One evening, my mother-in-law, mother, N and I were testing each other on our Marathi. We took turns to dictate some tough Marathi sentences from Mrutyunjay (a Marathi book on Karna from Mahabharata) to each other and write them out and then check them for rhasva-deergha, anusvar etc. It's been a long time since N and I have written in Marathi but we did pretty well.
However I learnt a new thing. I pronounce F instead of Ph for the Marathi letter "pha" - Faar (lot), Fool (flower), Fakta (only) when they should actually be pronounced as Phaar, Phool and Phakta. The same rule applies to Hindi and I make the same mistake. I say Fir Bhi not Phir Bhi. I should have realized when all the Hindi movie names use "ph" - Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, Patthar ke Phool, Phool aur Kaante - me being a movie buff :)) Now that I am writing this, I am wondering about words like Faaslein, Faisla, Fariyaad etc - so the F sound does exist in Hindi? Or are these words Urdu? Don't have time to research so moving on... If you know, please leave me a comment :)
The other day, on Indian Idol, Javed Akhtar corrected a participant on the pronunciation of "pha" and the participant said - Main FIR se yeh galti nahi karunga - that was hilarious :)) Also, now that Sr and Jr have started babbling, we realized that they are starting with the "pa, pha, ba, bha, ma" line of the barakhadi. That's when I had the "eureka" moment - all these sounds are made with your lips which is why "pha" is "pha" and not "fa". For saying "fa" you actually touch your teeth to your bottom lip.
So basically the essence of this post is that I have to start correcting my pronunciation of this syllable :)) which is really tough to do after 30 years of saying it wrong :)) I also did not really know the difference between the "shatkonatla sha" and the normal "sha". But we realized that when we actually speak these "sha" we say them differently, "shatkonatla sha" sound is more at the back of the tongue than the normal "sha". In English, I always had a doubt between pronouncing V and W - seemed almost the same to me in India, until I came here and realized v is more of a wh.. I think :))
anyway. If I start listing out all the things I say incorrectly this post will be never-ending. So I will stop here. Phir Milenge :))
13 comments:
Arre this is obvious. Consonants are also arranged in this way:
voiceless voiceless+aspirated voiced voiced+aspirated
You know that most languages dont have the aspirated one. But what you may not know is some languages dont make a diff between voiced and voiceless so k and g etc is the same eg. tamil; arabic doesnt have p etc.
F comes from farsi (in hindi it is written with a dot under) and I bet marathi people started speaking f rather than ph due to farsi influence because for a long time we were ruled by mughals and their chelas and even shivaji etc spoke in that style. We have a lot of farsi words, shabash, jahiraat etc.
sahi aahe ha post!! I ahve realised too that i say F instead of Ph,but i blame my konkani heritance for that. If i am not wronng Fool(flower),Falya(tomorrow),Fanas(jackfruit),Fakta(only) are some konkani words that start with F. you point about V and W is correct though,native Virginians pronounce Virginia with slight F at start "Fvirginia" and not "Vherginia"
Saurabh -
Arre that voiced/aspirated order funda is very cool, mala mahit navhta. how is farsi different from urdu?
Super/Supriya,
Fool, Fakta and fanas are konkoni words?? i know Falya :))
Unlike most things I am not 100% sure about this :) but I think Farsi was the original language spoken by Persians. Urdu was born only in India to give the Mughals their own identity. I had read long ago that some people believe Urdu is a mix of Farsi and Sanskrit but i dont know for sure or havent read enough abt it. I am curious to know the differences in how Babar spoke and how Aurangzeb spoke?
Then Urdu and Hindi together gave birth to Hindustani that is spoken mostly in Delhi and surrounding areas.
Farsi is Persian, what they speak in Iran. Urdu is what they speak in Pakistan. Farsi would be mostly unintelligible to us, Urdu we can get most of unless they use really hard words like Ghalib. Urdu is basically Hindustani with more Persian influence and Arabic script. Hindustani is what they speak in Bollywood. Real Hindi is spoken only in UP/Bihar and Chanakya serial.
Btw Farsi is a lot like our languages in terms of consonants and phrasing etc, Arabic is much more alien - I mentioned they dont have a p, they also have some weird th/dh sounds that are replaced by s/z in Urdu and maybe Farsi too (due to all this, Urdu has like 3 s's and 4 z's all pronounced the same).
Also about voiceless/voiced, the 5th letter on those lines is what nasal sound you'd make just before any consonant on that line (pronounce anga, anja, aNTa, anta, amba to yourself - the position of tongue changes for the n sound). The anusvar is basically a short form for these sounds. So you cant expand sanjay with a half n, like Tilak did with santa, you'd have to use that weird letter at the end of the ch, chh line.
PS: btw the "pronounced the same" applies to the 3 s and 4 z differently (it's two sounds for 7 letters, not one sound).
Oh another thing about the ph/f. Anybody from North India knows the difference. Frustrated N. Indians have scolded me on at least 3 occasions (wo fool nahi hai phool hai :-))
Saurabh,
That 5th letter of each line thing - why did you never tell me that before? :) I never knew why those existed or how to correctly pronounce them! sahi ahes pan tu. you have very good GK - I have to admit. good good.
he lack of aspirated (maha-prana) letters is what makes Tamil speakers say things like 'kaana kaaya', 'gar gaya' etc.
My Pakistani friend has corrected me numerous times on 'phir' and 'phool', I make it a point to speak it right ever since.He also tells me that what they speak in Pakistan on the street is virtually identical to what they speak in Delhi/UP on the street. Its Hindustani or Khari Boli. Urdu is for poetry and television broadcasts.
By some estimates 25% of Marathi is Urdu/Farsi based.
In my experience, Indians pronounce V the way amercans say W and vice-versa..
For ex- When we say "volleyball" it actually sounds like "Wall-e-ball" to Americans..
We kind of open our mouth wide to say 'V'which sounds more like 'W'.
I dont know if its just the case of British Vs American pronounciations.
Finally i learnt it right when i bought my Volkswagen Beetle and I had to tell everyone what car i bought :)...
Try saying - Volleyball, Wolf, Wide
The V and W by pp is right. Thats coz Indians do not pronounce the two letters differently - for V, touch the upper teeth to the outside of the bottom lip
We say neither v nor w correctly. Our "va" is an in-between sound. w has rounded lips. For v and "va" the tongue touches the teeth, but the opening is more constricted for v. "va" is thus *technically* closer to v than w, but to an English speaker's ears it could *sound* closer to w.
Btw what p says is wrong - the "vice versa" cant exist coz we have only one "va" sound.
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