The thing is, the first part is a distinct sound in English. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s how ‘The’ starts off. It’s just never used in a similar way, followed by an ‘i’ sound, so I suppose that makes it tougher to distinguish.
A friend of mine who teaches elementary school English tried to avoid that by transliterating his name as ガリ (ga-ri). Unfortunately he’s a somewhat large man and “garigari” means “scrawny” in Japanese. The kids apparently get a great deal of pleasure out of that.
ट and ड do not actually match any of the sounds in English. In India, they teach English as though they do, but they’re only approximations. If you replace English /t/ and /d/ with ट and ड, it will sound as a very distinctly Indian accent.
Also, त and द, as well as थ, do not match any sounds in English either. The real English /t/ and /d/, and /θ/ and /ð/, are sounds that do not occur in Hindi at all.
To summarize: ट, ड, त, थ, द are sounds that do not exist in English.
The English pronunciations of /t/, /d/, /θ/, /ð/ are sounds that do not exist in Hindi. No matter what anyone from either side does, they can only be approximations of each other.
ट and ड are unaspirated retroflex stops. (Aspirated refers to the coarticulated puff of breath like an [h] sound).
त and द are unaspirated dental stops.
थ and ध are aspirated dental stops.
English [t] and [d] are alveolar stops. The point of articulation is in between ट and त.
English [θ] and [ð] (“th”) are interdental fricatives.
Hindi has no alveolar or interdental sounds. English has no retroflex or dental sounds. While English [t] is aspirated word-initially (sounding in between थ and ठ), it is not aspirated following another letter, and [d] is never aspirated. In English, aspiration is not phonemic the way it is in Hindi, and English speakers do not hear the difference between [t] and [tʰ].
In Israeli Hebrew slang, the word “alek” means something similar to a sarcastic “as if” or “yeah, right”. That means that a name like “Alec Baldwin” can be read as “As if he’s a Baldwin or something.”
Nope. I have a neice called Eloise that her mother constantly refers to as Lou.
I don’t think John Thomas would really make that many people snigger either, TBH. I’ve never heard anyone refer to a penis as a John Thomas in real life, it’s just something I’ve read about.
The voiced “th” is actually followed by an “i” sound in “this.” But the sound you’re talking about isn’t a voiced “th.” It’s a different sound, as comprehensively explained by Johanna. The voiced “th” is produced between the teeth, not on the teeth like the sound at the beginning of Dikshit.
It doesn’t matter how much you tell us it’s a different sound, we won’t hear it that way. Same goes for speakers of other languages when presented with sounds in English that don’t exist in their own language.
What are you saying ‘No’ to? I said द matches ‘the’, so the initial sound in the Hindi Dikshit matches the initial sound of the word ‘the’. Am I wrong?
Also, to clarify what you’re saying, is not टी the same as the English t? and isn’t डी the same as the English d?
त, थ I agree, that’s why I had trouble coming up with a comparable sound for the end of Dikshit.
A side note to that side note: in my experience–and by it’s structure–the Hebrew language has never met a string of consonants that would or could not have vowels stuck in them to sound out. Technically, I think, that means it rarely has initialisms, only acronyms that act eventually live on as neologisms, such as Fanny Mae.
Interesting Discussion. Seeing that my own name is Naman Dixit, I thought maybe I should drop atleast one reply. To those who can’t hear the difference between 1Ð1 (“D"ick) and 1Ð6 (“D"ixit) or 1Ï9 (Shi"t”) and 1Ð4 (Dixi"t”), here’s a DIY:
Speak “Dick” the usual way and try to notice where your toungue’s tip strikes the roof of your mouth when you speak “D”. If I’m not mistaken about accent, it should be around one centimeter behind the base of your upper teeth.
Now put the tip of your tongue exactly where your upper teeth meet the mouth’s roof; flatten your tongue against the roof and trying speaking Dick. It might be awkward a first few times and you might accidentaly end up spitting on someone but you should hear a sound that’s kind of like “Th” of “Their” or “Thou”.
Nice! You really do have to concentrate on tongue position for a sound like this. An English speaker has never had to make their tongue do that in the context of speech. A sound like this is as “foreign” to English speakers as the so-called African language “exoticisms,” or “clicks.” Ref. Gods Must Be Crazy).
t/d is alveolar, not dental for most English speakers. The tongue is not at the teeth but slightly behind them. Put your tongue in place as if you are about to say a ‘t’. You will still have room to move it forward a little bit to where it actually touches the back of your teeth (where they meet the roof of your mouth). It’s a small difference, but it changes the sound.
Here’s the answer to all such questions—what Sanskrit scholars do: International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
ट ṭ, ठ ṭh, ड ḍ, ढ ḍh, and ण ṇ are all transliterated with a dot underneath. Retroflex series.
त t, th, d, dh, and n are transliterated plain with no marks. Dental series. You see the pattern?
So we’d transliterate दीक्षित as Dīkśit for Hindi, and दीक्षित Dīkśita for Sanskrit.
No, what I was trying to say is that I drafted a lengthy reply to Nava to tell her to use IPA, and then I looked at the IPA page to get the symbols and discovered that she had used IPA. Thus I gave myself a headsmack. Apparently that didn’t come across.
You might have picked up on the headsmack as a clue to look at the symbols yourself before replying.
As for John Thomas, having had it explained I can see a mild humor in how that might be funny, but it isn’t as inherently funny to me as a guy named Dick Butkus* or Chin Wang**.
One of various reasons why I cannot get into Alexander McCall Smith’s thrillers with the Botswanan detective heroine. For me, the word concerned has been monopolised / ruined for all time by its LOTR association.
