Learning of Hindi Phonology as a Foreigner: Professor Ram Lakhan Meena, Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer, INDIA

Learning of Hindi Phonology as a Foreigner
Professor Ram Lakhan Meena, Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer, INDIA

ABSTRACT

Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language about 1200 million worldwide highest speakers in the world, after that Mandarin about 1030 million. It is also spoken in all parts of India, as well as Indian subcontinents in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Hindi is also understood, and there are a significant number of Hindi speakers in South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and Nepal. Urdu is a linguistic style of Hindi and it is also closely related to Hindi, Urdu is the main language of Pakistan, which is written with the Arabic script, and linguists consider Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari-Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. Apart from the difference in writing systems, the other main difference between Hindi and Urdu is that Hindi contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains more vocabulary from Persian. Committees like the Kendriya Hindi Samiti and the Hindi Advisory Committees were also set up to promote Hindi in routine work in government offices, undertakings, and nationalized banks, among other places. The Constitution of India declares Hindi in the Devnagari script as the official language of the Union (Article 343(1)). The government alone offers an array of posts created by the policy of Hindi promotion — like those of a Hindi officer, a Hindi instructor, a Hindi journalist, a Hindi translator, a Hindi tele-printer operator, a Hindi stenographer, a Hindi clerk. Information about these standardized accents functions only as a limited guide to all of Hindi phonology, which one can later expand upon once one becomes more familiar with some of the many other dialects of Hindi that are spoken.

Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language with about 1200 million worldwide speakers which is highest in the world, after that Mandarin about 1030 million. It is the main language used in the northern part of India’s 10 states including Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. It is also spoken in other parts of India, as well as in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Hindi is understood, and there are a significant number of Hindi speakers in South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago and Nepal. People of Indian origin in Fiji are also speaking Hindi.
Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, is one of official languages of the government of India - the other offical language is English. Both languages are used in parliament, in the judiciary, in communications between the central government and state government, and for other official purposes. Urdu is a linguistic style of Hindi and it is also closely related to Hindi, Urdu is the main language of Pakistan, which is written with the Arabic script, and linguists consider Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu to be different formal registers both derived from the Khari Boli dialect, which is also known as Hindustani. Apart from the difference in writing systems, the other main difference between Hindi and Urdu is that Hindi contains more vocabulary from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains more vocabulary from Persian. At an informal spoken level there are few significant differences between Urdu and Hindi and they could be considered varieties a single language.

Hindi first started to be used in writing during the 4th century AD. The first printed book in Hindi was John Gilchrist's Grammar of the Hindustani Language which was published in 1796. Hindi’s historic role led Indian Constitution-makers to the historic decision to give it the status of an official language of India. The Union government came out with the Official Language Act in 1963 (amended in 1967), the Official Language Resolution in 1968, the Official Language Rules in 1976 and the Annual Implementation Program me since 1968. Committees like the Kendriya Hindi Samiti and the Hindi Salahkar Samiti were also set up to promote Hindi in routine work in government offices, undertakings, and nationalized banks, among other places. Even the non-official sector evinces no enthusiasm for Hindi. 

The Constitution of India declares Hindi in the Dev Nagari script as the official language of the Union (Article 343(1)). Hindi is also enumerated as one of the twenty-five languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. The Constitution of India has stipulated the usage of Hindi and English as the two languages of communication for the Central Government. It was envisioned that Hindi would become the sole working language of the Central government by 1965 (as per directives in Article 344 (2) and Article 351), with State governments being free to function in languages of their choice. However, passage of the Official Languages Act (1963), provided for the continued use of English, indefinitely, for all official purposes. However, the constitutional directive to the Central government to spread Hindi was retained.

In a fast-shrinking world, being multilingual definitely gives you an edge over others. A large number of people today like to read, write and communicate in Hindi. In the marketing sector, hindi acts as an important medium to attract consumers for example, Coca-Cola has a stylish campaign in ‘Thanda matlab Coca-Cola’ (Cool means Coca–Cola), making it amply evident that if you want to catch the India’s attention, you’d better use Hindi. Students have options for skill development in a special field such as poetry, functional Hindi, media studies, linguistics, theatre, and translation. Some colleges also offer a vocational course in Hindi under the BA programme, called functional Hindi. It offers Hindi computer (typing), Hindi shorthand, media writing, advertisement translation, and creative writing. Hindi can take students to universities in SAARC countries, south-east Asia, Europe and America. Hindi departments over there are not only teaching Hindi as a language but also conducting research. Exchange programmes have also been effective in promoting Hindi in these countries.

The policy also makes functional Hindi free from the excessive rigidities of grammar. Thus the basic idea is to encourage functional Hindi. In order to do so, several incentives and awards are given, but there is no provision for any penalty in the Official Language Act or rules under it. This underlines that the aim of the policy is to propagate Hindi, but not by coercion. Many people may still be unaware that functional Hindi has also earned its separate place in the academic as well as the professional world. The government alone offers an array of posts created by the policy of Hindi promotion — like those of a Hindi officer, a Hindi instructor, a Hindi journalist, a Hindi translator, a Hindi tele-printer operator, a Hindi stenographer, a Hindi clerk. Besides, several job entrance competitions in the government and the public sector, including for all-India civil services like the IAS and the IPS, the Central secretariat services, the subordinate services, banks and undertakings are now conducted in Hindi as well.

It is in this connection that the Union government has yet to provide convincing pro-of of its commitment to Hindi. Instead of showing undue concern for the achievement of certain targets or figures, what it should strive for is increasing use of functional Hindi in its real, day-to-day functioning. For doing his or her work in Hindi, it would be better to reward an individual officer or employee in real terms like a promotion in service or quicker increments and not just with some monetary incentive or occasional prizes in kind. Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in Hindi Language. The phonological system of a Hindi Language includes; like many other languages, Hindi has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of Hindi share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system.

Phonological analysis of Hindi often concentrates on or uses, as a reference point, one or more of the prestige or standard accents, such as it has so many linguistic variants. Nevertheless, many other dialects of Hindi are spoken, which have developed independently from these standardized accents, particularly regional dialects. Information about these standardized accents functions only as a limited guide to all of Hindi phonology, which one can later expand upon once one becomes more familiar with some of the many other dialects of Hindi that are spoken. A phoneme (/ˈfoʊniːm/) is one of the units of sound or gesture in the case of sign languages that distinguish one word from another in a particular language. The difference in meaning between the Hindi words kaal (Time) and k^haal (Skin) is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /k/ for the phoneme /kh/. Within linguistics there are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic (or phonematic) terms.

However, a phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (phones) which are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, in Hindi, the /k/ sounds in the words kal (tomorrow) and nakal (copy) are not identical (as described below), but they are distributional variants of a single phoneme /k/. In this way, phonemes are often considered to constitute an abstract underlying representation for segments of words, while speech sounds make up the corresponding phonetic realization, or surface form.

Phonemes are conventionally placed between slashes in transcription, whereas speech sounds (phones) are placed between square brackets. Thus /kal/ represents a sequence of three phonemes /k/, /a/, /l/ (the word push in standard Hindi), while [k^hal] represents the phonetic sequence of sounds [k^h] (aspirated k), [a], [l] (the usual pronunciation of khal). For example, /क/ represents the written letter grapheme k.) Therefore, each human language is a complex of knowledge and abilities enabling speakers of the language to communicate with each other, to express ideas, hypotheses, emotions, desires, and all the other things that need expressing.

Hindi linguistics is the study of these knowledge systems in all their aspects: how is such a knowledge system structured, how is it acquired, how is it used in the production and comprehension of messages, how does it change over time? Linguists consequently are concerned with a number of particular questions about the nature of language. What properties do all human languages have in common? How do languages differ, and to what extent are the differences systematic, i.e. can we find patterns in the differences? How do children acquire such complete knowledge of a language in such a short time? What are the ways in which languages can change over time, and are there limitations to how languages change? What is the nature of the cognitive processes that come into play when we produce and understand language? The part of Hindi linguistics that is concerned with the structure of language is divided into a number of subfields:

§  Phonetics - the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects

§  Phonology - the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects

§  Morphology - the study of the formation of words

§  Syntax - the study of the formation of sentences

§  Semantics - the study of meaning

§  Pragmatics - the study of language use

Important parts of Hindi linguistics
Subfield	Description	Research questions in Neurolinguistics
Phonetics	the study of speech sounds	how the brain extracts speech sounds from an acoustic signal, how the brain separates speech sounds from background noise
Phonology	the study of how sounds are organized in a language	how the phonological system of a particular language is represented in the brain
Morphology and lexicology	the study of how words are structured and stored in the mental lexicon	how the brain stores and accesses words that a person knows
Syntax	the study of how multiple-word utterances are constructed	how the brain combines words into constituents and sentences; how structural and semantic information is used in understanding sentences
Semantics	the study of how meaning is encoded in language

Many teachers see major difficulties in maintaining academic standards in today's larger and more diversified classes. The problem becomes more tractable if learning outcomes are seen as more a function of students’ activities than of their fixed characteristics. The symbols used for particular in Hindi phonemes are often taken from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the same set of symbols that are most commonly used for phones. However, descriptions of particular languages may use different conventional symbols to represent the phonemes of those languages. For Hindi language whose writing systems employ the phonemic principle, ordinary letters may be used to denote phonemes, although this approach is often hampered by the complexity of the relationship between orthography and pronunciation (see Correspondence between letters and phonemes below table).

IPA Symbols		Phoneme	Related Grapheme	Occurrence in Hindi Words
				Initially	Medially		Finally
p		प	Voiceless Bilabial Plosive	/pəl/ ‘moment’	/upəha:r/ ‘present’N		pɑ:p/ ‘sin’
b		ब	Voiced Bilabial Plosive	/bəl/ ‘strength’	/muba:rək/ ‘congratulations’		/kitɑ:b/ ‘book’
pʰ		फ	Voiceless Aspirated Bilabial Plosive	/pʰəl/ ‘fruit’	/səpʰəl/ ‘successful’		/kəpʰ/ ‘phlegm’
bʱ		भ	Voiced Aspirated Bilabial Plosive	/bʱa:ɾət/ ‘India’	/səbʱa: / ‘assembly’		/ʃubʱ/ ‘auspicious’
t		त	Voiceless Dental Plosive	/tən/ ‘body’	/a:tur/ ‘eager’		/du:t/ ‘messanger’
d		द	Voiced Dental Plosive	/ dɑ̃:t/ ‘tooth’	/ʧɑ:dəɾ/ ‘bed sheet’		/pəd/ ‘position’
tʰ		थ	Voiceless Aspirated Dental Plosive	/tʰɛ:la:/ ‘bag’	/kətʰa: / ‘story’		/rətʰ/ ‘chariot’
dʱ		ध	Voiced Aspirated Dental Plosive	/dʰən/ ‘welath’	/pᴔdʰa:/ ‘plant’		/dʰundʰ/ ‘fog’
ʈ		ट	Voiceless Retroflex Plosive	/ʈo:pi:/ ‘cap’	/a:ʈa:/ ‘flour’		/pe:ʈ/ ‘stomach’
ɖ		ड	Voiced Retroflex Plosive	/ɖəkɑ:ɾ/ ‘burp’	/pənɖɪt/ ‘scholar’		/dənɖ/ ‘penalty’
ʈʰ		ठ	Voiceless Aspirated Retroflex Plosive	/ʈʰag/ ‘ ‘thugg’	/mi:ʈʰɑs:/ ‘sweetness’		/ʤʱu:ʈʰ/ ‘lie’
ɖʱ		ढ	Voiced Aspirated Retroflex Plosive	/ɖʰo:lək/ ‘drum’	/mẽ:ɖʰək/ ‘frog’		/ɖʰũ:ɖʰ/ ‘search’
ʧ		च	Voiceless Hard Palatal Affricate	/ʧəkka:/ ‘wheel’	/ma:ʧis/ ‘match sticks’		/miɾc/ ‘pepper’
ʤ		ज	Voiced Hard Palatal Affricate	/ʤəb/ ‘when’	/bʰoʤən/ ‘food’		/kʰo:ʤ/ ‘search’
ʧʰ		छ	Voiceless Aspirated Hard Palatal Affricate	/cʰət/ ‘roof’	/pi:ʧʰe:/ ‘behind’		/mũ:cʰ/ ‘moustache’
ʤʱ		झ	Voiced Aspirated Hard Palatal Affricate	/ʤʰu:ʈ/ ‘lie’	/mã:ʤʱi:/ ‘sailor’		/bã:ʤʱ/‘childless(woman)’
k		क	Voiceless Soft Palatal  Plosive	/ka:r/ ‘car’	/məka:n/ ‘house’		/nəmək/ ‘salt’
ɡ		ग	Voiced Soft Palatal  Plosive	/ɡa:li:/ ‘abuse’	/ãɡən/ ‘courtyard’		/lo:ɡ/ ‘people’
kʰ		ख	Voiceless Aspirated Soft Palatal  Plosive	/kʰe:l/ ‘sport’	/əkʰɾo:ʈ/ ‘walnut’		/a:ŋkʰ/ ‘eye’
ɡʱ		घ	Voiced Aspirated Soft Palatal  Plosive	/ɡʱəɾ/ ‘house’	/səŋɡʰərʃ/ ‘struggle’		/me:ɡʱ/ ‘cloud’
q		क़	Voiceless Uvular Plosive	/qᴔm/ ‘community’	/bəqa:ja:/ ‘debt’
m		म	Voiced Bilabial Nasal	/məka:n/ ‘house’	/kəməl/ ‘lotus’		/kɑ:m/ ‘/work/job’
n		न	Voiced Dental/ Alveolar Nasal	/na:m/ ‘name	/kʰa:na:/ ‘food’		/ka:n/ ‘ear’
ɳ		ण	Voiced Retroflex Nasal		/ɾa:ɳa: / ‘(a name)’		/kiɾəɳ/ ‘a ray/ (a name)’
f		फ़	Voiceless Labio-Dental Fricative	/fəɾʃ/ ‘floor’	/əfso:s/ ‘regret’		/bəɾf/ ‘ice’
s		स	Voiceless Alveolar Fricative	/sa:ɾa:/ ‘all’	/kisa:n/ ‘farmer’		/ɡʱa:s/ ‘grass’
z		ज़	Voiced Alveolar Fricative	/zəɾu:ɾ/ ‘sure’	/intəzɑ:ɾ/ ‘wait’		/ʧi:z/ ‘thing’
ʃ		श	Voiceless Post-Alveolar Fricative	/ʃo:ɾ/ ‘noise’	/ɾe:ʃa:/ 'fibre’		/pɾəka:ʃ/ ‘light’
x		ख़	Voiceless Soft Palatal  Fricative	/xət/ ‘letter’	/zo:xim/ ‘danger’		‘ʃo:x’ ‘naughty’
ɣ		ग़	Voiced Soft Palatal  Fricative	/ɣəm:/ ‘sorrow’	/ka: ɣəz/ ‘paper’		/ba:ɣ/ ‘garden’
h		ह	Voiceless Glottal Fricative	/ha:tʰi:/ ‘elephant’	/bəhən/ ‘sister’		/de:h/ ‘body’
ʋ		व	Voiced Labio-Dental Approximant	/ʋəɾʃa:/ ‘rain’	/əʋta:ɾ/ ‘descent’		/pa:ʋ/‘a quarter kilo’
j		य	Voiced Palatal Approximant	/judʰ/ ‘war’	/ʋa:ju/ ‘wind’		/ʧa:j/ ‘tea’
ɾ		र	Voiced Alveolar Tap	/ɾa:ʤa:/ ‘king’	/pəɾiʋɑ:ɾ/ ‘family’		/məʈəɾ/ ‘pea’
l		ल	Voiced Alveolar Lateral Approximant	/la:l/ ‘red’	/ka:la:/‘black’		/ba:l/ ‘balck’
IPA Symbols	Phoneme		Grapheme	Grapheme (with preceding consonants)	Occurrence in Hindi Words Initially Medially Finally
i	इ		Short,  Unrounded, Close, Front  Vowel	i~ $ b ¾ fi	/is/ ‘this’	/sikka/ ‘coin‘		/əti/ ‘excess’
ə	अ		Short,  Unrounded, Mid, Central Vowel	i~ $ v ¾ i	/əpna:/ ‘self’	/əmən/ ‘peace’		-----------
u	उ		Short,  Unrounded, Close, Front  Vowel	i~ $ m  ¾ iw	/us/ ‘that’	/əruɳ/ ‘(a name)’		/əpitu/ ‘but’
i:	ई		Long,  Unrounded, Close, Front  Vowel	i~ $ bZ ¾ ih	/i:ma:n/ ‘honesty’	/si:kʰ/ ‘instruction’		/səbʱi:/ ‘all’
e:	ए		Long,  Unrounded, Close-mid, Front  Vowel	i~ $ , ¾ is	/e:k/ ‘one’	/re:kʰa:/ ‘ a line’		/bəɽe:/ ‘big-OBL’
a:	आ		Long,  Unrounded, Open, central Vowel	i~ $ vk ¾ ik	/a:m/ ‘mango’	/da:m/ ‘price’		/bʰəla:/ ‘good-natured’
o:	ओ		Long, Rounded, Close-mid, Back Vowel	i~ $ vks ¾ iks	/o:s/ ‘dew’	/ro:z/ ‘daily’		/bo:ʤʱ/ ‘burden’
ɔ:	ऑ		Long, Rounded, Open-mid, Back Vowel (in borrowed words from English)	i~ $ vkW ¾ ikW	/ɔ:nər/ ‘honour’ (in Your Honour)	/bɔ:l/ ‘ball’		-----------
ᴂ:	ऐ		Long,  Unrounded, Open-mid, Front  (diphthong) Vowel	i~ $ ,s ¾ iS	/ ᴂ:nək/ ‘spectacles’	/bᴂ:l/ ‘bull’		----------
ᴔ:	औ		Long, Rounded, Close-mid, Long Back Vowel	i~ $ vkS ¾ ikS	/ᴔ:ɾət/ ‘woman’	/dᴔ:lət/ ‘wealth’		----------
All the consonants are written with Vowels as and when required like ‘प’ a Long with their MATRAS which are showing in red colour.  All the Vowels (except ऑ) have Nasal counterparts.