Hindi and Sanskrit alphabet is the same and its every
consonant and vowel has very precise pronunciation
(Article 30) which is not
found in the English language (or any other language of the world). This
is the reason that the exact pronunciation of Hindi or Sanskrit words
cannot be transliterated into English.
In the English language all the words (even the very
simple words like, a, an, the, one and two) have a history of how they
originated from proto-Germanic, Latin, Greek, Romance languages or Old
English, and then how they took the modern shape. During that period their
spelling and pronunciation and also their meaning were changed a number of
times (pp. 184-192). Every letter of English language has a sound which
further changes according to the style of the pronunciation of a
particular word. Thus, sometimes a letter has more than one sound, and
sometimes more than one letter has the same sound. For example: In the
words cat and kitten, c and k
both have the same sound; in the word apart, a has
both sounds, short and long
;
in the words finish, finite and liter,
i is pronounced differently
;
in the words center and sentence, c and s
both have the same sound; and in the words free, freak and
frequency, long e
is written in three styles, ee, ea, and e; and so on.
Thus, the English letters do not have a fixed, precise sound that could be
used in all the situations, whereas the Hindi and Sanskrit letters have a
definite and precise sound.
For these reasons the exact pronunciation of a Hindi or
Sanskrit word cannot be correctly transliterated. People have tried to
do some modifications in their style of transliteration, but sometimes it
worsened the situation. For example: “The Oxford Hindi - English
Dictionary” and also the “Sanskrit - English Dictionary” by Sir Monier
Monier-Williams suggest ‘c’ for
(ch) like church, which is very unusual for an English
knowing person to pronounce ch for c in transliteration.
“Practical Sanskrit Dictionary” by Arthur A. Macdonell fully worsens the
situation when it suggests to pronounce
as k, and kh, g and gh, which resembles
It is certain that nobody would pronounce ch for k. It
transliterates
as ta, tha, da, dha, and also
as ta, tha, da, dha without giving any example
or explanation. Apart from them, some prominent Hindu scholars and writers
in past started using their self-preferred transliteration of certain
words like: atman for atma
,
brahman for brahm
,
jnana for gyan
and samsara for sansar
,
and others followed that wrong trend without any consideration. It is
definite that no Hindi or Sanskrit scholar would ever pronounce brahman
jnana for brahm gyan
.
These writers also started using ‘a’ at the end of a noun, excessively;
just like, Arjuna for Arjun, Ashoka for Ashok, and so on.
Considering these difficulties and misinformations,
to give a general idea of the pronunciation of a Hindi word for a English
knowing person, who doesn’t know the Hindi alphabet, we have
transliterated Hindi (and Sanskrit) words in a very simple way that
follows the general pronunciation of the English letters; and,
for a Hindi knowing person, as he already knows the pronunciation of
the Hindi words, he can easily and correctly pronounce the
transliterated words.
