Hindustani orthography
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Hindustani (Standard Hindi and Urdu) has been written in several different scripts. Most Hindi texts are written in the Devanagari script, which is derived from the Brāhmī script of Ancient India. Most Urdu texts are written in the Urdu alphabet, which comes from the Persian alphabet. Hindustani has been written in both scripts. In recent years the Latin script has been used in these languages for technological or internationalization reasons.
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[edit] Devanagari script
The Devanagari script is an abugida writing system, so the written form of consonants have an inherent default vowel afterward, namely a schwa. In certain contexts, such as at the end of words, these schwas are deleted in correct Hindi pronunciation, in a phenomenon called the schwa syncope.[1] Devanagari consonants which have other vowels afterward use diacritical marks around the consonant. The script is written from left to right, with a top-bar connecting the letters together.
| अ | आ | इ | ई | उ | ऊ | ए | ऐ | ओ | औ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ə | aː | ɪ | iː | ʊ | uː | eː | ɛː | oː | ɔː |
| क | ख | ख़ | ग | ग़ | घ | ङ | |||
| k | kʰ | x | ɡ | ɣ | ɡʱ | ŋ | |||
| च | छ | ज | ज़ | झ | ञ | ||||
| t͡ʃ | t͡ʃʰ | d͡ʒ | z | d͡ʒʱ | ɲ | ||||
| ट | ठ | ड | ड़ | ढ | ढ़ | ण | |||
| ʈ | ʈʰ | ɖ | ɽ | ɖʱ | ɽʱ | ɳ | |||
| त | थ | द | ध | न | |||||
| t̪ | t̪ʰ | d̪ | d̪ʱ | n | |||||
| प | फ | फ़ | ब | भ | म | ||||
| p | pʰ | f | b | bʱ | m | ||||
| य | र | ल | व | श | ष | स | ह | ||
| j | r | l | ʋ | ʃ | ʂ | s | h |
क्ष kṣ is pronounced /kʃ/ and ज्ञ jñ is /ɡj/.
[edit] Schwa deletion
The schwa (अ or 'ə', sometimes written 'a') implicit in each consonant of the Devanagri script is "obligatorily deleted" in Hindi at the end of words and in certain other contexts.[2] This phenomenon has been termed the "schwa syncope rule" or the "schwa deletion rule" of Hindi.[1][2] One formalization of this rule has been summarized as ə -> ø | VC_CV. In other words, when a vowel-preceded consonant is followed by a vowel-succeeded consonant, the schwa inherent in the first consonant is deleted.[1][3] However, this formalization is inexact and incomplete (i.e. sometimes deletes a schwa when it shouldn't or, at other times, fails to delete it when it should), and can yield errors. Schwa deletion is computationally important because it is essential to building text-to-speech software for Hindi.[3][4]
As a result of schwa syncope, the correct Hindi pronunciation of many words differs from that expected from a literal rendering of Devanagari. For instance, राम is Rām (incorrect: Rāma), रचना is Rachnā (incorrect: Rachanā), वेद is Véd (incorrect: Véda) and नमकीन is Namkeen (incorrect Namakeen).[3][4]
[edit] Persian alphabet
The Persian alphabet is an extension of the Arabic alphabet. It is written from right to left, and most letters connect to each other. This leads to different forms of a letter depending on its position in a word, although the different forms generally resemble each other. Most vowels are omitted in normal texts, although they may be written for disambiguation or pedagogical purposes. Urdu is primarily written in a calligraphic style of the script called Nasta'liq.
| Letter | Name of letter | Transcription | IPA |
|---|---|---|---|
| ا | alif | - | - |
| ب | be | b | /b/ |
| پ | pe | p | /p/ |
| ت | te | t | /t̪/ |
| ٹ | ṭe | ṭ | /ʈ/ |
| ث | se | s | /s/ |
| ج | jīm | j | /d͡ʒ/ |
| چ | che | ch | /t͡ʃ/ |
| ح | baṛī he | h | /h/ |
| خ | khe | kh | /x/ |
| د | dāl | d | /d̪/ |
| ڈ | ḍāl | ḍ | /ɖ/ |
| ذ | zāl | dh | /z/ |
| ر | re | r | /r/ |
| ڑ | ṛe | ṛ | /ɽ/ |
| ز | ze | z | /z/ |
| ژ | zhe | zh | /ʒ/ |
| س | sīn | s | /s/ |
| ش | shīn | sh | /ʃ/ |
| ص | su'ād | ṣ | /s/ |
| ض | zu'ād | z̤ | /z/ |
| ط | to'e | t | /t/ |
| ظ | zo'e | ẓ | /z/ |
| ع | ‘ain | ' | - |
| غ | ghain | gh | /ɣ/ |
| ف | fe | f | /f/ |
| ق | qāf | q | /q/ |
| ک | kāf | k | /k/ |
| گ | gāf | g | /ɡ/ |
| ل | lām | l | /l/ |
| م | mīm | m | /m/ |
| ن | nūn | n | /n/ |
| و | vā'o | v, o, or ū | /ʋ/, /oː/, /ɔ/ or /uː/ |
| ہ, ﮩ, ﮨ | choṭī he | h | /h/ |
| ھ | do chashmī he | h | /ʰ/ |
| ء | hamza | ' | /ʔ/ |
| ی | ye | y, i | /j/ or /iː/ |
| ے | bari ye | ai or e | /ɛː/, or /eː/ |
[edit] Romanized Hindustani
The Latin alphabet has been used to write Hindustani for technological or internationalization reasons. Roman Urdu uses the Basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used by young native speakers for technological applications, such as chat, emails and SMS.
ITRANS, ISCII, IAST, and Harvard-Kyoto romanization schemes have been employed primarily for usage by non-native speakers who are more familiar with the Latin alphabet.
[edit] See also
- Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu)
- Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) word etymology
- Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu) phonology
- Hindustani grammar
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Tej K. Bhatia (1987), A history of the Hindi grammatical tradition: Hindi-Hindustani grammar, grammarians, history and problems, BRILL, ISBN 9004079246, http://books.google.com/books?id=jJOXzRXsSK0C, "... Hindi literature fails as a reliable indicator of the actual pronunciation because it is written in the Devanagari script ... the schwa syncope rule which operates in Hindi ..."
- ^ a b Larry M. Hyman, Victoria Fromkin, Charles N. Li (1988 (Volume 1988, Part 2)), Language, speech, and mind, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0415003113, http://books.google.com/books?id=R6IOAAAAQAAJ, "... The implicit /a/ is not read when the symbol appears in word-final position or in certain other contexts where it is obligatorily deleted (via the so-called schwa-deletion rule which plays a crucial role in Hindi word phonology ..."
- ^ a b c Monojit Choudhury, Anupam Basu and Sudeshna Sarkar (July 2004), "A Diachronic Approach for Schwa Deletion in Indo Aryan Languages", Proceedings of the Workshop of the ACL Special Interest Group on Computational Phonology (SIGPHON) (Association for Computations Linguistics), http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W/W04/W04-0103.pdf, "... schwa deletion is an important issue for grapheme-to-phoneme conversion of IAL, which in turn is required for a good Text-to-Speech synthesizer ..."
- ^ a b Naim R. Tyson, Ila Nagar (2009 (12:15–25)), "Prosodic rules for schwa-deletion in hindi text-to-speech synthesis", International Journal of Speech Technology, http://www.springerlink.com/content/131xm66677g74418/fulltext.pdf, "... Without the appropriate deletion of schwas, any speech output would sound unnatural. Since the orthographical representation of Devanagari gives little indication of deletion sites, modern TTS systems for Hindi implemented schwa deletion rules based on the segmental context where schwa appears ..."
