# Hindi: Pyramids of Egypt



## flyinfishjoe

I believe that on another thread, QP sahab mentioned that in Urdu, the pyramids of Egypt are called "aHraam-i-misr." I checked a few sources and I can't find what they're called in Hindi. Searching "aHraam" in the Devanagari script brings few relevant results. On Wikipedia, the article for the Great Pyramid of Giza is simply titled "giijaa kii mahaan piraamiD." Is there any word that is used for "pyramid" in Hindi other than the English loanword?


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## eskandar

Can't help you with the Hindi term, but just for clarity's sake, it should be "*ahraam*-i-miSr" and not *aHraam, as the word in Urdu (originally Arabic) is اهرام and not *احرام (the latter, iHraam, refers to the garment worn by Hajj pilgrims).


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## Qureshpor

eskandar said:


> Can't help you with the Hindi term, but just for clarity's sake, it should be "*ahraam*-i-miSr" and not *aHraam, as the word in Urdu (originally Arabic) is اهرام and not *احرام (the latter, iHraam, refers to the garment worn by Hajj pilgrims).




Sikandar SaaHib. I believe flyinfishjoe is not blameworthy! It was my typing error but as you can see I did type the Urdu version correctly

A further clarification for those who may not know. "haram" is the singular and "ahraam" is the plural. This is like "xabar" (a piece of news) vs axbaar (news or newspaper- In Urdu, the latter sense)


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## flyinfishjoe

Thanks for the clarification. I am not very familiar with those kinds of plurals. But a quick search seems to show that "haram" too is not used for pyramid in Hindi. Hmm...


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## greatbear

I've never heard of any other word except "pyramids" used by Hindi speakers, even in rural areas.


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## Qureshpor

flyinfishjoe said:


> I believe that on another thread, QP sahab mentioned that in Urdu, the pyramids of Egypt are called "aHraam-i-misr." I checked a few sources and I can't find what they're called in Hindi. Searching "aHraam" in the Devanagari script brings few relevant results. On Wikipedia, the article for the Great Pyramid of Giza is simply titled "giijaa kii mahaan piraamiD." Is there any word that is used for "pyramid" in Hindi other than the English loanword?





Until some learned Hindi speaker comes to your assistance with a better answer, please allow me to fill the void.

I have come across *"suuchii"* (सूची  or सूचि ) as a word for a pyramid. Unfortunately the meaning of this word is not restricted to a pyramid alone. In another place, I have seen *"suuchii-stambh"*. This may be *the* word for it.

(If you need to know words for a cone, a parallelogram, a parabola or a hyperbola or even an ellipse, please do not hesitate to ask!)

PS: The word is "giizaa" and not "giijaa".


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## souminwé

Words suggested by spokensanskrit.de:

सूच्याकारस्तम्भ  - suucyaakaarastambh - 3 hits on google, all from the above dictionary
सूच्यग्रस्तंभ - suucyagrastambh - 16 hits on google, only 3 of which are  the above dictionary, the rest are some other dictionary.

No love for ahraam-e-misr in Hindi it appears.


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## flyinfishjoe

QURESHPOR said:


> Until some learned Hindi speaker comes to your assistance with a better answer, please allow me to fill the void.
> 
> I have come across *"suuchii"* (सूची  or सूचि ) as a word for a pyramid. Unfortunately the meaning of this word is not restricted to a pyramid alone. In another place, I have seen *"suuchii-stambh"*. This may be *the* word for it.
> 
> (If you need to know words for a cone, a parallelogram, a parabola or a hyperbola or even an ellipse, please do not hesitate to ask!)
> 
> PS: The word is "giizaa" and not "giijaa".


Thanks, I will look into this! It seems that GB is right and that the English loanword is by far the most commonly used in Hindi. But personally, I don't like the sound of "misr ke piraamiD". But if that is the only one that the common man would recognize, I guess I must use it.

By the way, I wrote "giijaa" because I was transliterating exactly from the name of the article on Wikipedia, which did not include a "nuqtaa" under the "ja".


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## greatbear

flyinfishjoe said:


> I don't like the sound of "misr ke piraamiD". But if that is the only one that the common man would recognize, I guess I must use it.



By the way, just as additional info, not many young Hindi speakers would know what "misr" is; they are more familiar with the English name.


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> By the way, just as additional info, not many young Hindi speakers would know what "misr" is; they are more familiar with the English name.




The net is overladen with "misr". So, at least in the writen word "misr" is common. A couple of examples.

इतिहास:क्या है*मिस्र*के पिरामिडों के भीतर ?

*मिस्र*के पिरामिड 2011/2012


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## greatbear

QURESHPOR said:


> The net is overladen with "misr". So, at least in the writen word "misr" is common.



Of course, one would translate/write Egypt as "Misr" in Hindi! That is what I myself had done in the original thread. You again missed the point, QP!


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> Of course, one would translate/write Egypt as "Misr" in Hindi! That is what I myself had done in the original thread. You again missed the point, QP!




No, I did NOT miss the "point" gb!


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## souminwé

greatbear said:


> By the way, just as additional info, not many young Hindi speakers would know what "misr" is; they are more familiar with the English name.



I don't know about this. Again it is quite common in the media, and I remember hearing it as such from my parents as a child - and this is growing up in North America being encouraged NOT to speak Hindi by my parents. I think people are familiar with it, and using it or not is probably a personal preference.


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## greatbear

It is of course quite common in the media, since it is the only word in existing Hindi for Egypt, so on a Hindi news channel you will never hear Egypt of course, it will always be Misr! However, if I were to mention Misr to my friends, most of them would give me blank or strange looks: the word is extremely uncommon, and wouldn't even be understood, in the young generation. Interestingly, with the pyramids the word "Misr" is still used a bit more, as if "Misr ke pyramid" has become an expression in itself, but when even many older people discuss, for example, the politics of Egypt, they use "Egypt" rather than "Misr"; younger Hindi speakers would never use "Misr" in that context.
This is not something that I would expect you to know, anyway, living in North America, since media will continue to have "Misr"; this brings us to the observation, inevitably, that not many Hindi speakers follow Hindi media, the English media being quite dominant (and superior too, mostly, in terms of quality) and most Hindi speakers having a good comprehension of English. If they had followed Hindi media, they would have known what Misr is.


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## flyinfishjoe

Actually, I heard _misr_ a lot in India, from all ages and kinds of _hindi-_ and _urduwale_. The use of _qaahiraa_ to refer to Cairo seems to be only used in _written_ Hindi however.

By the way I completely disagree with this statement:

"...this brings us to the observation, inevitably, that not many Hindi speakers follow Hindi media, the English media being quite dominant (and superior too, mostly, in terms of quality) and most Hindi speakers having a good comprehension of English..."

Only a tiny minority of Hindi speakers have a good comprehension of English, and the circulation of Hindi periodicals in India is twice that of English papers (80 million vs. 40 million). And in my humble opinion, if there is any difference in the quality of the English and Hindi media, it is marginal. The Indian press in general, irrespective of language, does not have a reputation for quality. GB, I believe that you may have meant the upper-class Indians who were educated in the English medium when you made this statement. It is important to remember that these people only make up a small to medium percentage of the total population.


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## greatbear

flyinfishjoe said:


> By the way I completely disagree with this statement:
> 
> "...this brings us to the observation, inevitably, that not many Hindi speakers follow Hindi media, the English media being quite dominant (and superior too, mostly, in terms of quality) and most Hindi speakers having a good comprehension of English..."
> 
> Only a tiny minority of Hindi speakers have a good comprehension of English, and the circulation of Hindi periodicals in India is twice that of English papers (80 million vs. 40 million). And in my humble opinion, if there is any difference in the quality of the English and Hindi media, it is marginal. The Indian press in general, irrespective of language, does not have a reputation for quality. GB, I believe that you may have meant the upper-class Indians who were educated in the English medium when you made this statement. It is important to remember that these people only make up a small to medium percentage of the total population.



In a country not fond of reading, except in certain parts, is the circulation of periodicals a good tracker of comprehension? In addition, most of those upper-class Indians follow non-Indian media, which automatically leads to decline in the sales of Indian English periodicals; also, India's biggest segment is the middle class, which understands English very well. Most middle class students go to English medium schools, and it is rare a student that goes in a local language school today. The best barometer of English comprehension instead could be the game of cricket: most of us watch the game with English commentary, even when there's the choice of the same game with Hindi commentary. Of course, they are not watching a game with a commentary they are not understanding? Why is the website cricinfo, largely driven by Indian followers, is in English and not Hindi? Who are those millions of Indians who are commenting day in, day out on its live matches, articles, etc.? Are they all "upper class"? It's a big stereotype, I believe, that English is limited to the upper crust; when you also consider that Hindi is now spoken fluently not only by people coming from the original Hindi belt, but also by people for whom it is a second language, e.g. people from the south, there remains no doubt in my mind which word would be more readily understood across ages, regions and classes.

Regarding the quality of English press in India, its reputation might not be the greatest, since anyway anything labelled as "American" or "Western" is tended to be thought of as good, but in my opinion it has a very good quality, and often devoid of sensationalism, something which British and American press so often abound in. There are now periodicals in India emulating, for example, bad journalism like the British periodical _The Sun_, but thankfully they are not that popular.


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## flyinfishjoe

India has a population of 1.2 billion people. The middle class is estimated to be 150 to 200 million people. Internet usage is in India is estimated to be 65 to 100 million people.

Also, for talk of sensationalism, one only needs to point out the uproar about racism in Australia, or the American diplomat's supposed Tamilian gaffe, both of which were front-page on all major Indian English dailies, and both of which were given undue weight and were blown out of proportion. Anyway, we are getting a little off topic, but I still stand by my comment that _misr_ wouldn't be an unfamiliar word to Hindi speakers. Or at least that was my perception when I was in Delhi and Lucknow. I can imagine that the situation in Bombay might be different.


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## rahulbemba

flyinfishjoe said:


> I believe that on another thread, QP sahab mentioned that in Urdu, the pyramids of Egypt are called "aHraam-i-misr." I checked a few sources and I can't find what they're called in Hindi. Searching "aHraam" in the Devanagari script brings few relevant results. On Wikipedia, the article for the Great Pyramid of Giza is simply titled "giijaa kii mahaan piraamiD." Is there any word that is used for "pyramid" in Hindi other than the English loanword?



The word in Hindu for Pyramid is "Pyramid". It comes as it is in Hindi.


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## rahulbemba

flyinfishjoe said:


> _misr_ wouldn't be an unfamiliar word to Hindi speakers.



I agree with you and I think you are right. Misra is what is known to more Indians, than Egypt. Not only by Hindi speakers but by many other regional language speakers too.


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