Moderator:vijayjohn
vijayjohn wrote:Oh wow, welcome back and good luck!
n8an wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Oh wow, welcome back and good luck!
Thank you
I'm enjoying it so much more this time. Last time I studied Hindi I had never learned a language with cases (at all), so now that I've done several others I find it much more logical
vijayjohn wrote:Yay!
I don't think you can use को in a situation like that; को to my knowledge functions more like the dative case in a bunch of other languages, so I wouldn't say कविता के घर is in oblique case. The के there may be plural of respect or something. You could just as well say कविता का घर जाता AFAICT.
I think your friend is wrong about those two words. "Kyoon" and "bahot" are just common pronunciations of those words, but I think I can see how your friend might think those are the standard pronunciations because they're just so darn common (probably more so than "kyon" and "bahut")! But for that matter, there are other common pronunciations of बहुत, too, like "bohot" and even "bhot." They're even been written in poetry that way sometimes for hundreds of years. I think the spellings and pronunciations for बहुत with an "o" in them are especially useful for emphasizing things, and 'a lot' is a word you can easily feel the need to emphasize! (I'm reminded of a video from Memri TV of a Pakistani interview where actress Veena Malik is accused of violating Islamic law or something, and she says something along the lines of "why are you picking on me specifically? If you're so worried about Islamic law being violated, there are BOHOT other things you could be talking about!").
n8an wrote:That's what I thought originally, and I kept getting extremely confused as I went on with the book as to why it kept referring to houses respectfully or why everybody had multiple houses. I flicked back through the book a couple of chapters and found this
Sorry for my poor drawing skills. I used Snapchat
Aha, this makes sense. Do you think it's a specific "accent"? It seems to be the standard pronunciation, which is weird considering it doesn't conform to the written language (which is usually the case with standardised pronunciations, right?).
It kind of reminds me of the seemingly endless pronunciations of यह, वह, ये and वे. I've had friends laugh at me for pronouncing them as my book says to (yeh and vo for both), and I seem to hear "yaha" "vaha" "ye" and "vey" a lot.
Vijay, how are you competent in almost every language ever? I am amazed.
n8an wrote:Why is क्यों pronounced "kyoon" instead of "kyon",
and बहुत pronounced as "bahot" instead of "bahut"?
vijayjohn wrote:It kind of reminds me of the seemingly endless pronunciations of यह, वह, ये and वे. I've had friends laugh at me for pronouncing them as my book says to (yeh and vo for both), and I seem to hear "yaha" "vaha" "ye" and "vey" a lot.
Really? This makes me wonder who your friends are. I guess they're high-caste Hindus from either wealthy or middle-class families? Maybe some of them are teachers or have teachers in their family? "Ye" and "vo" are totally normal pronunciations for those pronouns.
n8an wrote:(and apparently never if it's a person).
vijayjohn wrote:I'm inclined to guess that भारत को जाता is a calque off of English.
vijayjohn wrote:Yeah, that's weird; I've never seen any of those kinds of examples or claims before and doubt that TY Hindi has them. I did a Google search for "भारत को जाता" (in quotes) and found that while there are some results for it, there aren't nearly as many as for "भारत जाता" in quotes. I'm inclined to guess that भारत को जाता is a calque off of English.
Sorry for my poor drawing skills. I used Snapchat
See, it may well be the most common pronunciation by now at least, but it's hard at least for me to tell where it came from in the first place (if it even has a clear source). I've heard kyoon for sure a lot in Bollywood movies, but the reason why Mumbai is basically Hindi-speaking in the first place (let alone home to almost the entire Hindi movie industry) is because of immigration from various parts of the Hindi Belt. In general, language contact in South Asia is complicated and messy and kind of all over the place, and always has been, so it's often hard to trace these kinds of things.
Really? This makes me wonder who your friends are. I guess they're high-caste Hindus from either wealthy or middle-class families? Maybe some of them are teachers or have teachers in their family? "Ye" and "vo" are totally normal pronunciations for those pronouns.
Or are you just thinking of different words? Yahaan (with a nasalized vowel, no actual n) means 'here', wahaan (also with a nasalized vowel) means 'there', and ve can be a particle, I think.
Because that's all I have?
Thanks, though!
Saim wrote:At least in Pakistan [kjũ] is more common, not sure about Hindi as spoken in India.
The most common pronunciation of बहुत in normal speech is baut ([bɔːt]), bhaut ([bʱɔːt]) or even bauhat ([bɔːɦət]). I don't believe I've ever heard anyone say [bəɦʊt] as the spelling would suggest. It's not uncommon in Hindi for vowels to change when next to /ɦ/ (शहर, anyone?).
I've had Indian teachers on iTalki correct my pronunciation of singular यह and वह. In theory conflating यह with ये is nonstandard in Hindi but it is part of the prestige dialect so almost everyone talks like this in normal speech.
In Urdu it is standard, there is no [yah] or [vah].
think their point is that -को will always have a dative meaning if it has a human referent. If you're going to someone's house you use -के पास. Since in English you wouldn't say you're going to someone either I'm not sure why they needed to mention it.
Saim wrote:I've had Indian teachers on iTalki correct my pronunciation of singular यह and वह. In theory conflating यह with ये is nonstandard in Hindi but it is part of the prestige dialect so almost everyone talks like this in normal speech.
n8an wrote:This explains a lot! I have several friends from Mumbai who only speak Hindi and can't speak Marathi, and they told me that their friends don't speak it either. I assumed that this was because they were Catholics, but I guess it's more common than I thought.
Are other dialects of Hindi (Awadhi etc) still as commonly spoken, or are they also being eroded by the "standard" version? I know Bhojpuri still has a fair amount of media, but I'm not sure about the rest.
No no. Don't be modest. You just need Hebrew in order to be part of every conversation I can have on this site (along with the 400 I can't partake in)
Ah, so it really is "yeh" and "vo" for both singular and plural in both Hindi and Urdu?
I guess all the other languages I've studied in between have made my brain more open to finding logic in places I couldn't see it before.
vijayjohn wrote:None of the languages spoken in the Hindi Belt have any official recognition except Maithili and Santali (plus languages that are spoken mainly outside the Hindi Belt such as Bengali and English ), so I think everything is being eroded by the standard, even though many of them are among the most widely spoken languages in the world, some of them have long literary histories, and some were even the prestige variety of Hindi until relatively recently and are still widely recognized as being more overtly prestigious than the standard at least in the context of literature. Some very well-known Bollywood songs are in nonstandard varieties, e.g. this I believe is in Braj, and this is in Awadhi. Much of the dialogue in Lagaan is in Bhojpuri. Certain kinds of Hindu mythological plays are supposed to use what would now be considered nonstandard varieties by longstanding tradition.
vijayjohn wrote:Mumbai has been an important port city for centuries by now, so its population is largely made up of immigrants (and their descendants, of course) from various parts of India. The lingua franca of Mumbai is Hindi, not Marathi, especially since an awful lot of these immigrants came (and still come IIUC) from Hindi-speaking areas anyway. I remember my dad once saying there is no way you can go to Mumbai without knowing at least a little bit of Hindi and cab drivers don't speak a word of English. There is even a political party called Shiv Sena that started out criticizing precisely the fact that Mumbai is Hindi-speaking rather than Marathi-speaking and blaming immigrants for this (but ended up becoming a more generically Hindu nationalist movement within a few years).
None of the languages spoken in the Hindi Belt have any official recognition except Maithili and Santali (plus languages that are spoken mainly outside the Hindi Belt such as Bengali and English ), so I think everything is being eroded by the standard, even though many of them are among the most widely spoken languages in the world, some of them have long literary histories, and some were even the prestige variety of Hindi until relatively recently and are still widely recognized as being more overtly prestigious than the standard at least in the context of literature. Some very well-known Bollywood songs are in nonstandard varieties, e.g. this I believe is in Braj, and this is in Awadhi. Much of the dialogue in Lagaan is in Bhojpuri. Certain kinds of Hindu mythological plays are supposed to use what would now be considered nonstandard varieties by longstanding tradition.
Well, if you didn't know, I'm currently part of the Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew study group.
Saim wrote:A similar dynamic is at play in the shift from Punjabi to Urdu in Pakistan.
n8an wrote:Is this happening? I don't know that much about the Pakistani linguistic situation, though I do notice my Pakistani friends speaking Urdu to each other often. I had just assumed that they were of different ethnic backgrounds, but what you're saying makes sense.
mundiya wrote:n8an: Do the Catholics of Mumbai generally speak Hindi and not Marathi? I wasn't aware of that.
Saim wrote:Keep in mind, though, that these are some of the poorest areas of India where literacy and education rates are rather low, so it may take a couple of generations for Hindi to truly marginalise these other languages, at least in the vernacular sphere and outside of larger cities. A similar dynamic is at play in the shift from Punjabi to Urdu in Pakistan.
n8an wrote:Aha. But it seems like Marathis are still speaking Marathi amongst themselves...right?
Thanks! I like listening to these other languages. I had only really heard Bhojpuri before.
I should've known are you progressing with Hebrew much?
mundiya wrote:Instead of quoting various posts, I'm just going to discuss several of the words simultaneously.
n8an: क्यूँ is also a common spelling, though it's used much less than क्यों. It became a matter of convention to predominantly use the spelling क्यों, but that doesn't necessarily affect pronunciation habits. Same is true for other spellings such as बहुत and ढूँढ़ना. बहुत has already been discussed. ढूँढ़ना is a widely used spelling in writing but is uncommon in speech, where ढूँढना predominates (and which is also used in writing). Another example is the number six, which is usually spelled छह but pronounced छे.
n8an: Do the Catholics of Mumbai generally speak Hindi and not Marathi? I wasn't aware of that.
Saim wrote:Among middle-class/educated urban people, yes. Everyone understands both Urdu and Punjabi [in traditionally Punjabi-speaking areas], but many middle- and upper-class women can only speak Urdu and many poorer people, again especially women, can only speak Punjabi. Educated families do not tend to pass Punjabi down to children, but since only about half the population of Punjab Province was literate in 1998 (I can't find any more recent data), Punjabi is still the most common vernacular language.
vijayjohn wrote:And I forgot to include the link for the Awadhi one. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOF7JWJqHEc. In the beginning of this one, the guy even insists on nonstandard pronunciation, which merges /ʃ/ with /s/.
Well, tbh, I'm only doing it to help other people feel motivated, so I'm really not keeping track of my own progress. (Not that I do a great job of keeping track of such things anyway - I suppose that's probably part of the reason why I do progress in the first place!).
n8an wrote:Oh, I don't know about that. This one girl had a Portuguese name, so I assume that she wasn't a Mumbai native.
Gotcha. Why is Punjabi not passed down in Pakistan? I feel like it almost always is in India (I know the situations are different, but still).
Why is it the educated women who can only speak Urdu and poorer women who only speak Punjabi? What's the phenomenon behind this?
Thanks!
I always heard that sh/s merging was a feature of Bengali. Is that not exclusively true?
Saim wrote:Sanskrit had a three-way /s, ʂ, ʃ/ distinction but these have all merged into /s/ in most (all?) of Indo-Aryan. In Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi /ʃ/ exists but it is limited to Persian and English loans and is still merged with /s/ in the speech of some regional/social groups.
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