Hindi: हरे कृष्णा

[humann]

I have to create a logo and this is the only typeface I can use, so I'd like to ask the native speakers of the language if this phrase looks alright as it's written here:

I have noticed that the space between the second and third characters in the second word is usually smaller so I'd like to know if the larger space here affects the meaning or readability of the phrase, or if perhaps looks awkward or something.

Thank you very much for your time.

 

[Au101]

It looks alright, yeah. It doesn't affect the meaning and honestly fonts for Indian writing systems have come a long long way, people have put up with far worse than that for a long time.

It does look a bit low-effort though. Cheap. 'That'll do'. If you're creating a logo I don't really see why you can't correct this. Ideally the 'second and third characters' should form a ligature, i.e. they should ideally be joined together into one single character a bit like æ. A lot of older fonts and cheap newer fonts can't do that and it's not strictly necessary. But if you're creating a logo why can't you?

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

हरे कृष्णा

In the Devanagari system, isolated symbols have an implicit "a" / ə sound when nothing is attached to them.
Therefore, your second word reads "krSHana", not "krSHna".

Writing the letters together or separate is not a mere stylistic choice, it has spelling consequences.

IMO your example is wrong and does look akward.

 

[Au101]

Therefore, your second word reads "krSHana", not "krSHna".

Not really MonsieurGonzalito sir because it is written with a half ṣ ष्‍ and not with a full ष. The vertical line at the end of the ष character is missing so it would not really be reasonable to read it as krSHana. For that it would have to be कृषण.

IMO your example is wrong and does look akward.

Again I think this is much too strong. A quick google image search for हरे कृष्ण brings up plenty of examples where the ष्‍ is not joined to the ण as it ideally should be. In fact, in your very own post as seen on my computer we have a gap.

Now granted the gap in the OP's picture is quite large and the design of the letters makes it quite conspicuous, and that does impact readability a little bit perhaps, but then the OP's image is very zoomed in.

Ultimately the phrase doesn't look amazing in that font and if I were designing a logo then I would move the letters around a bit, because that is something you can do in logos...I mean the FedEx logo for example has the d and the E joined together in the logo. That's not a font thing, that's a logo thing... But the idea that it would be misread I think is not really tenable. In fact a lot of Indian writing systems were simplified to make it easier to print and type them.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

Not really MonsieurGonzalito sir because it is written with a half ṣ ष्‍ and not with a full ष. The vertical line at the end of the ष character is missing so it would not really be reasonable to read it as krSHana. For that it would have to be कृषण.

You are right!

I can't write the ष्ण conjunct separated, even if I wanted to ...

 

[humann]

Thank you for your highly useful input everybody! That was precisely the assistance I needed.

As you can see in the new image I joined together the middle characters of the second word, does it look correct now?
I also reduced a little bit the space between the letters of both words as I thought that the logo will look a little better that way in general. Do they look condensed or anything?

If possible please have a look and let me know what you think; any advice would be very welcome!

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

It looks good to me.

 

[Au101]

As MonsieurGonzalito says it is quite correct.

For me personally, from an aesthetic point of view, I think I would actually leave a small gap. Smaller than the original, but I'd have a small gap. The reason for this is that it's (to my eye at least) quite obvious that the the two halves of ष्ण don't really fit together, it's not a very smooth join in my personal opinion. What you would ideally do is alter the shapes a little bit so that the two halves look like they belong together, as, for example, in this picture:

However I'm aware that that could be considered altering the font too much for your brief, so that being the case, it might be better just to have a small gap than a dodgy join. But that's just my opinion.

Also be sure you know what you are writing. In your title you have written हरे कृष्णा, notice the two vertical lines at the end there. In your image you have written हरे कृष्ण, with just the one vertical line. This second one, that you have in the picture, this is correct. But you should know that in Hindi कृष्ण (as in the god Krishna) is often pronounced Krishn or Krishan. The first option, कृष्णा, would be pronounced Krishna in Hindi, but that's a bit by the by as that isn't how the name is correctly spelt in Hindi or in Sanskrit. And it is a Sanskrit name and it Sanskrit it's pronounced Krishna. In Sanskrit कृष्णा would be a completely different word. It is one of the names by which Draupadi is known.



Learned members feel free to correct me, I'm primarily a Sanskritist and no expert in what I hope I may call Eastern religious traditions, nor any contemporary movements that may draw on them. I'm not aware, however, of anywhere where हरे कृष्णा is correct

 

[humann]

Thank you for your insightful reply Au101. 🙂

Indeed, the two halves of ष्ण didn't look very nice joint together like in the previous image so now I left a small gap between them and I also tried to join the two characters in a more smooth way:

1.

2.

I would be grateful if you could take a look and tell me what you think.

As for the difference between the wording in the logo and the thread title, it is due to the fact that the latter was not typed by me but by somebody from the moderating team; the valid wording is the one used in the images.

 

[humann]

Thank you for your insightful reply @Au101 🙂

Indeed, the two halves of ष्ण didn't look very nice joint together like in the previous image so now I left a small gap between them and also tried to join the two characters in a smoother way:

1.

2.

I would be grateful if you could take a look and tell me what you think.

As for the difference between the wording in the logo and the thread title, it is due to the fact that the latter was not typed by me but by somebody from the moderating team; the valid wording is the one used in the images.

 

[Au101]

Well from a language viewpoint both are perfectly correct. As for aesthetics, you're the artist. I think I prefer number 2, what do you think @MonsieurGonzalito?

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

what do you think @MonsieurGonzalito?

#2. Conjuncts are supposed to look, well, conjunct.
I guess any profficient Devanagari reader would readily understand that #1 is still a conjunct, due to the lack of a vertical trace after the SHaa. But it would cause an unnecessary mental blip.

Honestly also, I don' t understand the need of all this image manipulation, the default rendering of the conjuncts by any computerized font is quite graceful. Just to to Google Input Tools/ Hindi, type "hare krshn" , and copy that!

 

[Au101]

#2. Conjuncts are supposed to look, well, conjunct.
I guess any profficient Devanagari reader would readily understand that #1 is still a conjunct, due to the lack of a vertical trace after the SHaa. But it would cause an unnecessary mental blip.

Well they are supposed to be joined together when it is possible to join them together, but plenty of Devanagari conjuncts are properly formed without any joining at all, for example ण्ट and श्क. Now in the case of ष्ण a join is possible, typical, and desirable, and the absence of a join is a flaw in the font, but it is very unlikely to cause people problems in reading a very common word like कृष्ण. Similarly I like to make my श्व like the one on the left, with a join, but I think there are certainly some who would prefer the one on the right!

Also, while ष्ण should be an easy one for most half-decent fonts, I'd be very interested to know how ष्प्र and ष्ट्र्य (ṣpra and ṣṭrya) show up for you? What about ब्भ्य (bbhya) and ब्ज (bja)?

Honestly also, I don' t understand the need of all this image manipulation, the default rendering of the conjuncts by any computerized font is quite graceful. Just to to Google Input Tools/ Hindi, type "hare krshn" , and copy that!

Alas no, not any font, not any font at all. The ligatures add a lot of additional work and complexity to a font, by no means do any and all fonts handle even simple ligatures like ष्ण. It's likely that even the most rubbish fonts will go out of their way to provide common but special ligatures like श्र, क्ष and ष्ट्र, but providing all the possible combinations of ष् is a lot of work, work that won't necessarily be done when ष्‍ is close enough. You just don't get enough benefit out of all the extra work. And indeed, as a Sanskritist, I spent a lot of time finding very, very good fonts that have incredible ligatures like ṅgdhve and ddhrya, but even these often use a disappointingly rough combination with the i diacritic (e.g. त्स्नि) because it would be even more work again to provide bespoke characters for every combination with i. (Although what you could do is make all of your glyphs fit one of a small number of sizes, like you could have ten possible sizes (say) for your glyphs and all glyphs in your font would have to be one of those sizes. Then you'd just need to make ten matching ‍i shapes and you're good to go, but that would be quite restrictive). Anyway, as I say, some fonts do not have a bespoke ष्ण ligature. Lohit Devanagari is one:

And this is the standard Devanagari font for Ubuntu and was used by Wikipedia (Lohit fonts - Wikipedia). And if the OP is required to use a font that doesn't have it then OP is required to use a font that doesn't have it.

 

[MonsieurGonzalito]

ba + bha + ya

In this forum: ब्भ्य
As printed in Microsoft word using fonts Nirmala, Mangal, Hind and Aparajita:

ssa + pa + ra

In this forum: ष्प्र
In Word, with the above mentioned fonts:

ssa + ta + ra + ya

In this forum: ष्ट्र्य
In Word, with the above mentioned fonts (none does a 4-letter conjunct).

ba + ja

In this forum: ब्ज
In Word, with the above mentioned fonts:

 

[Au101]

That's really interesting @MonsieurGonzalito thanks! There are a couple of fonts there with some really impressive ligatures actually. I'm surprised how many have proper joins for some of those, I wasn't expecting that honestly. Nevertheless I'm sure you can see yourself that Mangal (Microsoft's default Devanagari font for however long) is a real weak link here.

For reference, here's what I get with (from top to bottom), Lohit Devanagari, Sanskrit 2003 and Siddhanta:

 

[humann]

Alas no, not any font, not any font at all. The ligatures add a lot of additional work and complexity to a font, by no means do any and all fonts handle even simple ligatures like ष्ण.

Exactly. 👍
I have very few Hindi fonts to work with and the one used here is the best looking one, however it seems to have several flaws in cases such as the one already mentioned. And these flaws can be corrected effectively only with manual work.

From what I understand the version #1 that I posted in my previous post is best one from a linguistic as well as an aesthetic point of view, therefore I guess I will settle with it.

Thank you very much for your precious help @Au101 and @MonsieurGonzalito !

 

[Empress Unicorn]

As a Hindi speaker, the typeface looks totally legible.

 

[humann]

Thanks for your input @Empress Unicorn !
As a Hindi speaker, would mind telling me which one of the following two versions looks better to you?