Team-BHP - Technical aspects behind the various Indian accents and pronounciations

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Originally Posted by tacho (Post 1869236)

By the way, I checked with a native speaker of English, an Indian-American friend whose wife's name is Preeti (he spells it that way, :)) who said the 't' of Pree't'i and the 'th' of thing are the same. Not that it proves anything, but I wanted to put it out there

Yeah, it does prove something, --- that your friend didn't know what he was talking about, I'm afraid, his being a "native speaker of English" not withstanding! Is he of South Indian origin, by any chance?

Why go to an Indian-American? You claim to be in VA. You must receive 'thanks' millions of times from people all around you. Does the 'th' sound the same as the 't' in teen (3) to your ear? Wait, You've already given us the answer, I think (thin, thing, thaw). i.e. teen (3) and thin both sound the same to your ear!

This has been an eye opener to me. Never thought of the possibility that for whatever reason, some ears may not in fact be able to distinguish between the two sounds (the first ('ta') and the second ('tha') letters in the second 'ta' varga), and therein may lie the whole reason behind usages like 'Maruthi'.

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Originally Posted by tacho (Post 1869609)

The way I see it, I use the second 'ta' only if there is a fairly strong 'h' sound.

If North Indians unequivocally use the second 'ta' for North, South, path, froth etc., I need to hand it to you guys, at least for your consistency

now that we understand the difference, this lack of a strong 'h' may explain why many of our south indian friends insist on 'kana kayega' instead of 'khana khayega'.

'h' seems to be a major pain point here.
here is another trivia. In tamilnadu, most of 'h' is converted to 'g'. so mahesh kumar often is pronounced as magesh kumar. I discussed it with a friend and he said how you are going to pronounce mahesh, you can't just make an 'h' (made a hissing noise) sound.

then I asked him, do you say 'gi' or 'gello' instead of 'hi' or 'hello' :D

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Originally Posted by meerkat (Post 1869788)

Punjabi.

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Why go to an Indian-American? You claim to be in VA. You must receive 'thanks' millions of times from people all around you. Does the 'th' sound the same as the 't' in teen (3) to your ear? Wait, You've already given us the answer, I think (thin, thing, thaw). i.e. teen (3) and thin both sound the same to your ear!

Post No 50. Sentence 2.

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This has been an eye opener to me. Never thought of the possibility that for whatever reason, some ears may not in fact be able to distinguish between the two sounds (the first ('ta') and the second ('tha') letters in the second 'ta' varga), and therein may lie the whole reason behind usages like 'Maruthi'.

If this is for me, where did I say I can't distinguish between 'ta' and 'tha' (of 2nd varga)

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Originally Posted by tacho (Post 1869945)

where did I say I can't distinguish between 'ta' and 'tha' (of 2nd varga)

Okay, from one of your earlier posts:

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On the other hand, there are plenty of English words with 'th' which are pronounced like the 't' of Maruti.

When I'd asked for examples, you responded

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thin, thing, thaw

Did I somehow misinterpret the simple English?

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Originally Posted by meerkat (Post 1871204)

Okay, from one of your earlier posts:

When I'd asked for examples, you responded

Did I somehow misinterpret the simple English?

YouTube - Learn to hear and pronounce the "th" sound of Think and the "s" of Sink.

Sounds like a native English speaker to me. You really think the way she says 'th'ink is unambiguously the second 'tha' and cannot be the first 'ta' (of second varga)?

So you finally chose someone on youtube as your authority, eh? Being a 'native English speaker' adds a godlike aura, I guess. Thankfully you didn't choose Geoff Boycott!

How about a source a little more authoritative, like:

Definition of thank you exclamation from Cambridge Dictionary Online: Free English Dictionary and Thesaurus

So you've listened carefully, right? Thank you.

The 'th' really sounds like the 't' in Maruti, right?

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Originally Posted by meerkat (Post 1873198)

First, answer my question in the previous post.

That's the way people around me speak. So, you still accuse me of not being able to differentiate the ta and tha?

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Originally Posted by meerkat (Post 1873198)

now that really depends on how we pronounce maruti/maruthi.

The 'tha' as pronounced in North India is not available in English. Or for that matter neither does kha, jha and so on. What 'h' does to a vowel is make it soft. T as in teen is considered 'hard', and pronounced sharply and whereas in thanks with a 'H' makes it soft - these are called aspirated consonants, if am right.

Equivalent of hindi kha, tha, jha etc cannot be pronounced in English or by the western people, but the closest pronouciation would be the above. But that doesn't make the southern usage of 'tha' anyway incorrect since the pronounciation is anyway going to be the same

For clarity please check out the book 'The country that was India' by AL Bashim, where he takes pain to introduce the difference between ka and kha as pronounced in Sanskrit/Hindi - ends up saying that it will be very difficuilt to spot the difference for an untrained Western ear