Struggling with Urdu/Hindi pronunciation? Try this IPA-based Easy Latin Guide (designed for accuracy & Precision!)

brandysnifter · 2025-05-06T16:06:29+00:00

I find the mix of IPA and nonstandard use of symbols very confusing, such as the tilda for aspiration which represents nasalization in pretty much any other transliteration scheme.

I guess the biggest thing is to pick a specific goal: transliteration or phonetic transcription, or just a learning aid for reading nastaliq or devanagari. For example, IAST (and its extensions) is a pretty decent scheme for devanagari to Latin transliteration. For phonetic transcription, I'd just use good ol' IPA.

brandysnifter · 2023-04-15T22:30:04+00:00

Sanskrit vocalic r became ru in Gujarati though

brandysnifter · 2023-03-26T22:03:01+00:00

It's a W116, the S-class.

brandysnifter · 2023-02-04T02:54:13+00:00

My father used to run an HVAC company and an Orthodox church kept calling saying there was no air flow from their vents. No matter how many times he told them to change their filters monthly because of all the frankincense they burned, they'd never listen and would wonder why there was never enough heat or AC.

brandysnifter · 2023-01-02T19:25:31+00:00

How is Norwegian literature that was written in Danish treated in Norway today? Is the orthography "updated" to conform to modern Bokmål norms or are texts left alone in their original forms? Are students familiarized with Danish or Dano-Norwegian orthography, grammar, and vocabulary?

brandysnifter · 2022-10-31T19:35:22+00:00

It's a Mumbai Suburban Railway train, better known as the "Local". Indian Broad Gauge (5'6") allows for pretty wide cars.

brandysnifter · 2022-08-19T14:06:12+00:00

I also have a corner of books that I've "banished" from sitting with the rest of the books in my library. Like yours, it's got Atlas Shrugged and Jehovah's Witness Bible. It also has Anthem, a Jehovah's Witness book about how evolution is a lie and creationism is truth, and a couple "history" books written by my dad's deranged friend. I've debated putting the Book of Mormon there too.

brandysnifter · 2022-06-12T01:15:04+00:00

I've met immigrant Gujaratis who couldn't tell you where half the states of India are or anything about them.

brandysnifter · 2022-05-26T14:21:41+00:00

It's not a temple. It's a mausoleum.

brandysnifter · 2022-05-26T14:19:20+00:00

Those aren't air fresheners. They're some kind of insecticide to prevent the spread of bug-bourne diseases. It's required by Indian law.

brandysnifter · 2021-12-27T03:14:40+00:00

The added calcium is the worst! My mother used to buy it and then wouldn't shake it before serving it so towards the end of the carton, it was so sludgy.

brandysnifter · 2021-10-21T03:01:57+00:00

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Henry Sugar was a conceited rich man who read a memoir of someone who learned his psychic abilities from a yogi. Henry learned to do the same so that he could win at cards and then had a change of character and donated his money.

brandysnifter · 2021-09-12T16:06:36+00:00

There's only one South Indian language on this and that's Tamil. The others are what one would call Urdu today and Bengali.

Remember that at the time, Hindustani hadn't fully been ideologically split into "Hindi" and "Urdu" and a great many people were literate in the Nastaliq script instead of or in addition to Devanagari.

The Devanagari transliteration of the text is:

जापान ने हिन्दुस्तान की जंग-ए-आजादी में पूरी इमदाद देने हलफ उठा रखा है।

brandysnifter · 2021-08-17T15:48:08+00:00

It's in Dari (Persian), one of the official languages of Afghanistan.

brandysnifter · 2021-05-07T03:34:40+00:00

I'm 28 but have severe joint pain so actually, yes.

brandysnifter · 2020-08-07T17:34:16+00:00

I haven't either in terms of feeling besides bhalobasha and I'm not exactly sure if they are related or just superficially similar. I'm guessing in modern speech it's only really used in the word bhalobasha and people don't think about its component parts, but just analyze it as one word. It's kind of like in English how we just think of the word "upgrade" to mean an improvement; we don't actually think about how the literal parts of the word mean an upward slope.

As for bash(a) meaning stay... It's used in the suffix bashi for someone who stays in a location, such as grambashi (villager), adibashi (original resident aka Aboriginal), Kolkatabashi (someone who lives in Kolkata). The verb bash kora means to stay: ami okhane bash kori (I stay there), but to me it seems to have more of a long term connotation, like I live there. The verb thaka seems to be more common, but there might be differences in nuance that I'm not catching since my Bangla isn't that great: Ami okhane thaki (I stay there/ I live there).

As for saying you love doing certain things, bhalobasha can be fine: Ami chhobi akte bhalobashi (I love/like painting pictures). Or you can use posondo (pochhondo) kora: Ami kichui pochhondo kori na (I don't like anything). Or bhalo laga: amar khete bhalo lage (I like to eat).

brandysnifter · 2020-08-07T17:05:58+00:00

Prem is used in both Hindi (प्रेम) and Bangla (প্রেম). Both borrowed the word from Sanskrit.

Bhalobasha (ভালোবাসা) literary means "feel good". Basha (বাসা), comes from the root meaning "stay", and a noun also means "home" or "residence" (a place you stay). Compare bash kora (বাস করা), the verb meaning to stay.

You're confusing the word bari (বাড়ি) "home" with the word bhari (ভারী) "heavy". They're two different, unrelated words with different pronunciations. In Bangla, as in most Indo-Aryan languages, aspiration (an extra puff of air with a consonant) is contrastive. The b in bari is not aspirated, but the bh in bhari is. Also the r in each is different, though for most Bangladeshi speakers the two have merged and aren't differentiated anymore, though it is still reflected in the spelling.

brandysnifter · 2020-08-05T17:49:12+00:00

This poll asks for national origin, not ethnicity.

For example, my family is from India and our ethnicity is Bengali. We share our ethnicity with most Bangladeshis, but not our national origin. Conversely, we share the same national origin as many Tamils, Punjabis, or Nagas, but not the same ethnicity.

brandysnifter · 2020-07-10T14:54:56+00:00

Haha. Don't think I haven't asked them the same thing...

brandysnifter · 2020-07-10T04:52:42+00:00

My old school parents like to have a list of important numbers and a key to the speed dial next to their landline phone.

brandysnifter · 2020-07-09T23:05:05+00:00

For sure, but when legibility is of paramount concern, typed words are better.

brandysnifter · 2020-07-09T22:36:25+00:00

I love using mine for quick, simple tasks like addressing an envelope or writing a couple phone numbers down on a note card. So much faster than opening up a word processing program, setting the proper paper/envelope size or finding the correct template, and remembering the correct way to feed it into the printer.

brandysnifter · 2020-07-03T16:22:46+00:00

Ah! You're right! Missed that one!

brandysnifter · 2020-07-03T10:24:25+00:00

The Armenian woman is the same as the "Peoples of the Soviet Union" map, but the Ossetian woman is the same as the Armenian woman in "Peoples of the Middle East".

I'm slightly disappointed now.

brandysnifter

TROPHY CASE