Pronunciation - قندهار / کندهار

[tor_khan]

Respected Forum Members,

I noted a difference in one of our Member's spelling of Kandahar/Qandahar. A couple of days ago my Mrs and I had this discussion over the pronunciation of the Arabic Qalm/Pen and Kalimah/Word - there's a correlation between the two and of course the pronunciation of the initial phoneme ق or ک is easy to switch.

It is one of the reasons why quite frequently we need to return to the Pashto script to see which pronunciation it is. In English I always write Panjab and not Punjab - and I do this because Panj, not Punj, is five. Similarly according to the International Phonemic Alphabet, to get the /iː/ sound for a non-English word, most probably we would use a double e (ee) for the adjective e.g. Panjabee since the spelling Panjabi would be represented by /ɪ/ and the I sound would be too short (as in city).

Pekhawar/Peshawar is determined by dialectal preference as is Pakhtoonkhwa/Pashtoonkhwa. Notice however, for English speakers who may find the second of both of these easier to pronounce, they cannot escape the final /x/ phoneme (usually written up as /kh/ as in the name Khan).

So then back our beloved city of Kandahar/Qandahar - which one is it? To you is it کندهار or is it قندهار - with that slight difference in sound at the beginning?

[MeemWawMeemNoon]

Is it not one of those 'pe' vs 'fe' issues?

[Admin Khan]

Assalam-Alaikum respected Tor_Khan,

Dagha khu ta wos dera sha poshtana wakrala magar ma khu da dero Kandahariano sara pa dagha barey ki khabarey karey dey, no aksaryat Kandaharian chi jhi hagha کندهار dagha sey noshta ka yey. Oh bazey masharan wayey way "kand" khuzh ta wayey.(like candy)

Wos pa Kandahar ki dagha aksaryat factories che jhe hagha Kandahar dagha sey noshta ka ye, کندهار. Oh pa hukmato oh sarkaro key hum کندهار dagha sey noshta ka ye.


Oh za chey parsiwaanan pezhanama, hagha قندهار dagha sey noshta ka ye.

[Mayana]

Personally, I tend to use 'Qandahar'.. I can't really explain it.. it's not really about pronunciation but rather about spelling.
For example, if you write Arabic with Latin letters, there are two ways of writing الرحمن : Al-Rahman or Ar-Rahman.. The first one is the literal transliteration and the latter is written the way it is pronounced. Of course it is easier to write it the way it is pronounced.. but in my opinion, that constitutes the chance of us slowly forgetting how to actually write it, we might end up writing it ارحمن because the Laam is silent. However, I think it is wrong to do that.

Now it's commonly known that we Pashtuns, from the South at least, tend to not pronounce ف ق ع ح ط ظ correctly. For example, we'll say Apridi instead of Afridi; we'll say Paculta instead of Faculta; we'll say kand instead of Qand (wo Admin Khana, zma pa Khial asli Qand day, Kand na..); we'll say Asib instead of Hasib, we'll mispronounce Azeem and Taariq for example. Similarly, I believe we say Kandahar instead of Qandahar.. which is perfectly fine, I mean if a certain phoneme isn't part of our language, it just isn't. But this leads to a slow change of our formal Pashto to colloquial Pashto.

In all of the other Afghanistan, our beautiful city is referred to as 'Qandahar'.. if we can't pronounce it, that's fine.. but at least we should write it correctly so that the accuracy of language remains conserved. =)

[IamDZJ]

qandahar

[AnGaaR]

Our tajik,hazara,uzbek call it qandahar
most of pashtoons call it kandahar
i call it Kandahar too

[Yousafzai Pakhtun]

We say Qandahar......also it is interesting to tell you people that sometimes when we used to write an essay or something that our teacher used to tell us orally...au daasey word ba makhey la raaghey chey mung ba confuse shu chey pa "Kaaf" ye oleeko au ka' pa "qaaf" sara, noo mung ba da ustaaz na tapos woko chey:
(jee, kom yo kaaf sara ye oleeko "Qandaharee" sara ka "Kashmiree" sara)?
and then he would told us to write it with "kaaf" or "qaaf" ....noo khabara mey daa kawala chey "Qandahar" ba mung as an example pa taur istemalolo...like punjabis say "konsa kaaf qainchee wala ya kuttay wala" we call "ق" as Qandaharey qaaf..khoooo taaso khalqo mung la dagha standard kharab kroooo..lol..

[Nokia_Apridy]

Ekhhhhhhh mata vote ba zaya za ka wachwalo......

QAAF da DRUND QADNHAR NUR HEM KHWAND KAYE..

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

We use ک

ک as in Kafir-e-Azam and not ق as in Quaid-e-Azam.


King regards.

[Nokia_Apridy]

ao da hem sama da..... LZ

[tor_khan]

We use ک

ک as in Kafir-e-Azam and not ق as in Quaid-e-Azam.


King regards.

Hmm ... three points.

1. for being a L E W A N E E Y A ...

2. for the Maseed imitation trick

3. 'cause I love your sense of humour ...

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Hmm ... three points.

1. for being a L E W A N E E Y A ...

2. for the Maseed imitation trick

3. 'cause I love your sense of humour ...

If only you hadn't already been taken.......

lol and thanks!