Useful Hindi Words For Travellers

Ante-script: I've edited my posts #285 and 289 to include Devnagari script.



Exactly. "Bara" wud create fewer problems.

Me or I - that's मै , the way you'd say mare.

Thanks, I know of it. I find MS easier to use though.
And I'll stick with it becos........

Only partly. Actually mostly - a very good example of "fraught transliteration" I was referring to -
The u in thunde threw the software, you needed to have used a - right now it rhymes with put.
And altho you used 'th' correctly, it threw out nonsense - a soft t !
And becos you wrote rahena instead of rahna, it added the English a sound into the mix.
Nahi - nasal n at the end, missed in transliteration as well. Try adding it and see the (minuscule) difference.

Exactly - refer above.

Absolutely. I blame the media.


Virtually the entire Northern half of the country, from side to side, would do that when speaking 'naturally'. Except Kashmiri and Urdu speakers (plenty of Urdu words get 'mispronounced' though, when used in Hindi/Hindustani - people simply use the pronunciations/s that go with their region/dialect).


Ever heard of Zimmy Carter?

Exactly! Like you must have heard people say "chhah!" in disdain or disgust - that's it.
Try it with a hissing sound.

What, the way the Italians pronounce it?
Impossible to write. I don't even recall ever seeing this word written in Devnagari - be interesting to see how many possibilities there are.
The closest would be पीत्सा (and tell the folks not to stress/dwell on the soft t ), but no one would agree with me - for starters I'd have a hard time convincing people that the i is a long 'ee' sound.
That 'zz' sound is difficult to do even for English speakers, some of whom actually pronounce it 'pidsa'. Close enough I guess.

Cannot get Ch and Chh. There's only one Ch in English and it's the only one I hear. Is it just more...violent? I hope you know what I mean.

Oh, that damned double "Chh..." In Hindi class, they used to make us over-pronounce it in order to try to "get" the aspiration. So you sit there (sounding like a fool) , going, "ch," but holding it, like a little stifled sneeze. You wouldn't talk like that, but if you practice it, it helps the pronunciation when you do run into these words.

As for the z/j thing, I have never been able to figure out which one is "poser" Hindi? The problem there, I think, comes from the old Hindustani, using Arabic script, because the z and j are almost the same - just a little dot is the only difference.

brilliant, karuna!

not 'chhutti' (holiday) but 'chhutta' (change)!

my suggestion would be to use the capital letter for all retroflexes T,D,Th,Dh,R,Rh and the small letter for other sounds and at least double the long vowels, this way the roman transcription without a specific font could be more precise...

But I perfectly know that Indians don't like to use such transcription

I also don't like the equivalence between the English 't' sound with the Hindi T sound...they are totally different!

totally agree here, my guess is that they feel uneasy about Hindi and try to make you feel the same LOL

Such kind of people usually tell me 'How cute, she wants to speak Hindi, but we do speak English, don't worry'.

Anar,

I'll try your chhutta next time, and if I get punched in the face by some angry Punjabi, I'll be sure to let you know.

I begin to see now why my fellow was so shocked - I should have aspirated the "ch," perhaps. Well, this proves our point about pronunciation....

DW, I had a similar experience with Jaiharikhal long time back and it sounded like jaharikhal (jahar like in poison) I was so confused about the strange name for the place and kept imagining people being massed poisoned there to get such as poisonous name. Same with Mahidanda. The local pronunciation is maedunda, and I thought that there were two different places with similar sounding names till I visited maedunda and found out it si actually Mahidanda!

OK, following a post on the "pushing in" thread, could someone translate for me:

"Excuse me (maaf kijiye?), I may be a foreigner, but I'm not deaf!"
and
"I may be a foreigner, but I am not stupid (stupid is behkuf?)"

I also want to get a t-shirt with "Stare all you like, I'm not going to stop being fat and foreign". But I think I might start a few fights if I do...

I have already posted this on the other thread Karuna but here it goes again.

Main phirangi hoon par behari nahin
or main phirangi hoon par bewakoof nahin.

"Bewakoof," above means literally "senseless, or without sense." I find this word has an extraordinary number of uses, too. The w, of course, has that Indian w/v thing goin' on.

Livin, that's a good line.

I found "phirangi" was not understood by some people. Might have been my mispronunciation, of course. The folk I know tend to use "gora" and "gori". Could I use that? It also means "fair" (as in pretty) doesn't it? Or would it be clear what I meant from the context?
In one book I read, the author suggested there's a negative connotation to "gora"; is that true?

Sorry to throw so many questions at you, I'm just interested!

There are slight negative connotations in gora/gori, when used to address a westerner. "Gori" means "fair," (i.e., pretty), normally - as slang it means "whitey." Personally, I don't mind. By Indian standards, I am awfully white. In Andhra Pradesh, "telaiyina" means more or less the same thing in Telugu.

Phirangi (or farangi) means foreigner (lit. "Frank," as in crusader) - it's an old term. Could be pronunciation. They would say it with a "p" in South India (where 'f' is pronounced as 'p' by many people), and with an 'f' in north India. The Himalayas might be a little different.

In India today, I think, the English word "foreigner" is more commonly used, now, more than farangi even by people who only speak Hindi.

For a politer alternative, try "videshi." (i.e., foreign)

meri chay mein makkhee hai = my tea has a fly in it

mujhe doosree chay de do = give me another tea

mujhse paise mat maango = don't ask me for money

mere paas kuch nahin hai = i have nothing

And then there's my most favorite Hindi saying, bellowed by the waiter to the cook at any little Indian roadside stand:

"Do samose ek chai lao!"

Makes me feel warm and happy just writing it. Especially as I'm looking out my window at a yard covered with about 2 feet of snow.

oh the do samose here might cost you 2500 /- welcome to india !!