Top ten egregious mispronunciation of lyrics

Languages used in Carnatic Music & Literature
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sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

My nomination goes to "Shukha Shounakha". This seems to trip up quite a few artistes, like on the radio this morning :)

girish_a
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Post by girish_a »

Isn't Shuka Shaunaka correct? Shuka Shaunaka Kaushika Mukha Peetam...It is hard to make a mistake there, I think...

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

Some say Suka sounaka. Some others Shuka Sounaka. And other times Sukha Shounaka. Many times differently during the same concert. The different letters Sa, Sha, S'a, Cha all get folded into Sa.

rajaglan
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Post by rajaglan »

I remember from Kumudam (gnani - if mem memory is good) said that 'Sha' in sankar by brahmin is colonial side effect.
I donot remember how he connected it.
Last edited by rajaglan on 28 Dec 2009, 16:02, edited 1 time in total.

keerthi
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Post by keerthi »

rajaglan wrote:I remember from Kumudam (gnani - if mem memory is good) said that 'Sha' in sankar by brahmin is colonial side effect.
I donot remember how he connected it.
unsubstantiated..


shankara is 'one who confers mangala/ auspiciousness'

sankara is 'crossing over/contamination/ migration'

The former word is used in the names of shiva and the Acarya.

rajaglan
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Post by rajaglan »

keerthi wrote:
rajaglan wrote:I remember from Kumudam (gnani - if mem memory is good) said that 'Sha' in sankar by brahmin is colonial side effect.
I donot remember how he connected it.
unsubstantiated..


shankara is 'one who confers mangala/ auspiciousness'

sankara is 'crossing over/contamination/ migration'

The former word is used in the names of shiva and the Acarya.
Keerthi,

Cool explanation. I

Nick H
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Post by Nick H »

How do you pronounce "egregious "?

;)

srkris
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Post by srkris »

The Sh- of Shankara/Shiva/Sharavana etc is commonly transliterated as z- under the harvard-kyoto method, and as Å› under the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST).

For those not familiar with Sanskrit is easy to identify the words that have Å›. They are written both as S and as Sh (for example Siva/Shiva, Sankara/Shankara etc). But eventually Å› is neither s nor sh. It is a different phoneme altogether.

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

Another one that bit me today is "Sayana" as in "Bhujaga Sayana".

rshankar
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Post by rshankar »

Suresh - I get lost well before the 'Sayana' of 'bhujaga Sayana' is hit - bujaga or worse, bujhaga already set my teeth on edge usually.

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

In the off chance that some performing artistes are reading this, I am hoping some concrete benefits could come out of this thread :)

rANi substituted for rAgni is another one that makes me cringe.

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

nick H wrote:How do you pronounce "egregious "?
http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=e ... mit=Submit
Last edited by sureshvv on 31 Dec 2009, 15:59, edited 1 time in total.

srkris
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Post by srkris »

>>rANi substituted for rAgni is another one that makes me cringe.

Shouldnt it be rAj~ni? But Sanskrit has internalized the prakrit rANi.

keerthi
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Post by keerthi »

srkris wrote:>>rANi substituted for rAgni is another one that makes me cringe.

Shouldnt it be rAj~ni? But Sanskrit has internalized the prakrit rANi.
Can you indicate any instances where rANi is used in Sanskrit..?

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

Good observation!
The word rANI (queen) is perhaps of dravidian origin and got passed on to other languages in India!

srkris
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Post by srkris »

>>Can you indicate any instances where rANi is used in Sanskrit..?<<

Hmm, how about words like indrANI?

CML, it's not dravidian by any stretch of the imagination, it's certainly Indic (Indic is the name for the Indo-Aryan subfamily of Indo-European, not generally meaning Indian).

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

indrANI has nothing to do with rANI.
It is the feminine derivative of indra. By the PANinian rule(4.1.49) one has to add 'An' before the feminizing suffix 'I' before these words. Here the female part of
indrs is 'indrA +An +I = indrAnI-->indrANI (because of the intervening 'ra' phoneme)
In Sanskrit the root word 'rAjan' becomes in the nominative rAjA. The feminine is derived by adding the 'I' suffix which yields
'rAjan + I = rAjanI' with the alternate form 'rAj + nI = rAjnI -->rA~nI' (through euphonics). The Tamil word rANI is very ancient (even during puRanAnooRu) which perhaps was also found in arabic (strictly not indic).

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Post by srkris »

CML, thanks for the explanation

Existence in the puRanAnUru is not an evidence of a word being dravidian, it has a large number of Indic words (mostly derived from prakrit and therefore indirectly from sanskrit). I found a few in the kadavuL vAzhttu.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

Just tell me on the basis of your linguistic studies as also through your gut feelings;
Which is older? prAkritam or dravidian (Tamil/kannada/..)...

srkris
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Post by srkris »

Sorry in advance for the long post.

There are 2 things called prakrit that we need to distinguish here.

1. The Prakrit (as a form of speech) contrasted with the Sanskrit form. The Sanskrit form was built on the vedic prototype (somewhat like the current tanittamil movement where some form of redemption activity is happening to make it sound more like old-Tamil, while tanittamil focusses on the vocab, the Sanskrit focussed on the phonetics) while the Prakrit form was the form that had a more natural evolution from Vedic (prAkRta = natural,old). I capitalize the P of Prakrit since this is a proper noun. Sanskrit is considered old-Indic in a linguistic sense while Prakrit is considered middle-Indic, not because Sanskrit is chronologically older than Prakrit, but because Sanskrit is more like Vedic than Prakrit is. So we can derive the Prakrit form of Sanskrit words (because sanskrit represents some kind of redeemed Vedic, even without some major features like the vedic swaras), but not the other way round, due to the application of a theory called geminate inalterability theory (for example inRaikku becomes innikku, and panRikku becomes pannikku in the colloquial language. Innikku and pannikku have a similar structure but we cant devise a common grammatical rule to get back their proper sources since the geminates are inalterable once formed). Once maudgalya becomes moggalla, the damage is permanent, you can't get back maudgalya by linguistic rules, since it is a one way street. This was also a period where writing had not yet reached the Sub-Continent, and any damage to vAk was permanent, there was no reference to older speech, and over time, the Scripture had the risk of becoming unintelligible and therefore lost. Knowing the operation of this theory, the founders of scientific linguistics (i.e. the old grammarians of Indic) exhibited a strong preference for the preservation of the Vedic form. How they came up with the sanskrit form is evident from the words they have used to describe it. They called it vyAkarana ("splitting down"), where they split a word into its constituent parts. Then they used the process of saMskaraNa (building up of the word again from the constituent components that had been analysed in the vyAkaraNa process). The resulting word form was called saMskRta (constructed), and this as expected matched closely with the Vedic form. Grammarians have taken pains to explain differences between Sanskrit and Vedic where the Sanskrit rules did not result in the Vedic word attributing the exceptions normally to "poetic license" (Arsha Prayoga). It is therefore normal to consider Sanskrit as older than Prakrit since Sanskrit is Vedic's representative today and the propaganda that Prakrit came first is ill-informed for Vedic itself has always been considered to be Sanskrit in form even though it was a vernacular that over time evolved into the Prakrit form through natural evolution. This is more like how modern formal tamil is literally no one's mother tongue, but still represents old-Tamil (since it follows the rules of grammar that were written to derive grammatical words that represent old-Tamil), but the real successors of old tamil are the koduntamizh (colloquial) dialects in use that cant be sufficiently explained with the standard grammar. It will be wrong to say that standard tamil form (irukkiRadu) evolved from koduntamizh (kIdu) the same way as it would be wrong to call Sanskrit younger than, or evolved from, Prakrit. It would also be wrong to say that standard tamil was no one's mothertongue since at some point of time, old-Tamil was spoken by people just the same way as Vedic was a natural spoken language.

2. The prakrits (with a lowercase p and in plural) to denote the languages that are based on the Prakrit form. There are many prakrits and each of them fall into 4 major categories as most of us already know: sauraseni, magadhi, maharashtri & paisachi. We don't have multiple languages based on the Sanskrit form because Sanskrit currently follows a unified structure.

The identified prakrits (i.e languages) had a defined start. They did not exist before a point in time. But the prakrit form is as old as the Vedas (or were there in some form even before the Vedas were composed). The same way we should be able to say that some form of Dravidian has always existed in some form after its split from its unknown ancestor at an unknown time. But the individual identified dravidian languages had a defined start when they split from their dravidian sister languages.

Comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges, I conclude that the oldest prakrits were older to Tamil and Kannada (and have influenced all major Dravidian languages), although it is hard to put an age to Prakrit vs Dravidian.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

Thanks for that erudite analysis. But I presume the last word is not written on that issue yet!
Can these be legitimately called 'Indic' ?

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Post by srkris »

Indic is used to distinguish it from other Indo-European language families. It refers to the Indic family of Indo-European. Outside IE research, Indic would stand for Indian I suppose. However the world of IE is very strong in the discipline of linguistics (covering about 75% of the spoken world), and most others follow IE naming conventions.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

My question concerns arabic which evolved outside of the IE branch. And Tamil had arabic affinity dating back to ages.

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Post by srkris »

I do not think Rani of arabic has the same meaning as the Rani of Indian languages. In arabic it is a male noun with a different meaning. Female is Rania.

Hope that answers your query. Yes Tamil has an Arabic connection (not too strong though) and there was a mixed language of Tamil with Arabic influence that is called Aravi (Tamil written in arabic script with lots of arabian loanwords).

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

I guess you are referring to 'arwi' which is considered almost a dead languge.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arwi_language
I guess it will be 'rani' or raani' in arabic. The word could have passed on to tamil and then due to the influence of sanskrit:
raani -->raaNI evolved (since by sanskrit grammar the intervening 'ra' leads to 'na -->Na' and the feminine ends in 'I' as per grammar. Hence you may be right in 'rani' being masculine among arabics which got transformed to feminine 'rANI' in Tamil using sanskrit grammar (though the word has no currency in sanskrit itself) and may have passed on to other Indian languages from south...

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

I found this link: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_m ... name_rania

"RANIA means as Indian name"queen" or "singing Queen"
but in Arabic it means "contented or satisfied by what she has"
in Greek it's a part of "Ourania" which means heaven
it also means "Royal" "

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

...also interestingly notice the masculanisation of 'rANI' into 'rANa' (according to sanskrit reverse grammatical rules) to indicate 'ruler' found among Rajputs!

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Post by srkris »

Yes CML, rANI to rANA is a case of reverse masculization.

But Arabic rani is not related at all to either tamil or sanskrit rani in any way. Tamil has borrowed rANI from prakrit (like lots and lots of other sanskrit & prakrit words found in old tamil such as ilakkaNam, ilakkiyam, mA, to mention a few) and prakrit rANI in turn is nothing but a simplified form of sanskrit rAj~ni.

Indic rAj~ni has cognates all over the Indo-European family, it has structural affinities with IE. We cant randomly speculate based on similar sounding words.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

It must be 'masculinize' :)
check
http://www.answers.com/topic/masculinize

If rANI is in prakrit then how come it did not pass into classical sanskrit ?
My reasoning is that it cannot be derived from any of the existing dhAtus as per pANini.
rAjan is derived from 'ra~nj rAgE' (to please) but 'raN shabdE' (to sound) does not yield 'rANan' with a relevant meaning. You are permitted to coin such a word using the 'kanin' pratyayam but that would mean something related to sounding. For example the dictionary sports the word 'rANikA' (which means a bridle) derived from this dhAtu. Hence my supposition is that 'rANI' was imported into prakrit subsequently and could not be admitted into classical sanskrit!

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Post by srkris »

I don't know what you are talking about. Is there a rule that a Prakrit form of an Indic word should pass into Sanskrit?

rANI is not the sanskrit form. It is a prakritization of sanskrit rAj~ni and entered into tamil from prakrit.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

You claim
rAj~ni (sanskrit)-->rANI(prakrit)-->rANI(Tamil/dravidian))-->rani(ranee)(OED) etc.,
case closed :)

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Post by srkris »

The sanskrit form is rAj~nI
The prakrit form is rAnI
The dravidian form is rANI

I dont know what you mean by OED.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

Oxford English Dictionary!
(It gives the etymolgy as from Sanskrit(rAj~nI fem of rajan king)-->Hindi(rAnI)-->English(rani/ranee))

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

1) btw, how do you say the 'j~' part of rAj~nI ?

2) Can Hindi be considered a prakrit form of Sanskrit? Or only marAthi, gujarAthi and bengAli will qualify.

3) I am still trying to understand what Suresh said which brought up this rANi discussion.

Suresh, what are your expectations? In MD compositions it should be 'rAj~nI' whereas in other languages 'rANi' is OK? Or there are some other rules?

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Post by srkris »

The English word rAni is just the same as the prakrit rAni (and I would presume is borrowed from that source).

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

vasanthakokilam wrote: Suresh, what are your expectations? In MD compositions it should be 'rAj~nI' whereas in other languages 'rANi' is OK?
My expectation is that the singer can both tell and convey the difference and use the one that is appropriate.

I don't think it is strictly Sanskrit vs. Tamil compositions. For example, the tamil Sivan kriti "Devi Neeye Thunai" in Keeravani uses raj~ni, I think. Don't mean to throw a spanner in the "Language" works here :)
Last edited by sureshvv on 06 Jan 2010, 20:50, edited 1 time in total.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

>raj~ni

I asked before, I am still not sure. How do you say the above?

sridhar_ranga
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Post by sridhar_ranga »

I assume the j~n in rAj~ni is similar to the in j~n in words like sarvaj~na, vij~nyAn, j~nyAni, poorna praj~nya, etc.

If so its more common representation in English transliteraruin is jn or gn or jny/gny. (gnAni, vignAnam).

In Marathi, they use the combination dny for the same sound I think (dnyAn = jnyAn / gnAn / gnyAn / gyAn).

ragam-talam
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Post by ragam-talam »

Several people pronounce it as 'gya' insterad of 'jna'. e.g. Vigyaan bhavan for Vijnaan bhavan

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

"O Ranga sayee" instead of "O Ranga shayee" is another commonly heard screw up.

Kudos to Sriram Parthasarathy for doing a neraval at "Shukha Shounakhaadhi" and getting it right consistently. May be singing for the movies has him more careful about lyrics... Not!
Last edited by sureshvv on 25 Jan 2010, 11:15, edited 1 time in total.

Music
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Post by Music »

In Telugu, we have 3 kinds of 'sa' sounds and I thought it is similar in Sanskrit. Here is my understanding of the three kinds of 'sa' sounds.

1. 'sa' as in the first syllable in the word 'sanskrit'. When you pronounce this 'sa', you direct a stream of air very close to the teeth in the front of your mouth.

2. 'sha' as in the second syllable of the word 'vishnu'. You pronounce this 'sh' sound by directing the stream of air to the middle of your mouth.

3. 'sha' as in the first syllables of the words 'shuka', 'shounaka', 'shiva', 'shankara'. This is the most commonly confused one. For pronouncing this, you would direct the air stream neither like 1. above nor like 2. above. You would direct the air stream somewhere in between 1. and 2., so it effectively neither sounds like 'sa' as in 'sanskrit' nor like 'sha' as in 'vishnu'. It definitely sounds different from 1. and 2.

Can any pronunciation experts in Sanskrit confirm/correct the above please?
Last edited by Music on 26 Jan 2010, 00:45, edited 1 time in total.

srkris
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Post by srkris »

Music, I am not an expert, but what you said is very right.

VK RAMAN
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Post by VK RAMAN »

So are the pronouciations in Malayalam

srkris
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Post by srkris »

I found another instance of (what I believe to be) a major mispronunciation of a major song by a major artist.

http://www.charsur.com/charsur/index.ph ... ts_id=2964

She says "bakkala" again and again!!!

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

Really? I hear a 'pa' and not a 'ba'.. May be she can be a bit more plosive on that 'pa' but hers is close to 'pa' than 'ba'. Let us see how others hear it.

sureshvv
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Post by sureshvv »

The very 1st time seems fine. Dangerously close the 2nd and 3rd time.Compare with the "pa" in nilapadi.

srkris
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Post by srkris »

Oops, sorry she is perfect the first time. I heard with headphones this time, laptop speakers last time. I should be more careful though.

However I think she says nilapaTi and volicE instead of nilabaDi and golicE

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

There are four variations with 'pa/ba' and 'Ti/Di' and you say nilabaDi is correct. I hear the other three variations. :) Sorry Gayathri for the micro analysis. srkris started it :lol:

With laptop speakers.

nilabaTi - first time

nilapaTi - second time

nilapaDi - third time

-----------
And voliche or oliche

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

>sridhar_rang wrote :
I assume the j~n in rAj~ni is similar to the in j~n in words like sarvaj~na, vij~nyAn, j~nyAni, poorna praj~nya, etc.<


I am giving the first lines of two songs of tyAgarAja where this diphthong occurs in the beginning and middle of words. I would like to know the correct pronunciations.
1 j~nAnamosaga rAda
जà¥ÂÂ

ragam-talam
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Post by ragam-talam »

Govindaswamy, based on my exposure to Sanskrit and Malayalam (in addition to Tamil) I can tell you that the 'correct' pronunciation does have the 'ja' sound before the '~na' sound. The use of 'ga' sound seems to be a Tamil speciality!
I assume both Kannada and Telugu also use the 'j~na' sound, knowing they are based on Sanskrit.

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