Saturday 31 August 2013

taksīm = division

A story of Sadaat Hassan MANTO in Roman Urdu / Roman Hindi with definitions of difficult words.

taksīm

ek ādmī ne apne liye lakṛī kā ek baṛā sandūk muntakhab kiyā jab use uṭhāne lagā to vo apnī jagāh se ek iṃc bhī nā hilā

ek śakhs ne jise śāyed apne matlab ki koyī cīz mil hī nahī rahī thī, sandūk uṭhāne kī kośiś karne vāle se kahā, "maiṃ tumhārī madad karūṃ?"

sandūk uṭhāne ki kośiś karne vālā imdād lene par rāzī ho geyā. us śakhs ne jise apne matlab kī koyī cīz mil nahī rahī thī apne mazbūt hāthoṃ se sandūk ko jinbaś dī aur uṭhā kar apnī pīṭh par dhar liyā.

dūsre ne sahārā diyā, dono bāhar nikle.

sandūk bahut bojhal thā. us ke nīce uṭhāne vāle ki pīṭh ciṃkh rahī thī, ṭāṃge doharī hotī jā rahī thīṃ. lekin inām kī tokā ne us jismānī maśakat ka esesās nīm mardā kar diyā thā.

sandūk uṭhāne vāle ke mukāble meṃ sandūk muntakhab karne vāla bahut kamzor thā. sārā rasta vo ek hāth se sahārā de kar apnā hakk kāyam rakhtā rahā. jab dono mehfūz mukām par pahuṃc gaye to sandūk ko ek taraf rakh kar sārī maśakat bardāśt karne vāle ne kahā. bolo is sandūk ke māl meṃ se mujhe kitnā milegā.

sandūk par pehelī nazr ḍālne vāle ne javāb diya, ek cothāyī.
bahut kam hai.

kam bilkul nahī, zeādā hai. isliye ki sab se pehele maine hī is par hāth ḍālā thā.
ṭhīk hai, lekin yahāṃ tak is kamar toṛ bojh ko uṭhāne ke liye kon hai?

ādhe ādhe par rāzī ho?

ṭhīk hai. kholo sandūk.

sandūk kholā geyā to us meṃ se ek ādmī bāhar niklā, hāth meṃ talvār thī. bāhar nikalte hi us ne dono hisedāroṃ ko cār hisoṃ meṃ taksīm kar diyā.

muśkil alfāz ke matlab

muntakhab karnā = cun nā
imdād = madad
jinbaś karnā = hilānā
tokā = umīd
nīm mardā karnā = kam karnā

Monday 19 August 2013

How is Manmohan Singh related to me?

It turns out the current Indian prime minister is a distant relative of mine. He is the son of the sister of father of the father of the husband of the sister of the father of me. This image will help you visualise.

Updated photo

 Old photo (when I did not know the names of three missing relatives.)


EDIT -

Unnamed one is Kalyan Das Chadha.
Chaddha is a typo. Please read Chadha.

Friday 9 August 2013

A little on keyboard layouts

Most of the time I type in English. Rest of the time I type in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Esperanto, and Chinese. I occasionally want to type Korean, Russian, and Japanese. I have got all these keyboard layouts install on Fedora Linux. 

The keyboard layout I use most is English QWERTY. I occasionally try to learn Colemak and Dvorak, but that does not count. You are all familiar with Qwerty, so I will not talk about it. 

Next comes Gurumukhi (Punjabi). I use Inscript. Some people use a phonetic layout. Inscript is more efficient. Here is what it looks like:



I forgot to add Inscript has a big advantage over any other typing method for Indic scripts. Because I can type Punjabi, learning how to type in other Indic script languages is easy, because they all use the same layout with minor changes. Adjustment is as easy, as it is for an English speaker to learn how to type German. The umlaut characters are a nuisance at first, but never a big problem.

Here is the Inscript Devnagari layout.



I have beginning to like the National Language Authority (NLA) Pakistan's Urdu layout because of its efficiency. It is better than the phonetic layout that some other agencies in India and Pakistan support.



I do not know what it is called. Try pronounce "Ŝĝertŭ" and I can excuse you for thinking Esperanto is unlearnable. 



Chinese has a ton of keyboard layouts. Let me name a few - Pinyin (qwerty), Bopomofo, Cangjie, Wubi, Array, Boshiamy, Erbi, and Dayi. This is just the tip of a massive iceberg. I use Cangjie. It is the oldest layout. Chu Bong-Foo created Cangjie in 1976 and made it open source a few years latter. It is popular in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Unfortunately, as I discovered, many people in China may not even be aware of its existence. What a pity!