safal banaam saphal (was Re: Pyaasa(1957) bhajan, aaj sajan mohe a.ng lagaalo - lyric corrections)


UVR wrote:
asad wrote:
raaz wrote:
aaj sajan mohe a.ng lagaalo
janam safal ho jaaye
* (aaj sajan mohe a.ng lagaalo
janam safal ho jaaye)\- 2 *

The sound of "f" is not there in Hindi. The correct word here would be
"saphal". I know this word along with "guphaa" is usually
mispronounced. There is even a popular brand of frozen peas and juices
which is known as Safal. However it is incorrect.

Asad

saphal and guphaa are not the half of it. Haven't you heard how
they pronounce "phir" these days? For example, Kailash Kher in
"TuuTaa TuuTaa ek parindaa ... allah ke bande" from Waisa Bhi
Hota Hai - Part II (2003)


While in most cases this using-nuqtaa-where-there-is-none is a vulgar
practice by some overzealous, ignorant "Ghazal fans", one has to
consider another point when it comes to such usage by aam janataa
(which, BTW, does not include artists/professionals like Kailash Kher
who are supposed to do it right).

In Hindi (or languages spoken in the Hindi region), there was
traditionally no difference between a nuqtaa and non-nuqtaa sound. None
of the native words or words of Indian origin had this differentiation.
They all had just one sound of pha, ja, ka, kha or, ga. This doesn't
mean that no people were able to pronounce or no one was pronouncing
the voiceless versions of these characters (like fa and za; i am not
too sure about qa, Kha, and Ga). Just that they never differentiated
between the sounds (e.g. between pha and fa). There were no native
words that required the differentiation.

There are regions in Hindi-speaking area that would only speak fa, not
pha, even when they actually mean 'pha'. They just don't have 'pha'
sound in their accent. Same thing is true about ja/za. The case of
using 'sha' for 'sa' by some regions is somewhat similar too. It was
basically a dialect/accent related phenomenon. The point is that there
still existed no differentiation between the two sounds.

Enter foreign words (especially from Arabic and Persian) and now there
was a need to differentiate. 'raaj' meant a different thing than
'raaz'; 'phool' and 'fool' were very different entities. This created
confusion for the tongues that were not used to this differentiation.
There were people who always spoke saphal as safal. But now there could
be no 'safal', because 'fa' was a different sound than 'pha'. I
personally think it was unfair to put that burden on speakers and
expect them to be correct all the time, but well. In any case, that's
where the confusion started that continues till now.

A Hindi speaker now learns that there are two sounds 'pha' and 'fa' but
his ears are still not very accustomed to the difference in the sound
and he keeps making mistakes. This phenomenon became more powerful as
fewer educated people read in Hindi/Urdu script, which could help them
identify the difference better. A part of blame for 'safal' should go
to the widespread practice of non-standard romanization of Hindi words.


Keeping all this in mind, I think such usage by uneducated janataa
(read 'people who do not read that much') have some reasoning at least.
Not that it makes them right (or wrong), but understanding their
difficulty can make it more tolerable. The above is entirely my theory
and I would like to learn if I am wrong somewhere.

Thankfully, the trend is changing and people reading Hindi (and
incidentally other Indian languages too) are increasing rapidly. Here's
a recent report about the National Readership Survey 2006.
http://www.thehindu.com/2006/08/30/stories/2006083010621300.htm
Now if only our print publications get better and not put nuqtaas where
they don't belong and do where they do.

On this matter, I have written my opinion here before. In Hindi, it is
still okay to not put nuqtaa where there is no possibility of an
ambiguity, but putting one where there is none is a no-no. At the same
time, while transcribing lyrics or quoting someone one should use
nuqtaas where required or actually meant.

A few weeks ago, I posted on my Hindi blog some of the most typical
mistakes people make while writing in Hindi. If anyone wants to take a
look (here comes the shamelss plug), the URL is:
http://hindi.blogspot.com/2006/07/blog-post_08.html

Vinay

-UVR.

.

Relevant Pages
Loading