Re: Sound of 'j' and 'z' in Hindi films and songs

I have over the last ten days or so been following this thread and it
has been quite interesting to read the various comments. I am not an
expert on linguistics but I do have some views which I thought I might
share on this forum. It’s turned out to be pretty long, so apologies
for that upfront...but just sharing my views. Not all directly
relevant to a music group...but the discussion has already widened.

I think a lot of issues have arisen in the debate over the “correct”
pronunciation of words (and since these are phonetic languages, the
impact is often on spelling as well) taken from one language (say
Urdu) into another language (say Hindi) . The fundamental question, I
think is that when a word moves from one language to another, why must
the pronunciation remain the same as the original language? Why should
it not change to reflect the structure of the borrowing language
rather than the borrowed language? I think by and large, anecdotal
evidence would suggest that the change in pronunciation and spelling
does happen. In fact, I think Hindi has given a unique place to Urdu
by accepting that words borrowed from Urdu should be identified by the
use of the “nukta” (and I use the words “Hindi” and “Urdu” as
abstracts here with no pointer towards users of the language)
indicating that the sound is different. This is not true in many
languages for words borrowed from other languages.

Consider for example, Hindi and Bengali, both of which owe a lot to
Sanskrit. Hindi words with “v” have a corresponding “b” sound in
Bengali because Bengali does not have the “v” sound . I don’t know
which the older language is...but if both have derived from Sanskrit,
then in many cases the Sanskrit version would be “v”. But the use of
“b” in Bengali cannot be surely imputed to anything but the structure
of the language.

Consider words borrowed into Hindi from English- take a word like
“phone” (I realize some people might insist that it is not a hindi
word...that being “door dhvani” , but for practical purposes, I think
it is today a hindi word). While, one might put a nukta on the first
letter to indicate the “f” sound, there is no way, to my knowledge to
put anything on the matra to show that the “o” sound is different in
English from Hindi. Similarly consider a word like “train” (again for
practical purposes, i think one could say that this is a Hindi word
today). The vowel sound in “train” is different in English from Hindi.
There is no indication of this either. In fact, so all pervading is
the influence of the Indian forms of these vowels, that most Indians,
even while speaking English would use the “wrong” vowels in words like
“phone” and “train”. Wrong in English, that is...it would be perfectly
fine in an Indian language.

This is also true when we consider words borrowed into English from
other languages...specifically Hindi and Urdu. Consider the word
“kismat”. The English pronunciation of this word is “kiz-met” though
it is spelt as kismet. The word comes into English from Persian and I
am guessing that it is the same origin for the Urdu (and Hindi???)
word which is pronounced very different from English. Consider
“jungle” which is derived from the Hindi but pronounced differently in
the 2 languages (the first vowel in the word in English is like the
second vowel of “above” while in hindi the first vowel of the word is
more like the first vowel of “above”)

There are also many cases of words in European languages deriving from
English, where the spelling remains the same (since they use the same
alphabet) but the pronunciation changes.

While all this is of course, anecdotal evidence, to me it is strong
enough to show that when a language borrows from another, it changes
the word (either orthographically or phonetically or both) to fit the
structure of its language. The case of Hindi and Urdu is possibly
unique...and that too, apparently only in one direction.

Why would something like this have happened? And what, in this
context, is “correct”?

I am guessing (and I hope there are people here who know more and
throw some further light on this) that earlier people spoke the
“Hindustani” dialect which grew out of Hindi and Urdu. People knew
that “zindagi” and “jeevan” both meant life...and while everyone may
not have been aware of the roots of the words, they knew (perhaps
because both languages were also in vogue as independent ones) that
the first was pronounced with a “z” and the second with a
“j” (phonetically “dz”). Over time, there were more and more words
from Urdu, which became used in day to day speech and there had to be
a way to write it in Devnagri. 2 choices now arose – either figure out
a way to write the “z” sound in devnagri, or else start pronouncing
the “z” sound as a “j” (the closest phonetically). Since the upper
classes (who really would had the means to influence the choice) would
have considered “jindagi” incorrect or even “uneducated” or “rustic”
and were used to saying “zindagi”, the language would have evolved a
form to have the Urdu sounds in writing in Devnagri (but never a form
for the English sounds, which had close phonetic equivalents in Hindi
– indeed i would say much closer)

And so, it is “zindagi” and not “jindagi”....”ziyaada” and not
“jyaada”

Does that mean “jindagi” is incorrect. That one is more difficult. To
me, it is wrong, because I grew up being taught that “z” is different
from “j” in Hindi by means of the nukta. But a language is by no means
static. Finally, correctness or incorrectness is a factor of usage. If
enough people start saying “jindagi” then it is, at least an
acceptable variant and if more than enough start saying it, then
“zindagi” is incorrect. I have no way to check what is happening but
if one were to accept newspapers as a barometer, maybe it is
happening. Consider for example Afzal saab saying that in the 20’s and
30’s street urchins in Delhi would say “ziyaada” (i don’t say
correctly or otherwise) but in some years time when UVR saab was in
Delhi, it had changed. Clearly language does change. And perhaps for
many of us who grew up in earlier times and (for some of us) who do
not live in India anymore, that change is not so visible.

Is that change good or bad? Prescriptiveness for a language is always
difficult. Can we say that if enough people say “jindagi”, then that’s
the word? It’s difficult to set the limits. For example, more and more
I see people in India, whose first language is, for practical
purposes, English, say “ph” incorrectly as “f”. I had a colleague from
Delhi who would say “fool” instead of “phool” and refused to accept
that it was “phool” (“how do you know? You are, in any case from Tamil
Nadu”) -clearly an influence from English. If enough Indians start
saying “f”, would the sound change? I should hope not.

But in the case we have been discussing, where the borrowing has
happened under counter-intuitive means (at least that is what I have
argued above), there could be merit in saying that in Hindi, one
should say “jindagi” and not “zindagi”. Many of us who have grown up
having being taught “zindagi” (including me) would consider it
incorrect and never use it...but over a period of time, if that starts
being used by enough people, i see no reason to view it as wrong.

May i add that this is only with reference to the Hindi word “zindagi”
being said (and written) as “jindagi” and not the Urdu word “zindagi”.
The Urdu word would always remain “zindagi”. And that would not change
irrespective of how it is written in Devnagri. So you would have 2
words –zindagi in Urdu and jindagi in Hindi- similar to having say,
jungle and 'jangal' or bungalow and 'bangla' in English and Hindi.
That, to my mind, may be an eventual end point.

regards
Sancho
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sound of j and z in Hindi films and songs
    ... issue of Hindi vs Urdu, etc, etc. ... language song or a hindi language song. ... Borrowing and assimilating from other areas is how ...
    (rec.music.indian.misc)
  • Re: Sound of j and z in Hindi films and songs
    ... some subtleties of English language. ... languages and dialects, except Urdu, Dogri, and English. ... these films titled them as above in film credit rolls. ...
    (rec.music.indian.misc)
  • Re: hindi/urdu pronunciation
    ... Hindi media? ... It would have been okay to say that in Urdu it is ... The spelling "dhokhaa" is universally ... commonly accepted spelling for the language under consideration. ...
    (rec.music.indian.misc)
  • Navigating Indias language wars
    ... ever done before him and addressed the judge in Hindi. ... state language of Marathi. ... but only in a country as astonishingly diverse as India has it ... always communicated in a mixture of Hindi and English. ...
    (talk.politics.misc)
  • Navigating Indias language wars
    ... ever done before him and addressed the judge in Hindi. ... state language of Marathi. ... but only in a country as astonishingly diverse as India has it ... always communicated in a mixture of Hindi and English. ...
    (sci.military.naval)