In English is it proper to write Arjuna, Ganesha and so forth, or should one write Arjun and Ganesh? The delightful desi I date says that it’s the latter. I say it’s the former. One doesn’t voice the -a but it should be written. Who is right? And I’ll need cites.
By the way, my spellchecker recognizes the names of the supreme archer and the elephant-headed deity with the final a, but not without.
Some of us Indians do voice the final “a” in such names. It just depends on the particular sort of Indians you’re dealing with. Do whatever you like.
Pretty much this. Some languages (such as Kannada) have an implied “a” sound at the end of every word, to the extent that while writing, you don’t write the “a” symbol, but always voice it.
Arjun and Arjuna are both perfectly acceptable variants, and would raise no eyebrows.
Keep in mind that “The Languages Of India” is a pretty broad category. It’s like asking whether or not “The Languages of Europe” have a specific feature. Maybe some do, maybe some don’t.
Yep. Kanada, noted above, is a Dravidian language, not and Indo-European language like Hindi.
In the specific case of Arjuna, it’s (virtually?) always transliterated with the final A in English translations of Mahabharata.
My understanding is that this is an artifact of an attempt to phonetically transliterate from Sanskrit (not Hindi). In Sanskrit all final consonant sounds are finished with a - as in about- sound unless there is a little comma like thing (halanth) under the letter - in which case the consonant has a clipped sound.
So, Arjuna should actually be pronounced Arjun"a"(as in about) …not Arjun"aa" (as in apple).
And about 4% of the Indian population speaks languages that are neither Indo-European nor Dravidian in origin.
I’m told that in Kanada one often hears the final eh.
The proper noun ‘Kannada’ actually has two of the quintessentially south Asian sounds in it, that are tough for most English speakers: it has a retroflex D and I think a retroflex N as well, though I might be wrong. my first cousin is a native Kannada speaker.
I was just in India. Both Hindi and Tamil speakers said “Ganesha” and “Arjuna” to me, and colleagues from North and South India who live in the US do the same, FWIW.
Whoosh…a?
That’s some of my finest work. Glad that you got it, at least.
golf clap
So we were both right, and both wrong. Thanks for all the answers.
Wait, so “kannada” is an actual language, not a subtle jab at the stereotypical Canadian tendency to end every sentence with “eh”? :o
On the off-chance I’m not being wooshed as well… Kannada
I do NOT see myself as the all knowing arbiter of all things. When my Primrose says ‘People in India do this, or say this’ I tend to believe her. She speaks Hindi and lived in India for 17 years. It would be the height of arrogance for me, who has never so much as taken a vacation to India, to insist I was right and she was wrong when it came to everyday matters. BUT, when it comes to formal, textbook matters of language and such it’s entirely possible for somebody with life experience to be wrong and somebody with book learnin’ to be right. For example, some one who knows only formal English would insist that ‘youse’ is not a proper word. Some one from South Philly would insist that they hear it used all the time. Never the less, ‘youse’ is not correct, formal English.
I don’t question her knowledge of Hindi as it is spoken everyday. I was questioning only her knowledge of a point of orthography based on what I thought I remembered from several threads here on the Dope.
Doc - Indian languages are 1000s of year old while English in the US has a few hundred year old history. Indian words have mutated / evolved / assimilated and the same word is said differently in different parts of India.
This question is sort of like asking if Christy or Kristy is the right way to write the name. For an extreme example think about Javed and David or Solomon and Suleiman. The answer is it depends.
For example - take Arjun
1> Most central and western states in India, the name is pronounced as : Arjun
2> Most Southern states : Arjuna
3> Northern States (Punjab) : Arjan
4> Eastern States (Bengal / Assam) : Ore-june
5> Rajasthan / Haryan : Arja <nr>. (the last part is a sound that I do not know how to type in English.
For Ganesh :
1> Most central and western states in India, the name is pronounced as : Ga -<nd> - esh
2> Most Southern states : Ganesha
3> Northern States (Punjab) : Ga -<nd> - esh
4> Eastern States (Bengal / Assam) : Gaw - nesh
He’s asking how these states are spelled in English, not how they are pronounced in India. Chinese has more than one way to pronounce place names, too, but there’s still generally an official Roman spelling, even if it doesn’t align with all the languages of China.