How many English Words end with the letter J? I read somewhere that there are not very many English words that end with the letter j. I cannot think of any at all. Can anyone else?

I can't think of a one, either. even OneLook didn't help much. tanj.

Haj seems to be in the process of being adopted, so maybe we will have one one soon.

Raj, hajj

Sorry about the missing "j" from "hajj". Transliteration is always tricky. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to the "y" from "raj", appropriately enough a four-letter word in devanagari. http://snipurl.com/8wbc-mq4201

Back in a long lost day, Lastday, it was considered cool to sport around in a bright red HenryJ.

Today I wrote a poem
And I put it in my book
It's about a certain letter
That's shaped sort of like a hook
It's a very special letter
And I like it quite a lot
The big one has a line on top
The small one has a dot
It comes at the beginning of a word like jellybeans
Or John, or Jane, or Jenny
Or a brand-new pair of jeans
You'll find it in the alphabet
Between the I and K
And if you haven't guessed by now
Well, it's the letter J

~Sesame Street

Wrong word. sjmaxq. English raj is from Hindi rAj m. 'rule, administration, government, kingdom, dominion, regime'. rAjya m. 'kingdom, territory, government, body politic, principality, land, monarch, domain' is obviously related. Not sure what the -ya is; some kind of suffix. I don't think you count letters in Devanagri, but syllables. It is a syllabary, not an alphabet. It's a good trivia question. I count two for both: rA + jØ and rA + jya. (I could be wrong.)

This was one of those "should I retract the post?" moments. As soon as I posted it, I realised my mistake. As for the syllabary, that's just me being lazy. Apart from being a natural gift of mine, enahnced by years of studious cultivation, my laziness in this has been exacerbated by the excellent Baraha software, which I use to write devanagari. Because I'm typing letters, I tend to think of the output as letters, even though I know they are really (a garland of) syllables. I was also attached to the "four-letter word" idea for Raj, since the Indians I know who lived under the Raj tend to think of it in those terms.

Because I'm typing letters, I tend to think of the output as letters, even though I know they are really (a garland of) syllables.

Interesting, I use pinyin to enter Chinese characters, but they always seem like characters to me. Actually, they seem like kanji to me which is the Japanese term (borrowed from Chinese qian-zí) because I studied Japanese first. The image of rAjya was really quite beautiful.

I was also attached to the "four-letter word" idea for Raj, since the Indians I know who lived under the Raj tend to think of it in those terms.

Ah, I can be dense sometimes. I was totally oblivious to your other meaning. BTW, how's your Hindi learning coming?

My Hindi is progressing at an undefined pace. I say that because the native speaker I spend most time with is from Fiji, and so my Hindi is likely to be "corrupted", at least in the view of speakers from India (including another friend from the Panjab, who is dismissive of the Fijian patois). Also, much like my Italian, I don't get enough practice speaking, so in both cases, my written comprehension is way ahead of my ability to make myself understood.

Devanagari is beautiful, but my handwriting isn't, as I was reminded the other while watching a 7-year old Nepali friend writing the syllabary. It confirmed that being left-handed is not the reason my attempts at writing devanagari are unreadable.

My Hindi is progressing at an undefined pace.

I love this sentence. Can I use it sometime? It can be attached to any subject. "How's your report coming on?" "Oh, my report is progrssing at an undefined pace."

It'll baffle people just enough that they won't push for more info...as in, "undefined?? what did she mean by undefined. Is there a meaning I don't know about. I won't ask just in case in makes me sound ignorant."

Yup. I think I shall adopt it if you don't mind.

It confirmed that being left-handed is not the reason my attempts at writing devanagari are unreadable.

Isn't it annoying when your excuse for something gets tossed aside so easily. And by a little kid, too. It's like the last time I went skiing and immediately fell...some little kid zipped up, swooshed to a perfect stop and said "Do you need help, ma'am?"

Just to shove my oar in.

I believe that Raj is simply a corruption of Rajya. A lot of Hindi words were simplified when taken on in Anglo-Indian usage.

And Raj would be pronounced as a single syllable. The point is that, unlike Sanskrit, in Hindi in general use (at least the 22 years of use I had of it) the final consonant is not given the full value (with schwa) that it might usually be given in Sanskrit. Hence the Shiv/Shiva confusion, and simplification into either single syllable Shiv or made into Shiva with an 'ah' sound at the end.

Of course, dialect matters too - in BrijBhasha (a lot of Bhakti hymns to Krishna are written in that dialect) Krishna is pronounced Kish'n (or sometimes Krish'n), hence the popularity of the name Kishen throughout Northern India.

Hope this either helps, or adds to the melee! :)

cheer

the sunshine warrior

I believe that Raj is simply a corruption of Rajya. A lot of Hindi words were simplified when taken on in Anglo-Indian usage.

Then do you believe that Hindi rAj was borrowed back into Hindi from Indian English? I assumed that Hindi rAj < Skt rAjan 'king', and I guess that H rAjya < Skt rAjya 'royal, princely; kingdom'.

And Raj would be pronounced as a single syllable. The point is that, unlike Sanskrit, in Hindi in general use (at least the 22 years of use I had of it) the final consonant is not given the full value (with schwa) that it might usually be given in Sanskrit. Hence the Shiv/Shiva confusion, and simplification into either single syllable Shiv or made into Shiva with an 'ah' sound at the end.

This is what I noticed. In Sanskrit, you'd need to use a virama to suppress explicitly the default -a (schwa) vowel. But rAjya is pronounced with the final -a, isn't it?

Jheem

My belief is that the creation of Hindustani/Urdu included a combination of the Hindu, Muslim and British influence over the last three-and-a-half centuries, and 'Raj' is a word that was jointly 'invented' over this period. It will be used in all forms of the languages they use. (Of course, I could be entirely wrong, but we'd need an etymological dictionary along the lines of the OED to discover first written use of Raj, on its own, in the literature.)

As for your second query, Rajya is pronounced with, strangely enough, the schwa-like -uh, not the full -ah sound that so many other words seem to take on in Hindi. Don't know why, but it's definitely, for instance, the Rajy-uh Sabha (upper house of parliament) not Rajy-ah Sabha.

That's my take, anyway.

cheer

the sunshine warrior