24 Comments
Oct 2, 2020Liked by Navin Kabra

Also, I am having hard time pronouncing ऋषभ right, based on this new knowledge 😂

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Oct 1, 2020Liked by Navin Kabra

Navin, fascinating read. The 'kanthya' and 'talavya' were taught in school (marathi as first language), but the fitting of य र ल व श ष स ह is very interesting.

About the ones you have left out, ए ऐ ओ औ are essentially combinations of basic vowels - अ + इ = ए, अ + उ = ओ and so on. अं is a simply a convenient way of representing a combine with a nasal consonant. It's pronunciation is dependent on the next alphabet. अः is a specialty of Sanskrit - I wonder if anything similar exists in other languages...

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Oct 1, 2020Liked by Navin Kabra

Wonderful article Navin. Enjoyed it thoroughly. I always say just like there is WYSIWYG, Devanagari gives me a way of Write Exactly Like What It Sounds (WELWIS).

What a coincidence. Just the other day myself and a friend were discussing Marathi Grammar, the way we were taught and how much we remember now. It came down to finding out what in Marathi are called Vrutta which is a specific and well defined way of writing poetry. Wanted to revise some of the basic first principles like matra, gana etc and how to mark them to identify the Vrutta. Finally went and bought a book on Marathi Grammar by Mo Ra Walambe which explained it in details. Yesterday I was able to look at a stanza from one Marathi poem called "Nal and Damayanti" and decipher the Vrutta. And today this article!

The book also gives some 4-5 different ways in which a broken R is written like in words क्रम, अर्क, चोर्‍या and others.

BTW, the book talks about a Devanagari alphabet which exists in Marathi as 'लृ' and the only one word that has been given as an example. Unfortunately I don't know how my keyboard can write that out. I think the word is 'Klupti'

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Oct 1, 2020Liked by Navin Kabra

1) this is so super-fun! I often brag about this elegance to non-Indians, but never realized the य row, ष row, and vowels as well fit in this grid. And now realizing "ऋ is a vowel" 🤯

2) knowing this is quite useful too, I think Indians can pick up foreign pronunciations quickly, using this grid. I know from my experience that most Chinese books/teachers teach the pronunciations by grouping sounds like this. Saw one Indian youtube who made grids for multiple foreign languages when he was learning them and now advocates for that pedagogy.

3) To add to the missing sounds in different languages, one surprising thing about English speakers, that many can't distinguish between ड and द, even when they have both sounds in English ( ड in day ←→ द in this ). That's important for me, since many use ड while pronouncing my name सदा 🤦🏻‍♂️. Also just realized, English ड (as in day) is quite different than Indian ड which curls the tongue. Maybe that's why...

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Thank you, this was absolutely fascinating to read, and cleared up so many doubts I had.

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This is the best explaination I have seen for the script!!

Still, if you see - the visual shapes don't align with the sounds. That makes learning a lot of memorization when the visual shape has no structure. I say this because a row or a column in "The Vovels" picture don't look similar. It would have been nice if similar sounds had been given similar shapes. For example, most alphabets which look similar to 'इ' don't sound similar at all.

Also, what is the importance of getting the sound so exactly right? Do we need all four of these - 'क ख ग घ' ? They are so close in sound!

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Was revisiting this article after I went through a book on Marathi Grammar. Am I missing it or there is no mention of ज्ञ or श्र in this article? Any thoughts on those?

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What a wonderful article. Today after reading this I think I truly understood the pronunciation difference between श and ष. I also realised the words starting with ष always have next letter in the same group (I might be wrong here) e.g. षडयंत्र, षट्कोन, षट्कार, षंढ, षड्ज

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One more bit of information. Potentially there are two varieties of pronunciation of चछजझ. चमचा vs चक्र. If i am correct ch in chamacha is dantatalava while ch in chakra is talavya. (Chamacha in hindi is again talavya but in Marathi if it is meant spoon, it is pronounced differently) झ in झबले vs झकास follows same differentiation. Any more information on this?

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Very nice . Explanation is too good

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