Talk:Anusvara

Removed comment about Finnish

"(cur) (last) 15:12, 9 December 2005 Uaxuctum (removed comment about a supposed Finnish word that neither has anything to do with the rest of the article nor looks believable (its purported meaning is utterly nonsensical)) "

As a Finnish speaker I can prove that it is true that anusvaara means "danger of anus".

--192.130.100.45 14:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

No on the merge

I don't support merging this article with Chandrabindu. Although the two diacritics serve the same purpose in certain languages such as Hindi, they have totally different uses in other languages, like Bengali (where anusvara/onushshar is a voiced velar nasal consonant and chandrabindu/chôndrobindu is nasalization on vowels). --SameerKhan 19:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Devanagari spelling of "Anusvara"

Hi, the Devanagari spelling in the introduction of this article (अनुस्वारः) is the definite nominative form and the correct transliteration would be "Anusvāraḥ". "Anusvāra" is the root form of the word. In Devanagari, the double dot at the end of a word adds a ḥ for the nominative. --JazzmanDE (talk) 10:33, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

In Sanskrit

Kwamikagami, I'm not sure you're quite on point with this edit. In your edit summary you make a reference to a confusion between writing and pronunciation, and that seems to be precisely what's going on here. In Sanskrit, the anusvara is first and foremost a sound (and not a written symbol); almost all the phonetic developments described in the section happened before Sanskrit was ever written. – Uanfala (talk) 21:41, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that could be. But even so, the clause "replacing earlier [l̃] and [ỹ]" is unintelligible in the context it had. What, exactly, is supposed to be the difference between anusvara-[l] and [l̃]? The sources themselves tend to view it as a written diacritic, with its use expanding over time, not the sounds themselves changing. At least, that's the only way I can make sense of statements that anusvara was first used (presumably for nasalized vowels) before fricatives, and later extended optionally (e.g. in Panini) for NC sequences with plosives.

If you know better (I'm currently reviewing Masica), please make whichever corrections are needed, but the old statement implying that Sanskrit-speakers all had cleft palates was a bit much. — kwami (talk) 21:57, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I admit that this text might not be clear, but it's been more than eight years since I wrote it and doing anything about it would require going back to the sources and expending more library time than I have at present. But at least that much is clear: the anusvara is an allophone of some of the nasals, and what has expanded over time is the range of environments that condition it: for example, /-ml-/ would be realised as [-l̃l-] in the earlier language, but as anusvara + [l] in the later.
As for the nasalised fricatives, this statement probably came from Allen's book, but I think I recall seeing them mentioned as a matter of course in other places. Phonetics is not really my area, so I'm not going to make any attempts at reconciling these descriptions with the presumed impossibility of the sounds – but at least I suppose that they're somewhat broad, and not the 1:1 phonetically accurate descriptions of the kind that might come out of a modern experimental study.
And I think you should be very careful when making references to writing in this context: Panini codified a spoken language, and Sanskrit probably wasn't written until well after his time. None of the content in this section before your edits had anything to do with the written language. – Uanfala (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Devanagari script

The second paragraph mentions "candrabindu", but it's not shown in the infobox alongside … "chandrabindu" is shown. The Hindi section also mentions "candrabindu" in the first sentence — but the Nepali section mentions "chandrabindu" in the first sentence. This is unnecessarily confusing for the reader: are "candrabindu" and "chandrabindu" the same, and one is a spelling error?
It's only when the reader goes to the "chandrabindu" page that four alternative spellings are offered: "candrabindu", "chandravindu", "candravindu", and "chôndrobindu".
In the interests of consistency (and not confusing the reader), may I suggest that one speling (e.g. "candrabindu", since that's how it is for the Unicode characters) be used throughout, and that the infobox be changed to "candrabindu" with chandrabindu, chandravindu, candravindu, or chôndrobindu in parentheses to show the alternative spellings? If you agree with the foregoing, then the "chandrabindu" page should be changed to "candrabindu".
Prisoner of Zenda (talk) 07:58, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Anusvara is a sound, not symbol

In short, "Anusvara" is a sound, not a symbol. In detail: the अनुस्वार (anusvar) is combination (sandhi) of two words: अनुः + स्वर. The word स्वर literally means vowel, but it also means sound. Anusvar means "something that comes after vowel". The article lead currently states anusvara is a symbol. This is then contracted in lead itself, and in next sections. In lead, it says Anusvara (Sanskrit: अनुस्वार anusvāra) is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound [...], and then [...] In the context of ancient Sanskrit, anusvara is the name of the particular nasal sound itself, regardless of written representation. In section "Devanagari script", it says In the Devanagari script, anusvara is represented with a dot (bindu) above the letter (e.g. मं). In Sanskrit, and Marathi language, name for the dot representing anusvar is "शीर्षबिंदू" (शीर्ष = shirsh = top/head, बिंदू = bindu = dot). The lead and rest of the article should be corrected. If no objection/response comes here, I will update the article in two-ish weeks. Regards, —usernamekiran (talk) 13:24, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Maybe we need better wording, but I don't see issues with the underlying information: that anusvara is the name of both a sound and a grapheme (in the various writing systems). – Uanfala (talk) 13:58, 19 June 2022 (UTC)