OT: English phonetic question

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Jan 5, 2004
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OK. I'm still learning quite a bit about the Gurkhas and their history. The phrase KAPHAR HUNNU BHANDA MORNU RAMRO CHHAA is obviously a motto, which I like quite a bit.

How is this pronounced? Is there any inflection or is it like Japanese where there is no syllabic emphasis? Can someone write it phonetically?

Maybe a strange question, but I'm curious.

--Rip
 
Normally Beoram would tackle a question like this, since one of his hobbyhorses is old Indo-Aryan linguistics. But since he's away, I suppose I can pick up some of the slack as resident linguist, even though this isn't my specialty.

What you see is pretty much how you'd pronounce it, using "Continental" vowel values. I believe stress in the Indic languages is penultimate, so the first syllable in all those words would get the stress. (Japanese has stress, too; what I think you're talking about in a "lack of stress" is *prosodic* stress, which is different from the *phonemic* stress used to distinguish otherwise identical words.)

The main difficulty for an English speaker would be the initial "K-", "Bh-", and Chh-". In English, voiced initial stops (p-, t-, and k-) are always aspirated, while voiceless initial stops (b-, d-, and g-) are never aspirated. However, Sanskrit-derived Indic languages have all three initial stops in both voiced and voiceless phonemes: p-, t-, k-, ph-, th-, kh-; b-, d-, g-, bh-, dh-, gh-.

So, the "K" in 'kahpar' would sound to an English speaker more like a [g] because it's unaspirated, and the "BH" in 'bhanda' would sound akwardly breathy. Same with the "CHH" in 'chhaa' -- like an extra breathy [h] sound after the [ch].

The double-A in 'chhaa' is probably meant to represent a lengthened vowel, not a geminated vowel, most likely 'cause it's easier than putting a macron over the {a}.

Hope that helps, though it probably didn't...:o
 
Thanks. It does help (I had only 1 linguistics course in college, but I get it generally).

Now I can practice it a bit.

--Rip
 
On further examination...(keep in mind I'm 10 years since seeing a book on linguistics)...

So it appears that stress is on the first syllable, all vowels are soft (unless at the end of a word), double vowels are lengthened, the 'h' designates aspiration after a consonant (or even after a vowel as in 'kahpar'?)


Finally, the 'u' in hunnu is like "oo" or "uh"? The 'a' in Ramro is 'a' as in 'cat' and the 'o' is as in 'goat'?

Thanks. Sorry to be a pain.

--Rip
 
* My fault; it was "khapar", not "kahpar." But your observation was correct: Unlike English, which disallows the [h] sound in a syllable-final position, you can do it in the Indics.

The "Kh-", then, would be like the syllable-initial [k] in English, though probably with stronger aspiration.

* I should have been clearer about the vowels. By "Contintental" values, I meant how vowels are usually pronounced in Spanish, German, and Italian. So 'a' as in adios, 'u' as in Guten Tag, 'o' as in O sole mio.

The whole vowel thing is tricky when going from English to other languages because English has a couple unusual rules that make it difficult. For example, English vowels always lengthen (in time) before voiced consonants. E.g., the /a/ in "tab" is longer than the one in "tap". This of course has nothing to do with the "long-short" distinction we learn in school, such as "tape" vs. "tap", which have no difference in time length. Plus, unstressed vowels in English always go to the schwa (that upside-down 'e'), which is something few other languages do and which is such a hard habit for English speakers to break when pronouncing non-English words.

* I should probably back off the stress statement I made earlier. I'd always thought that Indic stress was penultimate (second to last syllable) but on thinking it over I'm not so sure. It may be antepenultimate (3rd from last), which is why alot of final-syllable vowels have historically been lost. For example, 'Kumara' > 'Kumar,', 'Shankara' > 'Shankar'. Luckily, all the words in that quote seem to be one- or two-syllable, so it's probably safe to give the first syllable the stress in each. :cool:
 
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