August 31, 2010

Vhinay Vinay

The Vinay Health Home in the heart of Thakurdwar (which in many ways means the heart of Bombay) is an excellent place to get excellent Maharashtrian eats. My favourite is a concoction filled with green peas, which I will gladly eat anywhere, anytime, maybe even any amount.

On my last visit there, I pored -- as I am wont to do -- over the menu. These were the different sections in it, all transcribed from the Devanagari:

* Marhatmola Vinay
* Dakshin "Mukhi" Vinay
* Pharali Vinay
* Jain Vinay
* Chatpatith Vinay
* Vinay Sandwiches
* Toasty Tasty Vinay
* Thodkyath Mahatvache
* Garmagaram Vinay
* Vinaycha Thanda Mamla
* Rasbharit Vinay
* Vinay Milk Shake
* Vinay Icecream Milk Shake
* Vinay Falooda
* Vinayche Shakahari Icecream Vhariety

So I have two questions.

One, why is it that we spell it "Vinay", but we spell it "Vhariety"? (Believe it or not, this is a serious question. I really want to know).

Two, why is one section and that section alone spared from being labelled "Vinay" ("Thodkyath Mahatvache" -- which I shall freely translate as "A Few Important Things")?

5 comments:

Rahul Siddharthan said...

why is it that we spell it "Vinay", but we spell it Vhariety?

Ignorance? There is a "v" in Devanagari but no "w", so "white", for example, ends up being written व्हाइट... and they wrongly generalise from that to "variety".

The Tamil transliteration of "wines" is even funnier: it looks like "oyins". I don't know why they can't substitute "w" with "v": "vines" would be much less confusing.

Puppy Manohar said...

Dear Rahul Siddharthan,

Vowel to vowel (wines - > oyins (ஒயின்ஸ்) ) is probably a better approximation according to me than vowel to consonant (wines -> vines வையின்ஸ்).

Regards,

Puppy Manohar

Gouraj said...

q1) Rahul explains it well.

q2)"Thodkyath Mahatvache" must be a header for all the items mentioned below. The bullet is wrongly aligned with the sub-items. If you observe closely, all items below eat are liquids (cold drinks/tea/ice-creams)

Anonymous said...

your translation is wrong (marathi nahin aati aapko?) - 'thodkyat mahatvache' is 'briefly, something important', which is probably the reason why vinay is omitted - in the interest of brevity.

it is poor form to laugh at people's spelling mistakes.

Dilip D'Souza said...

* Between "A Few Important Things" and "Briefly, Something Important" is a vast and unbridgeable gulf indeed. Thanks much for pointing it out.

* You're right. Every word I have written down here in English is a spelling mistake, made as I transcribed it from Devanagari. Especially "Sandwiches". Couldn't they have spelled it correctly, i.e. "Sandwitches", in Devanagari? And I have been laughing at each of them. Shame on me.

Mee kai mhanto, mereko Hindi bhi I don't know.

Gouraj, I didn't think of that (p2). It probably is a meta-header, only printed like all the others.

Glad to see there are linguists here who are masters with non-English languages and their fonts!