Aman Chawla wrote:
> Thanks for the response Patrick. I understand your last sentence: the
> closest you can come to /&eps;/ is using ै
>
Yes, and I believe there is variability in the pronounciation of this
grapheme within Hindi speakers. As mentioned, some authors say it is a
/&eps;/ (open), some say it is a diphtong (such as English "rail").
There is nothing strange about this.
Compare the pronounciation given on these two different sites :
http://www.avashy.com/script/greendemo1.html (the woman pronounces the
letter in isolation differently from the man, but both say /&eps;/ in
aisâ) and the diphtong produced here
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jishnu/101/alphabet/sounds/018ei.wav
(found on
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jishnu/101/alphabet/default.asp?section=0).
You say it is /ae/ (I take it) as in "shall", this is corroborated by
William Bright (op. cit), but Ohala writes in her article that /ae/ only
occurs in English loan words such as "bat" (cricket bat)...
Knowing quite well French phonology and its own diversity, I would
assume the same applies to Hindi: the same letters are pronounced
differently in different regions or even social classes.
> However, in the response given to the following FAQ:
> http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/indic.html#13 you will find this
> sentence: "This zophola_aa can be seen as a special "composite" matra
> to write a new Bengali sound, imported from English."
>
> This is the kind of thing I am looking for: a 'special composite
> matra' to write a new sound in Hindi, imported from English.
>
I don't believe it exists. But what is your goal? Trying to give an
idea of how English is spoken to Hindi readers? I'm not sure a new or
very rare character would really help.
> Mark Davis suggests that: "I just checked with the ICU online demo at
> http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/tr , and "e" is transliterated
> as U+090E "ऎ" DEVANAGARI LETTER SHORT E*. "
>
One has to distinguish between transcription and transliteration. A
transliteration only allows one to preserve the original spelling in the
absence of the original alphabet. It does not indicate how this letter
should be pronounced (see the various pronounciation of the English "e"
in "we", "red", "the", "new", "bottle/some", "clerk") and this was your
original question "how do I represent in Devanâgarî the English SOUND
found in "red", "bed". A transliteration is of no help, a transcription is.
Patrick A.
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