'Th' in English

One day a friend came to me (he knew of my radio background) and said. What a funny RJ she is (he was referring to an RJ on AIR Rainbow FM who had been a colleague)? She says 'those' in such a funny manner. It almost sounds like 'Hose' or 'woes'. I doubled up with laughter. The poor RJ. Being ridiculed for being right.

Now the correct pronunciation of 'th' in 'those' and in 'the' and in 'then' is closer to the 'z' sound in English than the 'द' sound that most Indian speakers approximate it to. If you have read the word 'Ramadan' in English text referring to the Islamic holy month and wondered why 'd' was used instead of 'z'; then the answer lies in the correct pronunciation of the phoneme 'th'. Of course the pronunciation in the original Arabic is closer to 'd'(they pronounce the zvaad as daad), but most of the other languages spoken by Muslims approximate the sound closer to the phoneme 'th'.

There is a similar problem in the pronunciation of the word 'hadees' written in English as 'Hadith' which stems from the correct pronunciation of the 'th' used in words like 'health' and 'thing'. But that I will feature some other day.

Commonly mispronounced words 5 - Zanjeer

A reader of this blog had left a comment asking me to give links of an Urdu Dictionary which is written in Devanagari or Roman script. Now that set me thinking. The problem with the internet is there is an abundance of information but there is no way of checking the credibility. Now before I put anything up here, I check and I double check, but in spite of that I am mortally scared of an error creeping in. But there are many others who don't care. Let me give you an example. Prakash Mehra died on 17th May 2009. Only I know how many times I would have winced when some TV/radio presenter pronounced one of his greatest hits as 'zanzeer'. And this included some seasoned presenters too. Now I decided to check it out online. I searched for the word 'ज़ंज़ीर' on google. I found 155 pages spelling it like that. Then I typed 'ज़ंजीर' and found 8030 hits. Finally I typed 'जंजीर' and found 22300 hits. Anyone who did not know the right answer and searched all three options would have come to the conclusion that the right word is 'janjeer'. Democracy is dangerous. And then there would be those, who would hear some media person calling it 'zanzeer' and just do a google search to confirm. He would find 155 pages and think that must be the right spelling.

This is a word which has been constantly mispronounced over the years - being such a popular film. However, Prakash Mehra's recent death just made the wound fresh once more.

So if you are reading this and are in a position where the way you pronounce a word is likely to be heard by more than 1000 people, please, please, make some effort to check out the pronunciation before going out and institutionalising errors.

Commonly Mispronounced words 4 - equity

Some words really baffle me. When you have amateurs mispronouncing the words, one can rationalise it. But when you have subject matter experts mispronouncing simple words pertaining to their subject matter, it makes you wonder.

One such word found in the financial services sector is 'equity'. The word is simple. 99.99% of the people who belong to the financial sector would know and understand this word. A high percentage of even the non-finance guys would know and understand this word. But the murder of this word is to be 'seen' to be believed. Everybody starts with the 'ee' sound - as in 'ee hai bambai nagariyaa' or the 'ee' sound in 'bee' and call it 'ee-quit-ee'. The correct (and the only acceptable) pronunciation is eck-quit-ee. The eck will rhyme with 'peck' or the 'heck' in 'what the heck'.

Next time you watch CNBC or NDTV Profit or any so called stock market expert wax eloquent about certain stocks, please watch out for the pronunciation of this word. I would surely not buy the tips of a person who recommends equity but does not know how to pronounce it. But then I would not buy stock tips at all.