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[jkirk]

I checked the Hindi in my dictionary-- the spelling combined with the gender
of nm surprised me too. My Bangla dictionary doesn't tell the genders of
nouns...but the Bengali pronunciation is a dead giveaway as to whether they
consider an  'a' vowel to be a short or long 'a'.
Apart from cancelling subs, I suspect that either there's a Bengali in the
NYT paperpile, or that they got it off the web--where nowadays pujo appears
more often than puja around this time of year. Also on lists, as well, it
has moved on to pujo if a Bengali person is writing in.
Here's a good example of how 'a's get done in Bangla pronunciation: take the
name of a famous Bengali art historian, Pratapraditya Pal. In Bangla it
would be: Protoprodito Paal. He's done many wonderful books on both Buddhist
and Hindu art.
JK
================


On Monday 22 October 2007 14:15, jkirk wrote:

> In Hindi (apparently unlike in Skt.), pujaa is a nm.

It's quite unusual for nouns to change gender as they move from one language
to another. In fact, this is the first instance of that phenomenon I have
seen. 

> Thus, the final vowel in Bengali pronunciation becomes a sort of 'o'
sound.

What's the rationale for the NY Times to adopt the Bengala pronunciation (as
opposed to the Bengali spelling or the Sanskrit spelling and pronunciation)?

I can only see this as another sign of the corruption of American Sanskrit
by the influence of vulgar languages. I'm thinking I ought to cancel my
subscription to the NY Times over this matter. Any newspaper that can't get
Sanskrit right is hardly worth reading, eh?

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
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