Writing Script matters as much as the spoken language

Language isn’t just a means of communication but it is the medium of propagating culture. That’s why culturally Canada is similar to the USA while Mexico (and the rest of Latin America) to Spain. One huge advantage the USA has over Europe is that practically everyone speaks a single language. A Californian can fly 6 hours to New York City, and feel just at home, with the same language and thus, a similar culture.

Mac shortcut for typing Avagraha symbol

While writing text in Hindi/Sanskrit (Devanagari script), I need a quick way to insert the Avagraha symbol(ऽ). It turns out there is an undocumented shortcut on the Mac Hindi QWERTY keyboard for that and that is _shift + _

The sound of "ch"

There are at least three different ways “ch” gets pronounced in English words and that tells you the origin of those words.

The English ɛ - a popular vowel missing in Indic languages

English has a very commonly used vowel that doesn’t exist in Indic languages natively. It is ɛ- Open-mid front unrounded vowel. Consider the word bet, its vowel sound is halfway between bat/बैत़ and bait/बेत़. This vowel is fairly common in English, for example, tech whose vowel sound is halfway between tack and take. Or met which is half-way between mat and mate. Now, this sound is not natively written in Hindi....

Musings of transliteration: Tharman Shanmugaratnam's name

Tharman, the 9th president of Singapore is of Indian Tamil ethnicity. The pronunciation of his first name shows how various languages use Latin alphabets.

Monolingualism

I had just landed in the Czech Republic. I was taking a bus from Prague airport to the city. The man sitting next to me was dressed in formal. He was here to attend a meeting of the ESA, European Space Agency. I asked, “What language is the meeting in?”. “English”, he replied, nonchalantly.

Hindi-English phonemes that are similar but distinct

Hindi and English have several similar yet distinct phonemes.

German Pronunciations for Hindi speakers

The phonetics of German are relatively easy for more Hindi speakers except for a few sounds that are more nuanced.

Cesar Chavez Ave

The five different ways to pronounce the name "Chavez"

Latin script is the most recognized script in the world today. Most Western European languages, including some widely spoken ones like English, Spanish, and French use the same script with minor differences. The pronunciation variation, however, is a different matter altogether. Nothing illustrates it better than the popular Spanish last name Chavez. The name has three syllables. And is pronounced in 5 different ways!

Duolingo is a waste of Time

A few years back, I wasted time on Duolingo trying to learn Spanish. I no longer do that and you shouldn’t. Here’s why it’s not effective and better alternatives.