Rohinja or Rohingya

[Mole]

There's a debate going on here in Thailand about the Royal Society of Thailand's recommendation to spell and pronounce Rohingya โรฮิงญา as Rohinja โรฮีนจา(ro hin ja).

There's an uproar by many people of this choice of spelling. The Royal Society's reasoning is they're spelling it according to the Burmese spelling and pronunciation.

I am not sure if this is because limitation of the Burmese language to why they're pronouncing it like this.

But even the Rohingya themselves are annoyed of being called Rohinja here in Thailand because they say it's supposed to be "ro-hing-ya" which is correct pronunciation, so the English spelling is correct and the Thais should spell and pronounce it as โรฮิงญา.

An spokesperson of the Rohingya community here in Thailand has already officially requested the spelling and pronunciation to be changed.

I'm starting to understand why most Thai loan words from Sanskrit has some peculiarities when they get spelled in Thai. This may be due to the fact that they're not directly loaned from Sanskrit but from a intermediate language such as Khmer, Mon or Burmese, then to Thai, so they'll have these quirkiness.

There's currently a petition going on to persuade Royal Society to change their official spelling to โรฮิงญา. But they're a bunch of stubborn SOBs and at the moment, they keep their stance and aren't willing to lose face and prestige over this matter.

Edited May 14, 2015 by Mole

[AyG]

If they were basing it upon the official Burmese spelling and pronunciation it would be เบงกาลี.

Edited May 14, 2015 by AyG

[Mole]

I completely agree!

It is becoming a problem for ASEAN and their open border policy in 2016, which makes people from Bangladesh crossing over to Burma and starts to call themselves "Rohingya", then suddenly the world must automatically have sympathy for them.

[AyG]

There's a debate going on here in Thailand about the Royal Society of Thailand's recommendation to spell and pronounce Rohingya โรฮิงญา as Rohinja โรฮีนจา(ro hin ja).

There's an uproar by many people of this choice of spelling. The Royal Society's reasoning is they're spelling it according to the Burmese spelling and pronunciation.

I am not sure if this is because limitation of the Burmese language to why they're pronouncing it like this.

But even the Rohingya themselves are annoyed of being called Rohinja here in Thailand because they say it's supposed to be "ro-hing-ya" which is correct pronunciation, so the English spelling is correct and the Thais should spell and pronounce it as โรฮิงญา.

An spokesperson of the Rohingya community here in Thailand has already officially requested the spelling and pronunciation to be changed.

I'm starting to understand why most Thai loan words from Sanskrit has some peculiarities when they get spelled in Thai. This may be due to the fact that they're not directly loaned from Sanskrit but from a intermediate language such as Khmer, Mon or Burmese, then to Thai, so they'll have these quirkiness.

There's currently a petition going on to persuade Royal Society to change their official spelling to โรฮิงญา. But they're a bunch of stubborn SOBs and at the moment, they keep their stance and aren't willing to lose face and prestige over this matter.

I speak neither Burmese nor Bengali, so I'm relying upon Wikipedia for guidance on pronunciation. According to that source, the Burmese pronunciation is /ɹòhɪ̀ɴd͡ʑà/ and the Bengali pronunciation /ɹohiŋɡa/.

The points of dispute appear to be the final consonant of the second syllable and the first consonant of the third syllable.

For the second syllable, Burmese as /ɴ/, Bengali had /ŋ/. The Royal Society is indeed following the Burmese pronunciation here.

And for the third syllable, Burmese has /d͡ʑ/, so "จ" seems perfectly reasonable.

The Royal Society has done exactly what is has claimed: based its Thai spelling on the Burmese spelling and pronunciation. Whether it was right to do so, rather than using the Rohingya spelling/pronunciation, it's not for me to comment.

(Again according to Wikipedia, the Rohingya pronunciation of the word is /ɾuájŋɡa/. That makes no sense if their preferred Thai version is โรฮิงญา.)

And also in today's news: French people protest that the English speaking world calls "Paris" "Paris", rather than "Pareee" and forget to add the mandatory prefix "Gay".

And finally, a tornado has been located within a demitasse used for drinking a leaf-based oriental beverage.

[Richard W]

I speak neither Burmese nor Bengali, so I'm relying upon Wikipedia for guidance on pronunciation. According to that source, the Burmese pronunciation is /ɹòhɪ̀ɴd͡ʑà/ and the Bengali pronunciation /ɹohiŋɡa/.

The points of dispute appear to be the final consonant of the second syllable and the first consonant of the third syllable.

For the second syllable, Burmese as /ɴ/, Bengali had /ŋ/. The Royal Society is indeed following the Burmese pronunciation here.

As IPA /ɴ/ is actually a uvular nasal, the nearest Thai equivalent would be ง, and indeed the Burmese write it with their letter nga in this word. However, my understanding is that the nasal is more akin to nasalisation of the vowel, and is not specific as to place. What tends to be written for Burmese in the techical linguistic literature is rather 'N', and can be described as a 'placeless nasal'.

And for the third syllable, Burmese has /d͡ʑ/, so "จ" seems perfectly reasonable.

The Royal Society has done exactly what is has claimed: based its Thai spelling on the Burmese spelling and pronunciation. Whether it was right to do so, rather than using the Rohingya spelling/pronunciation, it's not for me to comment.

(Again according to Wikipedia, the Rohingya pronunciation of the word is /ɾuájŋɡa/. That makes no sense if their preferred Thai version is โรฮิงญา.)

I think what we're seeing is assimilation. Spoken Bengali seems to have a tendency to repeat assimilations seen in Pali when presented with Sanskrit spellings. That would explain a spoken simplification from -ngy-. Of course, there may be immense variations in the dialect area, so Bengali is by no means a sure guide. My guess is that the use of yo ying may indicate a first stage of assimilation. The literal transliteration of the start of the Burmese syllable is gy-, which is consistent with someone pronouncing the word with /ɡ/. Unfortunately, we don't have much hard information on this.

It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the diphthong is a result of assimilation to the consonant structure.