Linguistics

The sound ळ is a retroflex L/ल. Garhwali has this sound Haryanvi has it Punjabi has it Rajasthani dialects have it Marathi has it Tamil has it; in fact, it is the last sound in the name of the language itself. 1 Malayalam has it. In fact, in the name of the language, the first l is alveolar, but the second l is retroflex (मलयाळम) Even Vedic Sanskrit recognizes this sound. So, why is this sound missing from modern Hindi? Well, probably because this sound isn’t used in the Delhi-Meerut dialect that became the standard dialect of Hindi. ...

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.

How to type Avagraha symbol on Mac

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

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. However, this does show up in various spoken words like रहना, कहना, and सहन. And the native speakers intuitively know that the pronunciations deviate from the written spelling in these cases. ...

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

Modern day United States is weirdly mono-lingual

Hindi and English have several similar yet distinct phonemes.

When Americans say spicy, they usually mean chili. For some weird reason, other spices that are more aromatic like Turmeric, cloves, cardamom, etc. do not seem to fit the definition of “spicy”. That’s why in a typical Indian/Thai restaurant in the US when the waiter ask how spicy, they mean “How much chili should I put in” However, when an Indian says that the spices were good, s/he usually means that the food had an aroma and a balanced composition of contrasting tastes.

The name “Chavez” has three syllables. And is pronounced in 5 different ways!