Confusions of India - t and th

So whats the whole confusion with the t and th you ask?

Take a name for instance : Ajit, Ajith

People from the north of India are always wondering why the southies are spelling the name with an extra h in the end. And the people from the south wonder why the northies cut the word short of a sound.

Most people who have done some linguistic studies or know both languages will know the answer to this one straight.. Or if you don't give a shit at all, you can probably read some other stuff here.

The problem is that Hindi has more sounds that what can be supported by the English script.

The 4 letters थ, त, ट, ठ are mapped to only two English equivalents namely - t and th.

Now if you have passed basic arithmetic, you'll deduce that 4 is not mappable with 2.

On the other hand, some south Indian scripts (not Bombay you twit, Dravidian script) for instance Tamil, has only the two sounds त and ट. Yes there is no equivalent sound for थ or ठ in the script.

(Why? because those two sounds are not required to be made while solving the Schrodinger equation.)

So in Tamil it becomes simple - t stands for ट and th stands for त.

where t and th are pronounced exactly as in English. 

t as in melt    &    th as in wealth

Coming back to Ajit and Ajith. 

If spelt Ajit and were to be read out using the standard English sounds would turn out to be अजिट.

Just like Submit would be read out as सबमिट 

Only if it were spelt Ajith, will it be correctly pronounced - अजित 

Just like wealth would be pronounced - वेल्त

Face it, if you see the board Thane in Bombay .. and if you've never heard of that name .. you're gonna end up reading it as तेन and not ठाणे !!

Ideally Hindi should use the capitals of English to map their sounds completely:

Hence t would be ट, T would be ठ, th would be त and TH would be ठ.

ठाणे would then be spelt as THaNe

That would keep the difficulty in pronunciation and the fights between north and south of India a little less.

If you still didn't get it, then I Bret you're the kind that thinks Himesh Reshammiya is best there is, was and ever will be.

- humble me