Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 August 11

= August 11 =

According to orthodox Hindu interpretation
The following is currently cited at vedas,
 * "According to orthodox Hindu interpretation the Vedas are apauruṣeya"

the following is interpreted from the sentence that's from a reference book. Can the current citation be used for the actual citation?BalanceRestored 11:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * "According to the orthodox views of Indian Theologians" This sentence is from the reference book.


 * This is not really a language question; the Humanities section of the reference desk would have been more appropriate. I find the substitution of "interpretation" for "views" a bit curious (interpretation of what?), but otherwise not particularly significant. Obviously these theologians will not be Christian theologians who happen to have Indian citizenship. They are Hindu theologians. Presumably they are adherents of the orthodox school in Hinduism, and what the source presumably intends to say, while doing this in an awkward fashion, is: According to the views of orthodox Hindu theologians, .... A simpler replacement text than the one you mention is: "The orthodox schools in Hinduism view the Vedas as apaurusheyatva." Their being viewed as apauruṣeya is the very quintessence of what it means to be orthodox in Hinduism. However, the notion of orthodoxy is only introduced in the next paragraph of the article, and it looks as if the two paragraphs should be swapped and at least partially merged to avoid a strange duplication.  --Lambiam 05:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Why do you say "obviously these theologians will not be Christian theologians who happen to have Indian citizenship"? There are theologians in America who discuss Unitarian Universalism, evangelical Christianity, Islam, and animism, without necessarily belonging to any of these faiths. Is the situation somehow different on the other side of the globe? Tesseran 18:26, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
 * But could you reasonably ascribe "orthodox views" to a theologian who does not believe in the tenets of the religion to which these orthodox views are supposed to pertain? Would the "orthodox view" of a Christian theologian on the Vedas be that they were authored by God and not by humans? I don't think so. It is a reasonable presumption that the author of the reference book had Hindu theologians in mind in penning down the phrase. --Lambiam 01:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation
How do you pronounce this: æ ?

I cannot seem to find the pronunciation in the article. Thanks, 212.120.231.214 12:46, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe that it depends upon the language, but as a native English speaker I would pronounce it differently in different words. I may be wrong in doing so, but I automatically pronounce it the way that I would if it were ae rather than æ.
 * --Falconus 13:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * As a symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, [æ] is pronounced like the "short A" sound of English words like "hat" and "trap" in most accents. —Angr 14:51, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
 * In words like "encylopædia" and ""hæmoglobin" it is pronounced "ee". SaundersW 17:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It's usually an -ee- sound, often an -ay- sound, rarely an -a- (as in hat) sound. Unfortunately, it depends on the word, so if you don't know the word it's best to check it in a dictionary which includes pronunciations. You can't even rely on the same syllable having the same sound in different words - Phaedra is Feedra, Phaeton is Fayt'n. In Anglo-Saxon, the æ (called ash) had a sound very like the -a- in hat. Xn4 02:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In early Latin (and modern Icelandic) /æ/ is an [ai] diphthong like in the English words 'hi' or 'right. Haukur 00:08, 13 August 2007 (UTC)