A Phonological Approach to the Vowels of the Common Words in the Hindi and Persian Languages

The aim of this study is to investigate the vowels in the both Persian and Hindi languages in comparison to the ones in the Middle Persian (MP) language with regard to the words the two languages have in common in order to identify in which direction the phonological processes such as falling and rising of the vowels of the two languages in question have happened. First, an explanation about the origin of the two languages in question is provided in the first section of the article, that is, Introduction. In this section, a tree diagram, which is called Indo-Iranian languages and represents the sub-branch of the Indo-European languages family, has been drawn. The sub-branch includes whatever language that belongs to each Persian and Hindi. Then, the method through which the data have been collected is accounted for. This research has been done through a totally descriptive method in the way that the words in the four languages such as Modern Persian, MP, Arabic and Hindi were studied. These words were selected mainly from the Hindi language in the way that whatever word in Hindi having the same form and meaning as the one in Persian was identified and listed in a table. Subsequently, the listed words were categorized on the basis of the vowel they had, which may occupy either the middle or the final position of the word. Ultimately, they were compared to their Persian pairs, which were of Arabic or MP roots. The results of this study and comparison indicated that those words rooted in Arabic are articulated in Hindi in the same way as they are articulated in Arabic but they are articulated in Persian with vowel falling. The words rooted in Persian are articulated in Hindi in the same way as they were articulated in the MP Period. In this article, the phonetic symbols comprising the vowels and consonants of the Persian, Hindi and Arabic languages are tabulated in the appendix. As the vowels of these three languages are different from each other in their quality and as a result in their phonetic symbols, the authors decided to tabulate them so that they prevent the readers from being misled. Moreover, these symbols are not the same as the ones used by IPA but the same as those used in the references studied for the current research

Keywords:

Middle Persian , Persian , Hindi , Arabic , Vowels