Ha Ga conundrum
If you know Tamil (or any Tamil person close enough), you would know that we do not have the stronger sounds like ख (kha), घ (gha) etc. But even more important is to know that we use the same letter (க) for क (ka) and ग (ga). And we do not have letters for certain sounds like ह (ha), ja (ज) at all — there are some letters used (ஹ, ஜ) but we call them ‘Vada mozhi ezhuthu’ (Letter from a North Indian language). Now, these lead to hilarious outcomes because we keep mixing them up, not just in newer words but also regular ones that we use daily. That is what this post is about.
There was this friend (Tamil speaking)I had whose name is “Nagabooshanam”. His Yahoo user-id though was “naha”. Then there was this other friend (non-Tamil) who was wondering why he put an ‘h’ there. To Naga though, it was a strange question — There are many people who pronounce his name as “Naha”. Even he would pronounce his name with a ‘g’ when telling the shorter version (Naga) and with an ‘h’ when telling the longer version (Nahabooshanam). What was this question of “Why the yahoo user-id has an ‘h’?” When he told that he uses G and H interchangeably, the non-Tamil friend was not satisfied with the answer. Not even now, actually. He still asks, “How can you just interchange letters like that?”. We can, Sir because we do not have a separate letter to differentiate between these.
Same goes with ‘ka’ and ‘ga’ too — We name someone as ‘Sankar’ but call him ‘Sangar’. We name someone as ‘Prabu’ but call him as ‘Brabu’. We name someone as ‘Gowtham’ but call him ‘Kowdham’. If you had noticed carefully, we did not just replace the G with K. We also replaced the ‘th’ with a ‘dh’. That is because we use the same letter (த) for त (tha) and द (dha). (If you wonder why I used tha and dha rather than ta and da, you should first read this). So people you call as Vinod will be called as Vinodh by us but we will also write their name as Vinoth. You say balcony, but we say palgany.
The behavior is a lot pronounced in North Indian (read: Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Urdu etc.) words that have crept into Tamil over the past 2.5 millennia. The typical example I give for this is the word ‘Jati’ (जाती) meaning ‘caste’. Most of us call it ‘Jadhi’ (ஜாதி) but some of us even call it ‘Saadhi’ (சாதி) — corrupting every syllable of the word in the process. Another common example I give is the word ‘Megh’ (मेघ) meaning cloud, which became ‘Megam’ (மேகம்) in Tamil — All good so far, but we pronounce it as ‘Meham’ (மேஹம்).
This issue is even more pronounced (pun intended) with people who claim to have some knowledge of Sanskrit (read: Brahmins, but definitely many others too). They end up “over-correcting” and try to replace every ‘ga’ with a ‘ha’, assuming that the word should have originally been a North Indian word, so it would have had ‘ha’ and ignorant Tamils would have made it ‘ga’. While it works for some words like ‘Mahesh’ (where Tamils would have called it Magesh), over-correction happens in others. Over-correction happens in two ways: (a) The word is a Tamil word in its original form, example: Sogam will be replaced with Soham by the over-correcting crowd. (b) The original Sanskrit word itself had a ga sound. We already saw the Naga/Naha thing above. Other examples: They would say ‘பாஹம்’ (Baham) instead of ‘பாகம்’ (Bagam), even though the original North Indian word is also with a ‘ga’ (भाग) — meaning ‘part’, not ‘run’.
We already saw another example with Meham above, causing all the mayhem.
PS:: While other South Indian languages have special letters for all these (ka, kha, ga, gha… ja, ha etc.), my hypothesis is that they use those letters only in words that are borrowed from Sanksrit. So far, it has held true with words that I have come across. I am looking to invalidate this hypothesis. Help me.
PPS: The over-correction behavior is not just between Hindi-Tamil, but also with English-Tamil. As you would know sounds like ‘a’ in ant, cat, rat does not exist in Tamil. While we do use the sound correctly for these smaller words, for words with more than one syllable we struggle. For example, we would say Kaattarpillar for caterpillar till we realize it is wrong. After we realize it is wrong, we end up over-correcting things, where ayer (air) becomes aer, wawlmart becomes waelmart, and fuhshion becomes faeshion. (Refer to this for the letter combinations I use). I am confident I have messed up a bunch of things right here. Excuse me. Other common area where we are made fun of is in the sound ‘Aw’ like Orange, where we say Aarange. Of course, this is not restricted to Tamil, and all Indian languages do this corruption and over-correction. Example: Malayalees saying “Four”ty for Forty and once they realize this is wrong, over-correcting for Fort with Fart; Hindi speakers saying Plate-form for platform and over-correcting for Kate Winslet with Cat Winslet; and so on.
PPPS: When you colonize others (so to speak) and impose your “Universal culture” on them, such corruption of your words are bound to happen. Just ask the people of England about what we Indians have done to their language. No? Okay.
Update on 14-Apr-2022:
Fittingly, I read this on the Tamil New Year’s Day:
So, as much as I can make fun of my brethren to have picked up words from the North and corrupting them, it isn’t (purely) out of incompetence or the primitive nature of language — as a naive reader might interpret. Scholars like Tholkappiar has considered this and has told that the words from northern languages should adopt Tamil phonetics. A part of me wants to debate the “Why” of it, but I do realize that it is much beyond my pay grade.
