Hindi: ज़ as related to ज instead of स

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El Ganador

Senior Member
India - Hindi and English
The sound represented by ज़ seems to me more related to स than ज. So, why is ज़ formed by a nuqta under the ज instead of the स (or something else)?


Maybe this helps?:

ज: Voiced postalveolar affricate

ज़:Voiced alveolar fricative

स: Voiceless alveolar fricative
 
    • You are right that the voiced alveolar fricative /z/ (= English z as in zoo = Hindi ज़ z as in ज़िंदगी zindagī) is the voiced counterpart of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ (= English s as in sue = Hindi स s as in सुन्दर sundar).

    Why then is it written with nuqtā below the sign for j ज? The answer is that z is a foreign sound. It does not exist in Sanskrit or (I believe) its direct descendants and is foreign to the Dravidian languages also. In fact the lack of z is an extremely important part of Sanskrit phonology and affects the saṃdhi enormously. As the sound was foreign to Indians when it was introduced to India by Persian-speaking Mughals and later Europeans it was adapted to the phonology of the local languages. You are assuming that the pronunciation follows the writing, but this is not the case. As I'm sure you're aware j continues to alternate with z to this day in modern Indian languages. You will hear people (some people at least) say sabjī in one sentence and sabzī in the next. The Indians heard the z as j. This is perfectly normal. For example to British soldiers the cries of Yā Ḥasan! Yā Ḥosain! by Shia Muslims during the procession of the Muharram sounded like Hosseen Gosseen or Hossy Gossy or Hossein Jossen. From this we get the term Hobson-Jobson which is perhaps a more conscious alteration but the term remains in use to this day for the phenomenon by which foreign loanwords are adapted into languages, e.g. Spanish cucaracha > English cockroach and English riding coat > French redingote.

    So why did (does even) z sound so much like j to Indians? Presumably because of the affricate nature of j. Affricates are usually described as beginning as a stop and ending as a fricative, i.e. as stops with turbulent release. You can thus see how in a language without voiced fricatives a voiced affricate (like j) would seem to be the closest thing.
     
    This might be explainable by underspecification of features. The textbook "Understanding Phonology" by Gussenhoven and Jacobs is a good consolidated resource for understanding features and underspecification, and Lombardi's "The Nonlinear Organization of the Affricate" might also have relevant ideas for the specific question in the OP.

    Here is a possibility for how underspecified feature markings on /d̠ʒ/ and /s/ that might explain why the sound [z] might be perceived as /d̠ʒ/ rather than /s/ in a HU-style phonology that excludes /z/ --

    * Root features:
    - Both /d̠ʒ/ and /s/ must have [+cons].
    * Laryngeal features:
    - /d̠ʒ/ must have both [+voice] and [-spread], to contrast with /t̠ʃ/ and /d̠ʒʱ/
    - /s/ maybe has [-voice], since [z] is not perceived as /s/
    * Manner features:
    - /s/ maybe has [+cont], since alveolar [t] is not perceived as /s/
    - /d̠ʒ/ maybe has [+cont], since [z] is perceived as /d̠ʒ/
    - /d̠ʒ/ maybe doesn't have [-cont], since [z] is perceived as /d̠ʒ/
    * Place features:
    - Both must have [CORONAL].
    - /s/ must have [-ant] or [+dist], to contrast with /ʃ/ (could have both, though only one is needed I think and I'm not really sure which)
    - /d̠ʒ/ maybe doesn't have either [-ant] or [+dist], since [z] is perceived as /d̠ʒ/

    Stated differently, if a UH-style phonology that does not include /z/ specifies /s/ as a sound that is [+cons] [-voice] [+cont] [CORONAL] [-ant], and it specifies /d̠ʒ/ as a sound that is [+cons] [+voice] [-spread] [+cont] [CORONAL], then the sound [z] would have a mismatch with one of the explicitly specified features of the phoneme /s/ (namely, [-voice]), but it would match all of the explicitly specified features of the phoneme /d̠ʒ/.
     
    Last edited:
    Intriguing explanation.
    However, the actual voiced counterpart of /s/ would be /ʒ/ (itself also a "foreign" sound in Hindi), not /dʒ/, wouldn't it?

    Also (and I am asking this out of ignorance, as I don't know what really happened), isn't it more logical to assume that the script simplification (supression of nuktas) did its damage, rather than "the /z/ naturally sounding like /dʒ/ to Indians"?
    We are a writing society, and orthography is a very powerful driver of pronunciation.

    [EDIT] Sorry, cross-post. I was commenting on #2
     
    Right, sorry, I was not thinking straight. My point was, ज़ /dʒ/ is not the voiced counterpart of /s/ स anyways.
     
    MonsieurGonzalito said:
    Also (and I am asking this out of ignorance, as I don't know what really happened), isn't it more logical to assume that the script simplification (supression of nuktas) did its damage, rather than "the /z/ naturally sounding like /dʒ/ to Indians"?
    We are a writing society, and orthography is a very powerful driver of pronunciation.
    Click to expand...

    That last point is only true extremely recently (for more see an interesting summary on Wikipedia Spelling pronunciation - Wikipedia), before the advent of near-universal literacy (and still to this day) phonological processes have been taking place without any reference to spelling, if the speakers involved even had any concept of writing at all. In any case it usually goes the other way, with people trying to adapt their speech to the written word by adding sounds or syllables that were long ago lost in speech if they ever existed (for example pronouncing often with a t). One does not tend to see differences between sounds that exist in speech being lost under the influence of spellings. The Americans have no trouble flapping their ts and it makes no difference to them that there is not a special letter for it. We do not find ourselves unsure whether to pronounce th in English as in think or as in there because the orthography gives us no help on that score.

    In any case, we may be a writing society, but India has a wide variety of different writing systems a very different history with writing.

    What's more consider ड and ड़. Nobody is in danger of getting these two confused. There is nobody who says गाडी one moment and गाड़ी the next. We do not tend to find the nuqtā being forgotten about here because the difference does matter to speakers. The reason why it may go astray in सब्जी is it doesn't matter to speakers.

    And of course you'd then be back to the original question wouldn't you? Why did the Indians, whose writing system is actually masterfully and intricately laid out (as much as its scripts may differ from one another) and who have an astounding history of the study of phonetics decide that they should represent the sound /z/ by putting a dot under a j ?

    Also much as we might all doubt Wikipedia as a source I think you will find this article extremely informative

    Hindustani phonology - Wikipedia

    There are also a number of threads on this forum on similar topics. I'm sure I once found a brilliant summary of which dotted letters were distinguished which suggested that (almost) everyone distinguishes ड/ड़ and ढ/ढ़, most people can tell the difference at least between फ/फ़ and ज/ज़, and as for क/क़, ख/ख़, ग/ग़ some people distinguish them, but not many in modern Hindi. Meanwhile some only distinguish ड/ड़ and ढ/ढ़. I wish I could find it again.

    Anyway notice something interesting. F actually seems to be taking over from Sanskritic ph in Hindi regardless of spelling, but z is in no way replacing j in modern Hindi, instead j and z alternate not because the spelling comes first but because the spoken language comes first.

    As to the fact that the Persian-derived sounds are more commonly distinguished in Urdu (where to your point the script does distinguish them) I would say there's clearly a lot more to that than simple orthography. It is possible (even probable) that modern Indian education in Hindi might emphasise Sanskritic sounds and spellings whereas an education in Urdu ghazals, the Islamic faith and the Arabic language might emphasise Arabic and Persian sounds and spelling. That doubtless has an effect. I'm sure that Indian schoolchildren could be brought up in the difference between क/क़, ख/ख़, ग/ग़ and (most relevantly to us) ज/ज़ and then maybe the nuqtā would not be forgotten about then. But once again I feel that that would be creating a difference that was not there when ज़ was chosen to represent z, rather than reinstating a difference that was lost because ज़ was chosen to represent z. Indeed I should think that education in English is probably a factor that sustains z and f among modern Hindi speakers and might have a lot to do with the reason those are often distinguished whereas क/क़ are not.

    But all of these fascinating speculation is I'm sure relevant to the very disparate and diverse collection of dialects known by some (to the chagrin of others) as "Hindustani" it doesn't really say so much about the past. These sounds were introduced into India hundreds of years ago. The Nastaliq script was used for Hindustani in India for a long time. The history of literacy in India is long and complicated. The fate of /z/ in India is a topic with thousands of years of history! To assume Devanagari spelling as the primary factor in the alteration between j and z among even educated Hindi speakers is not something I personally would call 'more logical'.
     
    I remember that @littlepond jii said once that, among the Indian languages, Hindi has in fact a comparatively higher retention of the "foreign" consonants.

    So no doubt there are other forces in play, as not all Indian languages are Indo-Aryan, and even among the Indo-Aryan not all of them use the Devanagari script.

    Come to thik about it, I hear Telugu types all day saying "jiiro", "Gonjaalo", etc.
     
    Yes and Tamil likewise uses its letter j (which is itself not 'pure' Tamil being used for Sanskrit and other loan words) with a modifier for the z sound: ஃஜ (although Wikipedia suggests ஃஸ is also possible, ஸ being another special letter used for s in Sanskrit and other foreign words (s is a common sound in native Tamil words but it occurs as an allophone of ch in almost free variation with it making it sometimes necessary to use a letter which is specifically for s)). I'm not sure how exactly that came about though as Tamil phonology is no small subject.
     
    The only major Indo-Aryan with a "native" [z] is Assamese - and it is written জ / ঝ / য which in Bengali (literary) are used to write 'j' and 'jh'.
     
    Alexu said:
    The only major Indo-Aryan with a "native" [z] is Assamese - and it is written জ / ঝ / য which in Bengali (literary) are used to write 'j' and 'jh'.
    Click to expand...
    In some of the Pahari and Dardic languages, such as Kashmiri, z is also used in words of Indian origin, and is often interchangeable with j. In eastern Bengali dialects and Sylheti, original j has been replaced with z.
     
    Au101 said:
    In fact the lack of z is an extremely important part of Sanskrit phonology and affects the saṃdhi enormously. As the sound was foreign to Indians when it was introduced to India by Persian-speaking Mughals and later Europeans it was adapted to the phonology of the local languages.
    Click to expand...
    I agree with the gist of your post but one correction: The z sound was in all likelihood introduced in the Delhi region (and thus into Hindustani) during the rule of Muhammad Ghori and the subsequent Delhi Sultanate - more than 300 years before the Mughals. It may have been introduced even earlier in Punjab under the Ghaznavid dynasty, and even earlier in Sindh under Arab rule, but little is known about the extent of Persian/Arabic influence on the languages of those regions prior to the Delhi Sultanate period.
     
    desi4life said:
    I agree with the gist of your post but one correction: The z sound was in all likelihood introduced in the Delhi region (and thus into Hindustani) during the rule of Muhammad Ghori and the subsequent Delhi Sultanate - more than 300 years before the Mughals. It may have been introduced even earlier in Punjab under the Ghaznavid dynasty, and even earlier in Sindh under Arab rule, but little is known about the extent of Persian/Arabic influence on the languages of those regions prior to the Delhi Sultanate period.
    Click to expand...
    Thank you, please forgive my lazy surface level history, as a Sanskritist obviously if the year has four numbers in it and it's AD I'm basically uninterested. And really anything post Gupta Empire is just modern decadence really 😋
     
    Something still bothers me, in the spirit of the OP.
    Even if the speakers, or non-linguistically trained people perceive that sonority trumps other articulation traits (which I think is essentially what @aevynn jii says in #3) as a reason for choosing ज़ as the sign, it still seems odd that the devanagari script, which prides itself to be so scientific and logical, has also gone in that direction.
     
    Au101 said:
    Thank you, please forgive my lazy surface level history, as a Sanskritist obviously if the year has four numbers in it and it's AD I'm basically uninterested. And really anything post Gupta Empire is just modern decadence really 😋
    Click to expand...
    Why not look into Gandhara, which must have always had contact with "z", or the Kushanas, then? It's them who started using the Greek character zeta for both z and j.
     
    The character ζ represented (in ancient Greek) a double consonant, not the /ʒ/ sound.
    It is not known precisely what sound(s) it represented (/sd/? /ds/?), but, in any case, it is suggestive that there is already there some hinted sonority and some sort of occlusion, akin to /dʒ/.

    Based on @marrish Saahib latest comment, I start to see how sounds articulated in that part of the palate can evolve in any direction, really.
     
    marrish said:
    Why not look into Gandhara, which must have always had contact with "z", or the Kushanas, then? It's them who started using the Greek character zeta for both z and j.
    Click to expand...
    Lovely to hear from you again marrish Saahib.

    I was mostly intending to make fun of myself and not being completely serious. But no doubt a good and thorough book on the history of the Indian subcontinent has long been on my wish-list. I suppose the trouble is thoroughness is not easily achievable in just the one book.

    I think MonsieurGonzalito you might find yourself surprised what sounds in one language sound like to the speakers of another language, especially when the murky business of phonology as opposed to purest phonetics comes in. Sometimes, when confronted with a foreign word or name, people will substitute sounds that on the face of it may seem absurd. What's more sometimes the 'foreign' sound that is replaced actually exists in the language, but it might only exist in certain places, for example. A good example off the top of my head would be the voiceless palatal fricative /ç/. This sounds to English speakers like their sh and that is how they are likely to pronounce it. Never mind that the sound exists in standard British English pronunciations of /hj/ as in human. Or on a similar theme take for example English ng and Hindi ङ. In both English and Hindi this sound exists, in English it is actually free to be used at the end of a word and intervocalically. But it is forbidden in both languages at the start of a word. Thus, even though we English speakers should find it straightforward to pronounce the Vietnamese surname Ngô (perhaps not the tone, but the initial ng at least), we tend to say no. And yet we have the ng sound. I am told, on a more tangentially related topic, by friends of mine who studied Korean that baseball is very big in Korea, but Korean has open syllables and a word like English strike is taking the mickey really. So apparently (and I haven't been able to verify this myself) it is (or perhaps was, this is a few years ago) common in baseball stadiums in Korea to hear the crowd chant suh-tuh-rye-ee-kah!
     
    Ultimately, I believe that the OP's perplexity (and mine) came from the fact that we are too accustomed to a certain "vowel chart layout" in which some articulation traits are privileged over others. It is a simplification so that we can represent it (mentally and visually) in a two-dimensional fashion. But, as @aevynn jii was trying to explain, articulation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon.

    And also, as you point out correctly, just because some articulation possibility exists in a language, it doesn't mean that it will contribute decisively to conform a phoneme in every language. In other languages, it might contribute to form allophones of another phoneme, already defined by other traits considered more important.
     
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