Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 14:04:32 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Marc Ramirez <mrami@mrami.homeunix.org>, Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Aryan and Dravidian (was: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c)) Message-ID: <20020525140432.B84264@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020525032513.GA1425@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020522182914.I45715@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020524110009.T21090-100000@mrami.homeunix.org> <20020524173331.A5683@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525103645.A52737@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020525032513.GA1425@lpt.ens.fr>
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On Saturday, 25 May 2002 at 5:25:13 +0200, Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 25, 2002 at 10:36:45:
>> My understanding was that Singhalese is an Aryan language, whereas
>> Tamil is Dravidian. It doesn't have to have much bearing on the
>> matter, but it would make it more plausible that Singhalese would
>> pronounce it the Aryan way.
>
> It's however also quite likely that the pronunciation has
> evolved/changed significantly in Sinhalese.
Sure.
> Many Hindi speakers today have problems saying "sh" and convert it
> to "s"; they also have problems with two consonants succeeding each
> other. So they not only convert English words like "school" to
> "ischool", but also Sanskrit-origin Hindi words like "stree"
> ("woman") to "istree"
Interesting. The Malays have gone one step further and pronounce it
"isteri" (meaning "wife"). Again, the voiceless "e".
> somewhat like Spanish speakers perhaps, except that they will still
> write it "stree" and sophisticated speakers will pronounce it that
> way too. Most amusingly, "station" often becomes something like
> "tesan." And a name like "Krishna"
Wasn't that originally Krsna, with a fluid instead of a vowel?
> becomes "Krishan", "Kishan" or even "Kissan".
Yes, I've heard plenty of those.
> Bengali speakers on the other hand cannot say "s" but always convert
> it to "sh" (and have a whole range of other peculiarities in
> speech).
>
> There is a tendency in India to be contemptuous of all this and say
> that the Sanskrit pronunciation is the "true" pronunciation, but I
> think that's a bit elitist; in fact, after looking at European
> languages, each of which thoroughly distorts Latin words in a
> different way (especially French, which makes them nearly
> unrecognizable sometimes), I think Indian languages have stayed
> comparatively true to "pure" Sanskrit.
Hmm. There are other issues apart from pronunciation. I believe the
grammar has diverged considerably both in India and in Europe
(interestingly giving rise to excessive use of the present participle
both in English and in Hindi IIRC).
> Anyway, if the Sri Lankans pronounce it "Sri" and not "Shri", I'm
> willing to accept that as the "correct" pronunciation for their
> country...
Sure, I wasn't trying to tell them how to pronounce it, just trying to
guess how they do (and if that's yet another point on which the Tamils
and Singhalese don't see eye to eye).
I have a Tamil friend who grew up in the North, and who then emigrated
to Singapore. He tells me that the Tamil spoken in Singapore (where
it is one of the four national languages) is quite different from the
language spoken in Tamil Nadu. In particular, it retains more Aryan
words, whereas in Tamil Nadu they try to replace them with
Tamil-derived words. It rather reminds me of the difference between
Flemish and Dutch :-)
Greg
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