Talk:Gujarati language

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Incomplete Infobox

The article introduction is preceded by what looks to be coding for an infobox. I don't want to just erase it, because I'm sure it contains very good information, so can someone who knows how clean it up? Thanks! -Fsotrain09 22:12, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am surprised to see no reference to Narmad in history of the language.Npindia 11:35, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I removed this from the intro paragraph for being innappropriate for the article topic and an un-substanstantiated claim (some estimates):

The two most common surnames among Gujarati speakers are Shah and Patel; the latter surname has gained an alternate meaning in the United States, as many bearers of the name own and operate mostly small and medium-sized motels throughout the country; indeed, some estimates suggest that more than half of all such establishments in America not affiliated with major chains are owned and/or managed by Gujaratis, many of them surnamed Patel.

In addition, this could easily be offensive (if not much more carefully stated) to Gujarati Americans and other Indian Americans. - Taxman 13:14, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

AgreedZephyrprince 06:33, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I believe it is true that it is a 1/3 of motels are run by Indian-Americans, but it isn't really pertinent to the article - and plays to the stereotype of Gujaratis.

I was thinking about adding a link to the Gujarati Khordeh Avesta (ખોરદેહ અવસ્તા) at Avesta.org but it requires special software to view. I am also not sure if it is standard Gujarati or the Parsi dialect (it is the Khordeh Avesta after all!). Can anyone tell me how diferrent Parsi Gujarati is? Could I learn Gujarati and understand the Parsi dialect for example? Khirad^talk

I would like to state here Khordeh Avesta is the sacred prayer book of the Parsis Zoroastrians in India. Avesta is basically a language ( and a separate topic in itself to discuss ). But since most of the Parsis having migrated from Iran and having lost touch with the old language like Indians / Hindus loosing touch with Sanskrit. But the prayer book is written using Gujarati/Devanagari script but the pronounciations are of Avesta language in which the prayers are composed ( User : Fredy Udwadia / fredyudwadia@rediffmail.com ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.227.130.42 (talk) 11:57, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gujarathi is NOT the 23'rd most spoken language.........it is 25th according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

There are only 2 'official' languages in India....hindi and english. There are 22 'national' languages which includes the major 'regional' languages - pls refer Indian consttution

Revisions

I made some revisions to the article. There were lots of grammatical and spelling mistakes, redundant sentences, and inaccurate or inappropriate pieces of information. I didn't add anything new, as I am not an expert on Gujarati, but I am a linguist specializing in Indic languages so I felt I could remove some of the extraneous or inaccurate information. Please message me if you have any questions or comments about my revisions. --SameerKhan 08:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One would gather from the contents of this article that Gujarati is a recent language with Indo Aryan origins which in turn have linkages with the proto Latin Greek languages.

It needs to be found out what language was being spoken in sunken Dwarka that has been subject of marine archaeologists of late. It is to be found out whether those who constructed such advanced urban infrastructures, as also described in Mahabharat, etc.had any written script more than 5,000 years ago. It also needs to be found out if the sunken Mahabalipuram said to be more than 10,000 years ago, had any script. Whether Dwarka and Mahabalipuram have any linkages.

It probably is time now that marine archaeology be afforded more attention in tracing the origin of written languages.

It probably also is time for emerging out of eurocentric perspective of the world that has been propagated since some time now to be able to correctly interpret available information on development of languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.220.87.132 (talk) 13:24, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hindi?

I'm a little confused. What is the point of including Hindi in the grammar charts? It makes it seem like all languages in India descend from Hindi, which is obviously ridiculously far from the truth. --SameerKhan 02:51, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I made this edit: "Gujarati grammar is very much like that of its Indo-Aryan cousin languages such as Punjabi, Nepali, Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi. As Hindi is the lingua franca of northern India, one of the two national administrative languages of India, and the commander of the overwhelming plurality of speakers in India, this article will show, alongside with English, the Hindi equivalent to the presented Gujarati material, whenever possible." Tuncrypt 23:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I like this version much better; still I want to hear what others think. The new edit makes it seem like Hindi has some sort of authority over other languages of India, which is a misconception people have. Many here in the US, I can attest, believe that all Indians either speak Hindi or that languages like Bengali, Gujarati, etc., are just variants of Hindi. I don't think we should encourage any of these misconceptions. My basic point is, this article is written in English, and it is about Gujarati... so Hindi shouldn't factor in at all. If this article were dedicated to the similarities and differences between Gujarati and Hindi, that would be fine, but there is no need for this sort of comparison in an overview of Gujarati itself.

I will also add that other Indian language pages make no such comparison, and language pages from other parts of the world and other language families do not include such comparisons with related languages, whether or not they are official/national/whatever languages. --SameerKhan 01:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think I will remove the Hindi. You're right, this is an English page about Gujarati, why should Hindi come into play? A comparison with Hindi is what the Hindi Wikipedia version of this topic is for! Tuncrypt 22:12, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic! I'm glad we agree. I hope no one else has any problem with the revision. --SameerKhan 00:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that including Hindi translations in this article isn't relevant. However it could be nice to have such charts in the Indo-Aryan languages article. BernardM 17:00, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gujarati for salwar kameez

An anonymous editor keeps adding a sentence to the article on Salwar kameez saying that the Gujarati word for this outfit is zobha. Is this true, or is the anon having us on? Zora 07:04, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This page should follow the IAST romanization or National Library at Kolkata romanization

In the Passive section there was some violation of the romanization rules [here] I have fixed it but the page should be monitored so that no one removes the [[IAST] Thegreyanomaly 23:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar section

First of all, I must say the grammar section of this article is fantastic. Very thorough. My only problem with it is that it's far too extensive for this article. It has become the bulk of the text, in fact. All of this information really should be moved into a Gujarati grammar article, as has been done for other languages (e.g. Japanese grammar, Bengali grammar, English grammar, etc.). A significantly abridged version of the grammar section can remain. I can do this myself, but I figured that the editors responsible for most of the grammar section can be in charge of choosing what stays in and what remains only in the Gujarati grammar article. --SameerKhan 23:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling of past

Tuncrypt, I'm not very experienced at Gujarati but I've always read conjuncts forms such as આવ્યું or કહ્યું for past tenses. I've read various sources such as newspapers, magazines about Hindu religion and about cinema, a book to learn English from Gujarati, "Teach Yourself Gujarati", etc, but have never seen this ending without the conjunct form. What makes you think it should be written the other way? BernardM 23:29, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

loan-words

how can someone have missed out the word "minute", its used so commonly and yet it is an english word!. i'd add it but i dont have any gujarati characters!

I also would like to add on the Wikipedia Indonesian language page it says "Indonesian words derived from Portuguese include sabun (from sabão = soap), meja (from mesa = table)," The Gujarati article mentions "sabão = soap" but not "mej" which is in Gujarati means "table" also. Can anyone confirm if Gujarati lifted this from Portuguese? PovertyEradication (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Common phrases - pronunciation

A transliteration of those common phrases at the bottom of the page would be nice for those of us who can't read Gujarati. Lost4eva 22:05, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am slightly confused...

In the "Common Words, Phrases, and Idioms" section, it says that "āvjo" means "bye" but is literally translated as "come". How can this be? I myself thought that "āvjo" meant "come" anyway. Yoshiroshin 22:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It does literally mean "come" but I guess it is used as "come again" so when you say "avjo" you are telling the person come again and visit if you will. Akubhai 14:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A similar idiom is used in Bengali. --SameerKhan 02:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sample text

Beside the Gujarati sign I took a photo of was an English translation. Here it is :

Gandhiji's hut - Karadi
Here under the mango tree in the hut made of palm leaves (khajoori) Gandhiji stayed from 14-4-1930 to 4-5-1930 after the world famous Dandi march.
From here he gave impetus to the civil disobedience movement for breaking the salt act started on April 6 at Dandi and turned it into a nation wide movement.
It was also from this place that he wrote a letter to the British viceroy expressing his firm resolve to march to the salt works at Dharasana.
This is the place from where he was arrested by the British government after midnight on May 4, 1930.

By the way I like the idea of using it as a sample text. I'll try to find a more fun picture for a global illustration. BernardM 17:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Though I must say that my translation is by far the more "faithful" one; what they have provided is considerably different from its source, so as to fit in with English style and convention or something. In that case, I think it would be good to show both translations: my faithful one for clarity and for a better understanding of the passage, and the provided one as a real-life example (of Gujarati translation). I will also be putting a transliteration and two more types of translations - a word-for-word gloss (see Hindi#Sample_Text), and a semi-literal translation (difficult to explain, just wait and see). Tuncrypt 17:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's fine. BernardM 20:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Illustration

I've uploaded to commons two pictures that could be used as general illustration for this article and/or for the script article. They are Image:Fruit juice shop in Navsari.jpg and Image:Kameshvar temple sign.jpg. Where could we should put them? Which one do you prefer? BernardM 19:01, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added the shop sign to Loanwords -> English. Tuncrypt 21:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

lolz at me writing Navsari instead of Saraswati... Tuncrypt 02:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Separate phonology?

What about creating a separate article for Gujarati phonology? The section is becoming quite heavy. We could keep what people with limited linguistics skills can understand in the main article and move remaining stuff to a new article. BernardM 09:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I'll get to it. Tuncrypt 15:49, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Tuncrypt 18:13, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Link disambiguation

Gujarati	Meaning	Portuguese
istrī	iron	estirar¹
mistrī ²	carpenter	mestre³
sābu	soap	sabão
cāvī	key	chave
tamāku	tobacco	tabaco
kobī	cabbage	couve
cāju	cashew	caju
pāuṃ	bread	pão
baṭāko	potato	batata
anānas	pineapple	ananás
pādrī	'father'	padre
aṅgrej(ī)	English	inglês

¹ "Lengthen".

² Common occupational surname.

³ "Master".

Sorry, but what kind of key does "cāvī" mean, I'm assuming it's this, right? —May the Edit be with you, always. (T|C) 19:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)hi all[reply]

Oh, I see it's been fixed, thanks. —May the Edit be with you, always. (T|C) 12:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Low vowel transcription

I see that the low vowel of Gujarati is transcribed in IPA as [ɑ]. Is there a particular source that transcribes the sound this way? Considering that it's labeled as a low central vowel, one would expect [a], and from the pronunciations I've heard, it sounds like [a]. The vowel [ɑ] is a back vowel, like that of American English 'got' [gɑt] or 'body' [bɑɾi]. I noticed the same strange transcription in the Hindi article, but there is a reference for that transcription (even though it seems inaccurate to me). --SameerKhan (talk) 09:23, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Click here and scroll down to page 662. [ɑ] is also used throughout here for the low central vowel; esp. check page 120 to see that the symbol [a] then becomes used in displaying a murmured ɑ (to show its greater openness it seems).

I haven't come to understand it myself. Looking at the table to the right, I see that [a] is the symbol for front open, [ɑ] for back open, and [ɐ] for central near-open. It looks that linguists happen to prefer to use the symbol ɑ for Indic's central open, instead of ɐ (whose sound recordings I feel are the closest), and also without centralizing dots <¨>. Tuncrypt (talk) 19:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Very strange indeed! Outside of descriptions of Indic languages (but also in some descriptions of Indic languages), as far as I've seen, /a/ is used far more often to describe a low central vowel without any particular rounding or fronting or backing, although yes, /a/ can also mean a low front vowel. I agree that in languages that only have one low vowel, /ɐ/ sounds like the best transcription. --SameerKhan (talk) 00:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need assistance at Chaunk article

Need Gujarati script for vagar at the Chaunk article. Badagnani (talk) 03:36, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Can someone please write in Gujarati in native script "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"? I've got this romanisation: "Natal ni shub kaamnao Saal Mubarak" but if this inaccurate, please fix. --Anatoli (talk) 05:32, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if it's a bit late, but this is it - નાતાલ ની શુબ કામનાઓ સાલ મુબારક. --92.8.202.26 (talk) 09:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Saal Mubarak" is not traditional Gujarati, but rather an Urdu influence. Traditional Gujarati is "Newton varsha abhinandan" and it should be noted that this is not literally "happy new year," wich would be transliterated as "Khuśa navuṁ varṣa" but means "greetings/felicitations for the new year." PovertyEradication (talk) 20:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Freddie Mercury was a native gujarati speaker?

Legenary rock star Freddie Mercury was probably one of the most prominent native gujarati speakers. He was from a Parsi family. I just can't find any good sources for gujarati as his native language. If anyone can, please do so and add this to the 'prominent speakers' part of this article. Thanks! Alex Ex (talk) 16:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PANNABHAI T SUTHAR

Bold text PANNABHAI T SUTHAR AT-POST; VAGHASAN, TA; THARAD, DIST; BANASKANTHA, GUJARAT 385566 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.61.155.57 (talk) 08:06, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

File:Countries where Gujarati is spoken.png Nominated for Deletion

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Photo illustrating "high linguistic prominence" a little unintentionally funny

I really had to hunt around for any hint of Gujarati in the photo purporting to show that Gujarati has achieved "high linguistic prominence" in certain U.S. neighborhoods, even after I magnified the photo. I think maybe Gujarati appears on one of the banners on a lightpost, but all the other signs are in English. Is there a better photo to illustrate this assertion? Moncrief (talk) 17:14, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also mystified by the caption for this photo [1] in the article, when it says that "Note that 'Fruit Juice Centre' is in English." I've studied the photo, and I don't see anything in English, not that phrase or anything else. If the caption is asking us to note that the translation in the caption itself is in English, this seems too self-evident to be noted. I assume it's referring to the sign in the photo, but, again, I don't see any English there. What am I missing? Moncrief (talk) 19:58, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]