Navin Kabra Profile picture
Sep 29, 2020 13 tweets 5 min read Read on X
As a child, I always wondered why Indian words like राम always got written as "Rama" in English. To me "Ram" seemed like a much better fit for the pronunciation. I thought it was because of British arbitrariness.

Only recently I learnt the real reason for this. /1
Consider गम. How would you pronounce it? Like the English word "gum" right? As a Hindi/Marathi speaker, I can't imagine any other pronunciation.

But, for a Sanskrit speaker, things are different. गम् is pronounced "gum". In गम the full म is pronounced, so it becomes "gum-uh" /2
The extra "-uh" sound which is the difference between गम and गम् is called a schwa

And modern Indian languages like Hindi and Marathi all have an (unwritten) rule that the schwa at the end of a word isn't to be pronounced

This is called schwa deletion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_del… /3
In Sanskrit, all the schwas at the ends of words must be pronounced. If they want you to not pronounce it, they will indicate it by having a half letter there.

So, संस्कृतम् does not have a schwa at the end but राम does. So the correct pronunciation of राम is raam-uh not raam
/4
This is the reason why योग is written "yoga" and not "yog". The correct Sanskrit pronunciation is neither "yogaa" nor "yog". It is "yog-uh"

However (experts correct me if I'm mistaken), I think the correct Hindi/Marathi pronunciation is "yog". /5
I still remember @bibekdebroy's correct Sanskrit pronunciations of महाभारत and योग and other words when gave a talk at @BhandarkarI on the mahabharat*a*. Something we rarely hear these days. /6
And now, because of twitter, you know an extra piece of information that will probably make no difference to your life at all. 😀
People in this thread are asking why "u" is pronounced as "a" in some English words. Here is a long explanation english.stackexchange.com/questions/1451… (which, as anything in English, boils down to: English loves borrowing words from all over the world and making a khichadi of it)
As @pathaksudh points out, modern Indian languages have schwa deletion in the middle of letters also.

पु ल fans will remember भडक मकर vs भड कम कर

Discovering a whole bunch of repercussions of schwa deletion that I hadn't really thought about earlier:

e.g.
In general, it appears to me (based on the replies to the thread) that South Indian languages kept the schwa, while North Indian languages deleted it. Marathi falls somewhere in between so it keeps some schwas and deletes others

If you liked this, check out my newsletter futureiq.substack.com (it is about things I find interesting that I feel people should know about; not necessarily about linguistics or India or any specific topic)
For more delightful but much deeper snippets in linguistics of Indian languages, follow @avtansa

Here he goes much deeper into schwas than I did:

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More from @NGKabra

Jul 15
Who are Indians descended from? Aryans from Europe? Dravidians who've been "here" forever? The Indus valley civilization?

A controversial question for 150+ years, but now we have DNA evidence that answers these questions with a high degree of certainty.

🧵 Image
The controversy originated with the (now discredited) "Aryan Invasion Theory" which began as a respectable theory of how Indian, European, and Persian languages all have a common ancestry: but was quickly adopted by racist white Europeans
It started in late 17xx when William Jones, a linguistic scholar, was appointed a judge of the Bengal Supreme Court. He came to India and noticed striking the similarities between Sanskrit, Persian, Gothic, Greek, Latin.
Read 42 tweets
Jun 21
Devanagari is an extremely elegant script. But this was never explained to us in school.

A thread on the awesomeness that is devanagari.

Let's start with the things that my teachers did *not* teach me in school:
Why do both श and ष exist? (The difference in pronunciation was never explained) Why do ङ and ञ exist?

What is ऋ? Is it pronounced “ri” or “ru”, and in any case, why does it even exist if री and रु exist?
Much later in life, when I understood the meaning of the rows and columns in Devanagari, everything fell into place and I saw the beauty and elegance of it all.
Read 17 tweets
Dec 13, 2023
Ever wondered why "sin" (of trigonometry) is called "sin"? Today, I decided to find out, and the history is fascinating. It comes from the Sanskrit word for bowstring which somehow got translated to the Latin word for the "pallu" of a toga.

Follow me down this rabbit hole 🧵
Let's start with this wonderful image I received from a friend on WhatsApp (source unknown). Here, you can clearly see why "tan" is called "tan". But what about "sin"?

If you think of the solid yellow arc as a bow, then the solid blue line (sine) is the bowstring 🧵 Image
jīvá (जीवा) the Sanskrit word for bowstring is the name given to sin by Aryabhata the inventor¹ of the sine and cosine functions.

How do you get from there to a toga? A series of interesting accidents

--
¹ Ok fine, discoverer 🧵
Read 7 tweets
Feb 8, 2023
WhatsApp (if used well) is one the best things that has happened in communications in recent times.

It is excellent for deepening bonds with friends, relatives, and professional contacts.

But you have to work to ensure that WhatsApp doesn't degenerate into uselessness/toxicity
By default WhatsApp can be too noisy and a distraction. Here's 4 things I have done to improve the situation significantly:

1. Surgical notifications
2. Ruthless exits from noisy large groups
3. Proactive creation of smaller groups
4. Polite policing
Surgical notifications: 3 customized levels of notifications

Disable all notifications for groups—No sound, no popup, nothing

Gentle, low-volume, low-duration notification for 1–1 chats

Proper notification for a selected few people: kids, spouse, boss, important small groups
Read 13 tweets
Jul 13, 2022
Rewriting my thread on #karmanyevaadhikaraste because it is important enough to get right

The first few tweets are a simple introduction and you can skip those because it will be familiar to most Indians

But the rest of the thread, the example applications, are the good stuff
Bhagavad Gita, chapter 2, verse 47:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेसषु कदाचन
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते संगोसत्वकर्मणि

You have the right to action alone, not to its fruits
Don't be motivated by the fruits, and don't get attached to inaction either
The first part is famous and everybody quotes it: focus on your actions, not on the outcomes.

The second part is rarely quoted: don't use this as an excuse to not do anything. Do the right thing (even if it sometimes might seem pointless.)
Read 39 tweets
Jul 12, 2022
Good HBR article (by @TylerCowen et al) on reducing wastage and useless bureaucratic overhead from your hiring process.

Quick overview: /1
Do not have more than 4 or 5 "rounds" of interviews/interactions with a candidate. A study (at Google) showed that the first 4 gave 86% of the value. After that, the value diminished rapidly. /2
For each role, have one person who is the primary decision-maker. Unnecessary democracy and consensus results in worse hires.

A committee will hire a camel when a horse is required. /3
Read 8 tweets

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