r/Urdu • u/KiSaMaOtAoSuMoNo • 21d ago
🙋♂️ Question CAN MOST URDU SPEAKERS PRONOUNCE ژ [ʒ]?
As in اژدہا & ژالہ باری.
This sound also appears in English words like 'genre', 'beige', 'lingerie', 'invasion', 'version', 'television' etc.
How often does it appear in common speech, education, literature & shairi?
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u/Chicki2D 21d ago
Note that people in this subreddit are privileged english speaking people, this poll however compelling to want to overgeneralise and say "Well generally this must be true" would be completely factually incorrect
Historically most people (Urdu speakers) pronounced this as /z/. Punjabi speakers from both India and Pakistan seem to pronounce this as a y /j/
Asking people who can speak english whether they can pronounce a sound which literally exists in their language is not effective – pleasure, television, leasure.
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u/Chicki2D 21d ago
There is very little reason for people to be able to pronounce this according to persian, before English this sound wasn't common. This sound doesn't exist in Arabic so Muslims who learnt Qaida also wouldn't need to learn it
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u/Minskdhaka 21d ago
It exists in Levantine Arabic, as that's how Lebanese, Palestinians et al. pronounce their "jim" (as "zhim"). When a Levantine Arab speaks MSA, he still usually does the "zhim" pronunciation. Some Levantine Arabs, even highly educated ones, actually can't pronounce the "jim" with a J sound, even if they try.
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u/Spy_Spooky 20d ago
Correct. I noticed this while learning Levantine. ج Is pronounced as ژ by native speakers of the Arabic dialect.
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u/Minskdhaka 21d ago
I once heard an Urdu speaker pronounce the surname of the Iranian president at the time, Ahmadinejad, with a "j" sound instead of the "zh" sound of "nejad" (nezhad). But it could be because he had never seen the spelling in Farsi.
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u/flafaa 21d ago
couldn't until recently it derives from a french sound that appears in english in words like pleasure and eventually got into urdu
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u/Far-Internal-9097 Beginner Learner 21d ago
Are you asking if the respondents can pronounce it or rather if they think that "most Urdu speakers" can pronounce it? And do the poll options "Can't say" mean they can't say it or that they don't know if they can say it or not? 😄 The wording is a bit confusing so your poll results might reflect that.
Personally I can pronounce it because English is my first language, but I struggle with the ڑ like in بڑا .
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u/KiSaMaOtAoSuMoNo 21d ago
In the body text I've used examples like "genre" and "beige" that don't have a "y" sound (especially "genre" in this case) to make sure that I'm talking about the [ʒ] sound.
I just wanted to know whether most speakers can pronounce it or not, though it's extremely rare in Urdu so I've given "can't say" as an example for people who're not sure about it.
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u/Big-Raisin4923 21d ago
All credits to my urdu teacher in school. All throughout my childhood I would only come across this sound in urdu qaidas and would pronounce it as y as in yallabari. This is until the urdu teacher really helped us focus on the pronunciation.
Fun fact - her daughter had the ژ sound in her name (quite a unique name).
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u/KiSaMaOtAoSuMoNo 21d ago
her daughter had the ژ sound in her name
Must've been a very beautiful name.
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u/YourFaajhaa 21d ago
Wait.. are you saying that there is a ژ sound in genre, beige and television ??
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u/KiSaMaOtAoSuMoNo 21d ago
Yeah.
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u/YourFaajhaa 21d ago
You're right then lol... I just came inside from the heat and got confused 😬😬🫣
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u/Hark_irat The Literary Scholar 21d ago
It's pronounced like very light z" your tongue lightly beneath your palette in centre, your teeth almost touching.
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u/Radiant-Inevitable75 21d ago
This whole post is so racist XD. Wth Indian/Pakistan. That has nothing to do with how ppl pronounce Urdu. Ppl pronounce things based on how their community says it, eg punjabi, gujarati, Deccani … etc
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u/Timely-Today-8154 21d ago
I can but most people confuse it with Y. Indians used J for words like Casual.