1

I wouldn't say that Hindi has a fundamental problem with inconsistent transliteration. I would say that English has a problem with inconsistent transliteration of Hindi.

2

I would edit to add this but I can't: If Hindi speakers transliterated some English word into Devanagari script in half a dozen different ways, would you say that English had a problem?

3

given that, as I said, there are fairly standardized transliterations for Russian, Chinese and Russian into English It can't be English's fault... ;-)

But I'm right, no? there is no standard transliteration from Hindi into English- unlike Pinyin, Wades-Giles and what have you. Given how much English is used (some would say abused) in India, i think this is a problem that could be easily solved, if only Indian Government/academia got their act together.

4

But in each case there are several such transliterations, and also there are traditional spellings of certain borrowed words/names which do not necessarily correspond to any such transliterations. So in the absence of any consistent use of a particular transliteration, we typically end up with a mess. Thus it is common in Russian to write Fyodor not Fedor, but we usually write Krushchev, not Krushchyov.

And then there is the problem that one can use a transliteration, maybe have the diacritics lost off it if the transliteration system used diacritics if those were significant, and then have it routinely mispronounced. I had an an acquaintance for a period with an Indian gentleman called Mr Seth, a fairly common Hindi surname. It is universally pronounced in this country as the English name Seth, and he even introduces himself as that. But when I enquired further, noting that there is no th sound in Hindi, he explained that it was pronounced more like Shett, with one of the two aspirated Hindi Ts (Hindi has 4 letters we English consider all be to be kinds of T, though of course they don't), and had no doubt lost some of its diacritics which indicated all that.

Then there is the Indian name commonly rendered in English as Bose. It turns out that several Indian languages have this name, in the way that we might say that Peter, Pierre, Pedro, Pyotr, etc are all the same name, which tend all to be rendered into English as Bose, despite the varying pronunciations in the orginal languages. And although we usually say it monosyllabically in English, it generally has two syllables in the various Indian forms.

While we are on this subject, anyone know why is there an h in the normal English spelling of Delhi? I am aware that Hindi has two letters an Englishman might consider to be an L. Whether the h is intended to distinguish between them, or is for some entirely different purposes, I don't know. I observe that the Persian name of Delhi can be represented as Dehli, so another possibilty is that it was intended to represent the Persian name, but got garbled on the way, as happens.

5

I don't know anything about Hindi, but I'm intrigued by Mr. Seth being pronounced Shett in India.

The biblical name rendered in English as Seth is pronounced "shet" in the original Hebrew. But I'm hardly supposing there is any connection! Or maybe there is... who knows?

6

Linguistically, it is just a coincidence that the Indian name Shet or thereabouts is similar to the Hebrew name Shet or thereabouts, the origins are quite different. But it wouldn't surprise me if some Englishman went "Well we pronounce Shet as Seth in English, so we'll call you that".

7

I don't know why, but Biblical Hebew names in shin traditionally have been spelled with an s in English: Solomon, Simon, Israel, etc., and names with tav with a th: Esther, Bethlehem, etc. It may reflect the way they are spelled in the 9Greek) Septuagint.

8

I'd go with #6.

TT won't let me post a reply, saying there is content that is not allowed. Test!!!!!

9

All I can think of "not being allowed" is S - I - N (!) as the name of a letter.

10

It still won't let me post. Israel is not with shin, trying this link

11

At least that worked! Ignore all the extraneous stuff on that site and just concentrate on the difference between the letters, obviously.

12

Right. It's a shin in Arabic. I have no memory.

13

Aaargh! No edit function. It;s a sin in Arabic! (too)

14

Very sinful.

TT is being very uncooperative. Some of my posts on the Middle East forum go through instantly. About an hour ago I had great difficulty posting on that same forum and it didn't appear for ages.Who knows when (if?) this post will turn up...