

The standard spelling is समय.  Regionally and dialectically, the spelling समै is also used.  In fast or casual speech, समै can be a common pronunciation.  But in careful speech, you will hear समय.


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## Englishmypassion

It's always समय. समै is both distorted spelling and pronunciation, not correct.

Cross-posted


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## littlepond

Pron. of समय is like समे, almost invariably.


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## James Bates

littlepond said:


> Pron. of समय is like समे, almost invariably.


Like समे or समै?


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## littlepond

I've never heard समै.


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## mundiya

I've heard both समे and समै.  Platts lists the various forms here.


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## hindiurdu

I hear समै only from people from Western UP. These are the same folks who cannot say a 'z' at the beginning of a word or a 'j' in the middle (and sometimes end) of a word. Age becomes ez. Zebra becomes jaibra (जैबरा). क ख ग is recited as कै खै गै. Garage is गैरिज़ (gairiz). Zanjiir (ज़न्जीर) becomes Jainziir (जैन्ज़ीर). Najiib becomes Naziib. Lunch (लंच) becomes lainch (लैंच). Judgment becomes Juzment or Juzmaint. I think these are Ruhilkhandi speech patterns, which has not properly been studied as far as I know and also displays micro-patterns due to the proximity of Punjabi, Haryanvi, Garhwali, Rajasthani, Braj and Awadhi. The accents are much more marked in older people than in younger ones (who lapse into their own styles only when speaking with others of the same micro-region). Take any commuter train into Delhi and you'll hear a tangle of these sub-dialects.


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## tonyspeed

Englishmypassion said:


> It's always समय. समै is both distorted spelling and pronunciation, not correct.
> 
> Cross-posted


Are you suggesting it should be pronounced as samaya?


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## flamboyant lad

I always pronounce it as समै. To me, only a non-native speaker can pronounce it as समय.

PS: But I always write समय not समै


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## flamboyant lad

There are so many words in Hindi that we pronounce differently. e.g.

 बहुत We always pronounce it as  बोत or बहोत


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## Englishmypassion

Hello, fl,
I am a non-native speaker of Hindi then.


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## Delvo

I can't tell what the difference would be between pronunciation as समय and pronunciation as समै. If the inherent vowel is always dropped at the end, that leaves य as just the consonant equivalent to "y" and no vowel after it, which I can't interpret as anything but a vowel like "i", which, when preceded by "a", gives me "ai". Does य at the end just mean the "i" lasts longer?


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## flamboyant lad

समय= səməj
समै= səmæ

(We always pronounce "year" as "ear")


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## James Bates

flamboyant lad said:


> समय= səməj
> समै= səmæ


Thank you for the clarification.


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## flamboyant lad

James Bates said:


> Thank you for the clarification.


How do you pronounce "year"?


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## James Bates

flamboyant lad said:


> How do you pronounce "year"?


With a y!


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## Delvo

flamboyant lad said:


> समय= səməj
> समै= səmæ


Would this "æ" be like the "a" in English "sad"? I never would have guessed that from the transliteration "ai"! The latter looks like it's meant to represent the diphthong like the "i" in English "side"!


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## James Bates

Delvo said:


> Would this "æ" be like the "a" in English "sad"? I never would have guessed that from the transliteration "ai"! The latter looks like it's meant to represent the diphthong like the "i" in English "side"!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet


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## hindiurdu

Delvo said:


> Would this "æ" be like the "a" in English "sad"? I never would have guessed that from the transliteration "ai"! The latter looks like it's meant to represent the diphthong like the "i" in English "side"!



In general, Hindi-Urdu (Standard H-U, sometimes called Western H-U) does not like diphthongal vowel sounds and has a strong tendency to shrink them to a single sound. The exceptions are when one or both of them are long vowels (so, raaii meaning mustard seed would work), although then you can argue it's not quite a diphthong anyway. ai is pronounced as the English 's*a*d' or 'm*a*thematics'. Hindi speakers will often trigger on this 'ai' representation, and will pronounce the English 'said' as 'sad' also because to many of them ai = æ.

Eastern (Bengali influenced) and Southern (Marathi influenced) dialects might differ. Please note that, the British initially arrived in India from Bengal and Calcutta was their capital for British India for a very long time. The Asiatic Society was centered there. A lot of the 19th and early 20th century books described Eastern Hindi, instead of what is the far more widespread (and now standard) Western Hindi-Urdu. Standard H-U is based on (but still has differences from) the Khari Boli dialect of Western Hindi.

'y' can be seen as a glide i-a or e-a. And Hindi-Urdu have a powerful tendency to kill syllable-end-vowels if they are 'a' (the schwa deletion phenomenon). So, समय = sa-ma-ea goes to sa-ma-e. However, that final diphthong a-e is intolerable to many H-U speakers and they will collapse it to 'e' (sam-e = समे) or, for people from Ruhilkhand and East Haryana, to (sam-æ = समै). However, these folks have other distinctive pronunciations too, as I was pointing out earlier. For instance, most H-U speakers will say 'sona' (सोना) for gold. These people will say 'sauna' (सॉना), which is more akin to 'b*a*ll' (again, not diphthongal). This is a classic Meerut pronunciation, for example.

If you are learning and want to sound native, say sam-e (_some-eh_ for English speakers) and you'll be fine. Do not say 'samay' - that sounds Eastern or non-native. The rest of your speech won't sound Eastern though, so you'll simply sound non-native.


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## hindiurdu

Englishmypassion said:


> Hello, fl,
> I am a non-native speaker of Hindi then.


Well, if you are based in Nainital, then you are influenced by Kumaoni, most likely. You're still native, just dialectical. You can do a diagnostic with other sounds. Do you tend to say 'ts' or 'tsh' instead of 'ch' in words like chaar (four)? Put a hand in front of your mouth and say it. If you feel a small gust when you say the 'ch', that could mean 'ts' or 'tsh' in some measure. Garhwalis and Himachalis will say this too, but they also add 'dz' or 'dzh' in place of 'j' at word beginnings. Try it.


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## Delvo

hindiurdu said:


> In general, Hindi-Urdu (Standard H-U, sometimes called Western H-U) does not like diphthongal vowel sounds and has a strong tendency to shrink them to a single sound...


Then what would औ (सौ, मौ, यौ, नौ) end up as? A long "ō" (sō, mō, yō, nō)?


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## Dib

Delvo said:


> Then what would औ (सौ, मौ, यौ, नौ) end up as? A long "ō" (sō, mō, yō, nō)?



It's a long OPEN o, with or without a final glide /w/, i.e. /ɔː(w)/. Similarly, what is transcribed "ai" is also often /æ:j/, i.e. with a final glide /j/ (i.e. the "y" of English orthography). Though hindiurdu denies the existence of the glides in the standard pronunciation, I think, that is only partly true. The glide normally exists in careful speech, but also beyond that. And, I am not talking about Eastern Hindi. This is my impression of what I heard among the educated speakers in (Eastern) Delhi, where I spent 7 years, though I suspect this dialect is rather supra-regional without any deep root in any of the traditional dialects of the region. The local traditional dialect (e.g. spoken by rural Gurjars) does seem to drop the glides.

I feel, my opinion, as an outside observer, is of some value here, because my native language (Bengali) happens to contrast /æ/ and /æy/, and also /ɔ/ and /ɔw/ in word-final position*, e.g. /bæ/ (= "marriage" in my "paternal" dialect) vs. /bæy/ (= "expenses"); /hɔ/ (= "be(come)", 2nd person _intimate_ present imperative) vs. /hɔw/ (= "be(come)", 2nd person _neutral_ present imperative). So, it is likely that my ears are better tuned to pick up these distinctions than an average Hindi speaker's.

---

*To be entirely accurate, standard Bengali has only monsyllabic words ending in /ɔ/ and those in /æ/ are rare. However, I happen to speak the dialect of my father semi-fluently, and spent first 10 years of my life in that region (and still visit regularly), and this dialect has both /æ/ and /ɔ/ quite widely in word-final positions. So, I might be luckier here even than those who speak only standard Bengali, as far as picking up these distinctions are concerned.


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## Dib

hindiurdu said:


> Eastern (Bengali influenced) and Southern (Marathi influenced) dialects might differ.



I'd like to register a small _official_ protest to this statement, without trying to derail the thread. I think "Bengali-influenced" and "Marathi-influenced" are not necessarily the right designations for the shared features. Since most of these dialects had been evolving in situ for the past 2-2.5 thousand years, with only very occasional mass movements of people (there was a Maratha expansion, and Marathi-influence is indeed quite possible on some dialects in some cases, but it is hard to say the same about Bengali), it is rather difficult to pin-point the origin of many of the shared features. In fact, Maithili once enjoyed considerable popularity as a poetic language in Bengal (and Vidyapati is still widely read and sung), and some of the shared features of Eastern Hindi and Bengali might have originated there. Some of the features may actually be retension, rather than innovation. In the case of the pronunciation of "ai" and "au", especially, I suspect the Eastern Hindi actually remains closer to the original pronunciation, while it has changed in the Western range. The Bengali pronunciation of these letters is "oi" and "ou" respectively.


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## hindiurdu

Dib said:


> I'd like to register a small _official_ protest to this statement, without trying to derail the thread. I think "Bengali-influenced" and "Marathi-influenced" are not necessarily the right designations for the shared features. Since most of these dialects had been evolving in situ for the past 2-2.5 thousand years



Fair enough. I can go with this. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. These dialects are what they are. I suspect there must be something like Western Bengali which is more like Hindi than the Eastern one. No idea if this is true, just a guess.



Dib said:


> In the case of the pronunciation of "ai" and "au", especially, I suspect the Eastern Hindi actually remains closer to the original pronunciation, while it has changed in the Western range.



This is possible also. In particular, Northern and North Central Indo-Aryan languages seem to diverge from both Persian/Dari as well as Eastern Indo-Aryan in this. For example, Persian pronunciations of Haidar vs Northwest Indian ones. The way Afghan and Iranian and Eastern Indian people say Hyderabad (حیدرآباد) and the way Northwesterners and Pakistanis say it are different. The first set is diphthongal, the second set shortens it. Ditto for Hairaan (surprised). So, yes, there seems to have been some innovation in that large island in the middle. But it is the Khari Boli dialect from that island which is the defined standard. Variations from that are often regarded as localized. Classic example, Bail (oxen). If you say it as a diphthong, it is considered typical of the East. Amitabh Bachchan spoke like this to emphasize a variant accent in Bollywood movies.


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## Englishmypassion

hindiurdu said:


> Well, if you are based in Nainital, then you are influenced by Kumaoni, most likely. You're still native... Do you tend to say 'ts' or 'tsh' instead of 'ch' in words like chaar (four)? Garhwalis and Himachalis will say this too...



Hindi is my native language and I pronounce "chaar" "chaar". I don't know about Garhwalis and Himachalis...


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## hindiurdu

Englishmypassion said:


> Hindi is my native language and I pronounce "chaar" "chaar". I don't know about Garhwalis and Himachalis...



But Nainital is in Kumaon. Are you not natively from there? Bahut > Bo(h)t is classic Western Hindi. FL is right. It kind of the same phenomenon as Samay > Sam-e. Basically, as is typical, the aspiration is lost in fast speech. Bahut > Ba'ut. The diphthongal vowel in the middle, a'u, is immediately attacked and collapsed into the /ɔː/ monophthong, so bahut > /bɔːt/. Eastern and Central Punjabi does this exact same thing. However, if you go further westward and look at Punjabi dialects like Hindko (which is Pashto-proximate), you will see a diphthongal "ba'uu" re-emerge.


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## Dib

hindiurdu said:


> I suspect there must be something like Western Bengali which is more like Hindi than the Eastern one. No idea if this is true, just a guess.



"Bengali dialects" can be indeed divided into Western and Eastern groups. The modern standard language (i.e. "cholit bhasha") is a Western dialect. Western Bengali consonants mostly have the same values as Hindi, etc. but some of them are realized as fricatives in the east (e.g. j~z, or even k~x in the far east). Of course, what is a dialect and what is an independent language is a matter of controversy also within the Bengali sphere.


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## tonyspeed

hindiurdu said:


> ai is pronounced as the English 's*a*d' or 'm*a*thematics'. Hindi speakers will often trigger on this 'ai' representation, and will pronounce the English 'said' as 'sad' also because to many of them ai = æ.


  I would like to add this is according to standard American English pronunciation.  Other Englishes do not pronounce these as ae.  I would also like to add that the mouth is in a more closed position in comparison with English.


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## marrish

James Bates said:


> Is the Hindi word samay "time" spelled समय or समै? The reason I'm asking is that it is always pronounced as though it were समै. I don't think I have ever heard it pronounced समय.


I strongly believe although I don't have a proof for it there is yet another form of it in Hindi which is used in the standard language. समाँ _samaaN_.


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## mundiya

^ Yes, you're right.  समाँ _samaaN _is also used.


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