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#25594 04/03/01 02:45 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Where is Alexander Graham Bell when you need him?
wow


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<font color=blue>
Set1:

Anchor, (loch), anger, "Unghh"

Set2:

Crunch, (achhoo), injury, ( )

Set3:

Anther, ( ), (the), ( )

Set4:

Inter, ( ), under, ( )

Set5:

Umpire, amphora, umbrage, ( )
</font>

Shanks has given a good introduction to sounds in Sanskrit and related Indian languages. Let me add some comments.

Set 1 nasal sound is something like, even stronger than, what Greek eta (`n' with the long tail :-)) sounds like in IPA.

Set 3 and Set 4 have been wrogly labelled. First comes `t' and then, `th' as in `thin'

The second sound in Set 5 is not `f'. I cannot find a way to express that, but the closest I can get is to say: Do the same thing one does to `k' in `loch' to `p'.

Manoj

Bangalore India
12°58' N, 77°39' E

http://www.geocities.com/kummini/index.html


Bangalore India
12°58' N, 77°39' E

http://www.geocities.com/kummini/index.html
#25596 04/03/01 03:27 PM
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kummini, do any of your names have a meaning that you'd care to share? Mine means "The Supplanter".


`Manoj' has something to do with `being as fast as mind' .

Manoj.

Bangalore India
12°58' N, 77°39' E

http://www.geocities.com/kummini/index.html


Bangalore India
12°58' N, 77°39' E

http://www.geocities.com/kummini/index.html
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How about Rabindranath Tagore, how is Tagore pronounced?

chronist

#25598 04/04/01 07:52 AM
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Manoj

Thanks for those observations. I thought I'd interchanged the order of sets 3 and 4. Ah well... it's been some twenty years since I last wrote Hindi in anger .

As for the 'f' sound, you are absolutely right - there is no Hindi equivalent of English/Roman 'f', and sometimes it is best to represent the sound by 'ph'.

For those interested, it consists of a purely labial sound - no tongue or teeth involved, but instead of the plosive 'p', it's 'hissed' through the lips to sound (at least to Western ears) a lot like 'f'. It is unvoiced.

For completion's sake, there is no exact analogue of either v or w in Hindi, the sound that stands in for both of them being the voiced equivalent of the 'ph' described above.

Another way of looking at it is to try pronouncing your f and v with your lower lip against your upper lip instead of against your upper teeth. Requires a great deal more lip control, and will always sound different, but will sound (with practice) a great deal more authentic to Indian ears.

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#25599 04/04/01 08:05 AM
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How about Rabindranath Tagore, how is Tagore pronounced?

This one may stir up some controversy. To begin with, it is worth reiterating the fact that India is akin to a continent like Europe - many different, but often inter-related, cultures and languages existing side by side (and in crowded cities, on top of each other ).

So a 'standard' for pronunciation in one language is not necessarily the same as the standard in another. Gandhi was a relatively safe word because it is pronounced virtually the same in both Hindi (the 'big' language) and Gujarati (Gandhi's native language).

Things are different with my name (for instance), since my 'mother tongue' is Malayalam. In English, I prnounce it ra-vee. In Hindi it would be closer to r'[v]ee (with the ' indicating a schwa as described for Gujarati earlier, and [v] representing the v/w sound Manoj and I have discussed below). In Malayalam, however, it would sound more like Ray-wee.

The problem, then, with Tagore, is that whilst he is a legendary national figure in India, and hence has a conventionally developed pronunciation (t'gore), this is not necessarily that used in his native Bengali. I was very close to a Bengali family in Bombay for many years, and I was told (and I hope authoritatively) that in Bengal, because Tagore was a logomorph (IMIU) of the Hindi Thakur (landlord), the name would actually be pronounced that way: tthaakur. The 'tth' is an attempt to represent the plosive 't' sound described in the post on nasal sounds, whilst the 'aa' is simply the long a of part (RP).

Always remember, also, that in most Indian languages, the 'r's are prodigiously rolled like they are in Spanish. Come on everybody, give me an rrrr

Hope this helps.

cheer

the sunshine warrior


#25600 04/04/01 11:35 AM
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shanks encouraged: Come on everybody, give me an rrrr

Sorry, shanks. You seem to have taken a wrong turn at yahoo... you want to take a *right* at yahoo, climb over ebay, and you'll find the Pirate Chat just past the Hello Kitty home page, on the left.


#25601 04/04/01 11:44 AM
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...but do I have to fly until morning? (You know how these long haul trips are heck on diapers...)

cheer

the sunshine ("Smee can you hear the tick tock?") warrior


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hmm...never really thought about that, so I tried it out. My tongue lightly touches my teeth for "anthrax," and somewhere on or just behind or, probably, on the "dental ridge(?)" for "answer." The difference in sound is very slight

Since I know zilch about linguistics I'm admittedly way out of my depth here, but it seems to me that the placement of the tongue is "attached" to the sound that follows (th or s), not to the n sound. Or is it not possible to isolate the n sound from the surrounding letters?


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it seems to me that the placement of the tongue is "attached" to the sound that follows (th or s), not to the n sound. Or is it not possible to isolate the n sound from the surrounding letters?

Bingo! Nancy you've hit the nail on the head. It is, indeed, impossible to isolate the nasal sound from the surrounding letters, hence from the particular position of the tongue. Whilst the practice is not common inEnglish, in languages like Hindi, people learn to pronounce, and distinguish between, all these 'n' sounds. Nobody from India would mistake the anther n (even when pronounced separately), from the under n. And so on.

cheer

the sunshine warrior


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