{"id":10249,"date":"2022-03-29T01:41:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T01:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/?p=10249"},"modified":"2022-03-29T01:41:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T01:41:19","slug":"writing-hindi-devanagari-or-roman-script","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/writing-hindi-devanagari-or-roman-script\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Hindi: Devanagari or Roman Script?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Thought

Photo courtesy Nicole Herbert Dean<\/p><\/div>\n

School children in India learn \u0938\u0940\u0916\u0928\u093e Hindi from scratch. Walk near a Hindi medium school and you will hear chants \u092e\u0902\u0924\u094d\u0930 of ‘a’ ‘aa’ ‘e’ ‘ee’ ‘oo’ ‘ooo’ etc. These are the vowels. Then you will hear them chanting out the consonants.\u00a0 If you were to peek \u0924\u093f\u0930\u091b\u0940 inside the classroom you would see a blackboard and written \u0932\u093f\u0916\u093f\u0924 in chalk the Hindi alphabet in the Devanagari script. It is as real as you get. But nowadays people who learn<\/a> and abide by this form of Hindi are known as purists.<\/p>\n

Why? You ask. Because there is a huge shift \u0916\u093f\u0938\u0915 \u091c\u093e\u0928\u093e to write Hindi in the Roman Script.<\/p>\n

Why? You ask again. Because of technology, mainly. Keyboards, phones make it difficult to spell out the intricate \u091c\u091f\u093f\u0932 letters and accents of the language when you are in a hurry.<\/p>\n

Social media users, Bollywood signs, subtitling \u0909\u092a\u0936\u0940\u0930\u094d\u0937\u0915, etc all use the Roman script. This is because it is easy to phonetically spell out the Hindi word with English letters. But when you do, is the pronunciation accurate? Or Anglicized?<\/p>\n

Educators who teach the language will promote \u0915\u094b \u092c\u0922\u093c\u093e\u0935\u093e \u0926\u0947\u0928\u093e the usage of the Devanagari script. Using the actual Hindi letters, reading the script in Devanagari helps one pronounce the words properly. Hindi is a phonetic \u0927\u094d\u0935\u0928\u094d\u092f\u093e\u0924\u094d\u092e\u0915 language. What you see is how you pronounce it. Unlike English which can have a million ways, a word is pronounced.<\/p>\n

Also, there are no English equivalents \u0938\u092e\u0915\u0915\u094d\u0937 to certain ‘t’ sounds and ‘d’ sounds in the Hindi alphabet. Plus add to that the British English and American English with its many aspirations\u0906\u0915\u093e\u0902\u0915\u094d\u0937\u093e\u0913\u0902. No pun intended, but it will leave much to be desired as far as being understood. One certainly does not want to stick out among the locals. But rather to blend in.<\/p>\n

Many an English speaker faces merciless \u092c\u0947\u0930\u0939\u092e teasing for the rolled anglicized ‘r’s’ as well. There are ‘d’ sounds that sound like a cross between a ‘d’ and an ‘r’. So how does one write that in Roman Script?<\/p>\n

Then, what about the ‘w’ sound in Hindi? There is no straight equivalent, but rather a cross between a ‘v’ and ‘w’ sound in Hindi depending on which region you come from. In Urdu influenced cultures it is a ‘w’ sound. So how does one write the word for time in Roman Script? In Urdu it would be written as follows, ‘waqt’. But in Hindi-influenced \u0939\u093f\u0902\u0926\u0940 \u092a\u094d\u0930\u092d\u093e\u0935\u093f\u0924 cultures it would be written as ‘vakt’.<\/p>\n

Proponents<\/a> of the Roman Script say that languages evolve. The author believes and agrees but at the same time, the script of the language needs to be preserved \u0938\u0902\u0930\u0915\u094d\u0937\u093f\u0924.<\/p>\n

So while it is progressive to use the Roman script, the author does not believe it to be beneficial when it comes to pronouncing and getting the full nuance of the language.<\/p>\n

It is imperative especially when Hindi is being adulterated \u092e\u093f\u0932\u093e\u0935\u091f\u0940 with Punjabi, Urdu, and English words to keep the purity of the lettering and script at least, intact.<\/p>\n

So yes, by all means, progress, evolve and keep up with the times. But, please keep the script authentically original.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

School children in India learn \u0938\u0940\u0916\u0928\u093e Hindi from scratch. Walk near a Hindi medium school and you will hear chants \u092e\u0902\u0924\u094d\u0930 of ‘a’ ‘aa’ ‘e’ ‘ee’ ‘oo’ ‘ooo’ etc. These are the vowels. Then you will hear them chanting out the consonants.\u00a0 If you were to peek \u0924\u093f\u0930\u091b\u0940 inside the classroom you would see a…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":10265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3792,11],"tags":[3808,3830,556450],"class_list":["post-10249","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hindi-language","category-pronunciation","tag-devanagari","tag-hindi-script","tag-roman-script"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10249"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10264,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249\/revisions\/10264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/hindi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}