'nja', 'nha', 'gna' And 'nya' - Stories Of A Transliteration

This longish post is on the different transliterations into the English Alphabets of a certain Indian consonant and the possible histories of these transliterations.

First some notation: In what follows, 'NA' will denote the last consonant of the 'ca'-set in Indian alphabets - 'ca' as in 'locana'; we recall, the consonants of the 'ca'-set are 'ca', 'cha', 'ja', 'jha' and 'NA'. It is a matter of some concern that most folks in the northern part of this country have largely lost the original pronunciation of 'NA' - it is often pronounced somewhat like 'gya' which is certainly a deviation from the original sound. In the south, the original pronunciation of 'NA' is still known and used frequently in Tamil and even more so in Malayalam.

If one were to transliterate this 'NA' sound into English (in terms of the phonetics of English), the closest fit is 'nya' but one almost never sees 'nya' used. Indeed there are several other DIFFERENT transliterations in current use; and each seems to have a story of its own.

In Kerala, the 'standard' transliteration of the 'NA' sound in English lettes is 'nja' (for example 'njan' is how 'NAn' (meaning 'I') is usually written in English letters). However, especially in northern Kerala, one also sees 'NA' is spelt 'nha'. Names such as 'Kunhiraman', Kunhananthan',... are examples for this variant. I used to find this northern variant a bit odd (the standard 'nja' is actually even less intuitive in terms of English phonetics and was more acceptable only due to greater familiarity). In Tamil Nadu, 'NA' is transliterated as 'gna' which is still odder (examples are names like 'Gnanam').

These variations appear to have sprung from transliterations of 'NA' done into DIFFERENT European languages - a process carried out over a long time by visitors and missionaries who spoke those different languages; and these diverse transliterations were all apparently adopted unchanged by English - even those that are incompatible with English phonetics(?!). First let us look at the 'standard Mallu' transliteration of 'nja': the Dutch were influential in central and southern Kerala for quite some time. 'ja' is pronounced like 'ya' in Dutch. So writing 'NA' as 'nja' would give it the pronunciation of 'nya' in the Dutch convention - and that sound is about as close an approximation to 'NA' as one can get with Dutch phonetics.

The Portuguese had a strong presence in Mangalore (apart from Goa) - their presence in Mangalore (from where they had some influence over northern Kerala) lasted much longer than their earlier association with Cochin. And in Portuguese, the cluster 'nha' is indeed, pronounced 'nya' - examples are names like 'Saldanha' (actually pronounced somewhat like 'Saldan-ya'). So the Portuguese too have given a fairly accurate transliteration.

As for the transliteration 'gna' prevalent in Tamil-land, it seems to be of Italian origin - and it is the most accurate for, in Italian, the pronunciation of the 'gna' combination is practically identical to the Desi 'NA' sound. And although Italians never were dominant anywhere in India, Jesuit missionaries from there (like the famous de Nobili) spent long years in Tamil country and this 'gna' transliteration must have been their contribution.

And 'gna' could also be of Latin origin - the Latin pronunciation of the cluster 'gna' is the same as in Italian. It appears that the use of 'gna' to stand for 'NA' is found in Bengal as well which did not have much of an Italian jesuit connection so here Latin might have provided the phonetic reference.

So one could concludes that the persistence of these seemingly odd alternative transliterations of 'NA' into English (to the exclusion of the obvious 'nya') contain pointers to some less than well-known nooks of Indian history.