Zaghnal

[roshan]

Indian languages do not have the letter "z" as a native sound. Z is only found in words borrowed from Arabic, Persian or English. Most Indians will pronounce z as a j instead, as they do not have any sound that is closer to z. Indian scripts do not even have letters for z - in most writing systems, it is written as a J with a dot below it.

However, well educated, urban speakers will often pronounce the z's in borrowed Arabic or Persian words correctly - Hindus as a result of English language education, and Muslims as a result of Urdu.

The situation varies from region to region though. For example, in the Sindhi language, due to the use of Persian as an administrative language during precolonial times, z's and j's are always distinguished. In Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu the situation is as I described above (with urban speakers distinguishing and rural ones replacing), while in other languages, such as Gujarati, z is always replaced by j, although this could be changing due to the influence of Hindi/Urdu and because replacing z with j is regarded as a sign of being uneducated.

Hope this post has been informative.