Talk:Hindustani phonology

Untitled

It's looking good, Tuncrypt. I'm starting to switch from a bullet presentation to prose. kwami (talk) 01:28, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for the edits. The first part of my plan was to wipe out the script- and other non-related material. Now I'm adding in referenced bits from the sources I fortunately have available to me (Shapiro and Masica, plus Ohala on the net). Ohala's about used up and Shapiro is also nearing the end, though the Urdu article from the book Shapiro is in is quite massive, so there's more to come. It'll take a while, but yeah. Tuncrypt (talk) 04:07, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Minimal pairs of retroflex flaps/plosives

The article says, citing Shapiro:

However, the adoption of English loans with alveolar stops, which are identified with Hindi/Urdu retroflex rather than dental stops (as with bat above), has led to the emergence of minimal pairs, thus conferring marginal phonemic status to the flaps.

Yet Masica, in describing the same phenomenon, specifically says that it does not create any minimal pairs. Does Shapiro provide any examples? Grover cleveland (talk) 15:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. It gives one: "heD 'head' (of a department, organization, etc.) ~ heR 'flock' (regional)...". Can you give me the page number for Masica? Tuncrypt (talk) 16:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I misread Masica. He may only be claiming that the specific loanwords reDiyo and roD don't create minimal pairs, not that no such loanwords create minimal pairs -- it's a little unclear. Here is the full quotation (pp. 91-92):

The common English loanwords reDiyo and roD, however, ..., introduce the phone D contrastively (albeit not producing minimal pairs) into the intervocalic and final postvocalic environments previously occupied exclusively by R, thus rendering the earlier allophonic distinction "phonemic", according to one criterion for deciding such matters. Grover cleveland (talk) 04:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It might be a good idea to add the example (heD/heR) to the article. Grover cleveland (talk) 04:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Status of /ʔ/

In this page /ʔ/ is not listed, but it would most certainly seem to exist in Urdu. I do remember reading that Hindi speakers, and even Urdu speakers in casual speech, drop /ʔ/ altogether, but I think it would still be good to discuss it. 67.165.249.115 (talk) 18:50, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, I just noticed that /ʒ/ is not mentioned either, but it still seems present in Urdu though Hindi speakers may replace it with /dʒ/. I personally don't feel qualified enough to actually write these things into the article, but I'm hoping that I can just bring this to the attentions of those who are qualified enough. 67.165.249.115 (talk) 20:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a reference for these claims? Cheers. Grover cleveland (talk) 06:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

About ʒ I don't know but ʔ will be addressed. It is used in hypercorrect Urdu. Tuncrypt (talk) 15:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Urdu does have ژ listed as part of its alphabet. I believe I’ve seen it ‘transcribed’ in Hindi as झ़ once, but I can’t remember where, and most sources that mention ژ say it has no exact Devanagari correspondent anyway. Naim says it occurs in a few learned words borrowed from Persian and in the transliteration of certain European names, and gives its pronunciation as /ʒ/. The Urdu online dictionary at http://www.crulp.org/oud/ lists a handful of words with ژ, though I myself can’t tell how common they are at all: ژالَہ ‘dew, hail’; ژولِیدَہ ‘entangled’; مژہ ‘eyelash’; and so on. Psi-Lord (talk) 21:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The /zh/ sound definitely is a phoneme in Urdu though many approximate it with similar sounds. It should be included here. /?/ is not a real phoneme. (Sorry for my not being able to type IPA) Muhammad Areez (talk) 16:51, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

/ʂ/ and /ɳ/

It's my understanding that /ʂ/ and /ɳ/ are both found only in hypercorrect pronunciation of Sanskrit loanwords, and as allophones of /ʃ/ and /n/ when immediately preceding or following retroflex plosives. Currently /ɳ/ appears in the table of consonants as a marginal phoneme, while /ʂ/ is absent. Would there be any objection to adding /ʂ/ as another marginal phoneme? Cheers. Grover cleveland 07:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

ɳ is not an allophone of n like ʂ is of ʃ. Tuncrypt 18:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

And /ɳ/ and [ʂ] are not "hypercorrect" per se like ʔ in Urdu... they're just correct, in a standard sort of way. Tuncrypt 18:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Table

Aeusoes. I guess there's no problem with condensing together Approximant and Lateral Approximant. But I don't understand your condensing of Dental and Alveolar, and your movement of Nasal to the top. Please discuss. Tuncrypt 18:24, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Certainly. The official IPA charts I've seen put nasal as the first row and if I recall correctly, instructional guides say to put it as the top one. I condensed dental and alveolar because there is no contrast between any consonant on just the dental/alveolar feature. Also, since the dental consonants were already marked with a dental diacritic, it is clear which ones are dental and which are alveolar (if there are other dental consonants, a diacritic can go below this ones as well). I also changed stop to plosive but I assume since you aren't asking why that that's not a controversial change. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

/ɳ/ and /ɽ̃/

I've always wondered about ɳ. Could someone give a word where it exists (aside from nasal assimilation cases, such as ʈəɳɖ 'cold'). In all the words which have the letter ण (e.g. कारण), it seems to me that those are really cases of ɽ̃ (sort of the opposite of what is attributed to Shapiro on the actual page--in that (IMHO) the ɽ̃ is the underlying phoneme (for borrowings anyway), but the ɳ is the allomorph. But even then, not of ɽ̃ , but rather just some unspecified N at the same point of articulation as the following consonant ɖ, ʈ, etc.)

I realize that ण is considered a nasal being in the 5th line of the वर्णमाला, but really, it's always a nasalized retroflex flap instead of the plain vanilla nasal (except where it is assimilation), no? Bob Eaton —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.251.33.214 (talk) 13:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Though I guess the way things are are the ways things are for etymological (e.g. "five corresponding nasal stops") and cross-linguistic comparison purposes. Tuncrypt (talk) 17:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hindu/Hindi

I'm not a expert in this area, but anyway, should Hindu be corrected to Hindi in the first paragraph? In the phrase "Hindu and Urdu." 71.174.112.73 (talk) 02:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Voiced postalveolar fricative?

According to Persian phonology, Persian has the voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ]. This sound is not included in the list of phonemes introduced to Hindi-Urdu in Persian loan words, though. Any particular reason why not? Was it replaced by something else? —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

list some words with it Tuncrypt (talk) 23:36, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know any; I don't know Persian. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 23:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

well it's mostly like to have been transposed to dʒ Tuncrypt (talk) 00:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

links to orthography

I find this rather confusing. Do we not need some mention of how these sounds tie in to specific letters?? It is difficult to work it out, especially when the sounds given at Hindustani orthography are different from those on this page. Do [e] and [ɛ] represent different letters or are they allophones or what? Widsith (talk) 09:31, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

substandard/nonstandard

Per the edit war with Tuncrypt, who points to Masica (1991) in arguing that we should say some speakers of Hindi are producing substandard speech as opposed to nonstandard, here is the actual quote in question:

Admittedly such parameters, while representing a real and growing sociolinguistic reality, are at the same time both arbitrary and somewhat vague. Speakers who fail to consistently maintain /f, z, ʃ/ (confusing them with /ph, j, s/ are by this definition substandard, although these are "foreign" sounds...

What Masica is saying is that if you consider this feature to be intrinsic to standard speech, then you are the kind of person to see differences from the standard as distance from quality. However, he is not endorsing this view and in the overall context he's saying that the measure of conserving some sounds and not others is arbitrary. Given the context, it seems pretty clear that the word "substandard" is ironic and because we're taking information from him out of context that keeping "substandard" violates WP:NPOV. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:23, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, true. I concede. Go ahead with your edit. Tuncrypt (talk) 22:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

grapheme

Most phonology articles of other languages also list the basic correspondence between grapheme/alphabet and the phoneme, despite the fact that there is usually a separate article about the script. Here we should also have one for Hindi-Urdu in devanagari and Perso-Arabic. I am planning to add vowel and consonant table in a few days. Please consider.Cygnus_hansa (talk) 21:55, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Stress

What does "the stress falls automatically on the penultimate heaviest syllable" mean? If the word is medium-light-heavy, I assume that it will not have penultimate stress, but have no idea if it would be antepen. or ult. kwami (talk) 07:24, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I found some info, a summary of Hussein, but it wasn't very well worded. The original would be better. Other stuff I've found doesn't appear to agree, but all are problematic. kwami (talk) 09:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Sound files for unique contrasts

This article would benefit from sound files of minimal pairs. Some phonological contrasts, like dental and retroflex consonants, and voiceless, voiced, breathy-voiced, and aspirated stops, aren't found in English, and it would help English-speaking readers if they could hear examples of them. — Eru•tuon 19:55, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@AmritasyaPutra and ISoham: I'm looking for good Hindi examples to add to this page. I'm going to list them here, but I'm not ready to have them recorded yet. Let me know if I've written the Devanagari wrong; also, if anyone can type the Urdu for me, that would be wonderful. — Eru•tuon 19:27, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

• मील / میل mīl [miːl] "mile"

मिल / مل mil [mɪl] "meet"

मेल / میل mel [meːl] "harmony"

मैल / میل mail [mɛːl] "dirt"

माल / مال māl [maːl] "goods"

मल / مل mal [məl] "rub"

• बैटरी baiṭri [bæːʈɾiː]

बैंक baiṃka [bæ̃ːka]

• कूल / کول kūl [kuːl] "shore"

कुल / کل kul [kʊl] "lineage"

बोल / بول bol [boːl] "speak"

कौल / کول kaul [kɔːl] "Kol" (?)

• है / ہے hai [ɦɛː] "is"

हैं / ہیں haiṃ [ɦɛ̃ː] "are"

कहा / کہا kahā [kəɦaː] "said"

कहाँ / کہاں kahāṃ [kəɦãː] "where?"

वही / وہی vahī [vəɦiː] "that very one"

वहीं / وہیں vahīṃ [vəɦĩː] "right there"

हो / ہو ho [hoː] "(you) are"

हों / ہوں hoṃ [hõː] "(they) might be"

• बड़ा / بڑا baṛā [bəɽaː] "big"

बढ़ा / بڑھا baṛhā [bəɽʱaː] "increased"

BTW, shouldn’t the vowels in mail, kaul, hai, and haiṉ be long vowels ([ɛː] and [ɔː])? —ШαмıQ✍ @ 21:54, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it appears so. I've changed them accordingly. — Eru·tuon 22:01, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

BTW, for back vowels, these examples may be more appropriate: luṭ / lūṭ / loṭ / lauṭ. —ШαмıQ✍ @ 15:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• लुट / لٹ luṭ [lʊʈ] "be looted"

लूट / لوٹ lūṭ [luːʈ] "loot"

लोट / لوٹ loṭ [loːʈ] "roll/wallow"

लौट / لوٹ lauṭ [lɔːʈ] "return"

Thanks, that's much better since it has the same consonants in all of them. If you can think of an example of the vowel /æ/ in a loanword from English that's similar to the front vowel examples /miːl/, etc., that would be great. — Eru·tuon 19:03, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

बैंक, बैटरी — isoham (talk) 17:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Added these. Not totally sure about the transliteration and IPA transcription. Can you verify them, Wamiq? — Eru·tuon 18:02, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I know how to read Devanagari, but I am not an expert in Indic transliteration... I do not know how to transliterate "bank". I can transliterate Urdu using ALA-LC per WP:MOSUR. It should be like this:

• बैटरी / بیٹری baiṭrī [bæːʈɾiː] (battery) -- [r] is trilled (should it be changed?), i is long.

बैंक / بینک baink [bæ̃ːŋk] (bank) -- there is an [ŋ] sound.

These are the best examples I could think of. But, in one example here, bel does not have the same consonant in the end.

• बीन / بین bīn [biːn] "lute"

बिन / بن bin [bɪn] "without"

बेल / بیل bel [beːl] "creeper"

बैन / بین bain [bɛːn] "between"

बैन / بین bain [bæːn] "ban"

बान / بان bān [baːn] "habit"

बन / بن ban [bən] "bun"

Since this isn't any better than the original, I would just suggest adding the word "map" or "mat" to the mīl examples. The long /æː/ sound in map/mat is different from the long /ɛː/ sound in mail (dirt). —ШαмıQ✍ @ 18:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Devanagari is all correct. I've never heard of कूल and feel कौल should be replaced by something that's not a proper noun — isoham (talk) 11:43, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

@ISoham: Somehow I didn't notice your comment. I can't verify the words myself, of course, but I found कूल in an online dictionary. It would be ideal to replace कौल with a common noun, but in order to have a series of words that have the same consonants, we may have to use it.

Oh, never mind. We don't have to use the proper name, because Wamiq found another set of examples. — Eru·tuon 18:44, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

ph

In the box where all the stops are listed it gives IPA [fal] for phāl. That can't be correct, surely? Nothingbutmeat (talk) 13:09, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, [fal] is incorrect. —ШαмıQ✍ @ 14:38, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, the word is supposed to have [pʰ], but the audio recording currently has [f]. — Eru·tuon 19:04, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Hindustani phonology. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071025082631/http://www.speech.sri.com/people/rao/papers/icslp96_wbhyp.pdf to http://www.speech.sri.com/people/rao/papers/icslp96_wbhyp.pdf
• Added {{dead link}} tag to http://www.rosettaproject.org/archive/hin/phon-3?page_view=image_view

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 05:28, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

[w] or [β]?

I suspect that the bilabial pronunciation of the phoneme /v/ is actually the bilabial approximant (approximant, not fricative!) -- rather than the labialized velar approximant. The two sounds are barely distinguishable in practice, but the thing is: Why should the sound undergo velarization in one position and not in another? It's unlikely. German is another language where [v]~[ʋ]~[β] are allophonous and the pronunciation there is definitely [β] (used post-consonantally by some speakers). Something very similar can be said about Dutch, too.