Zandu Balm or Jhandu balm ?
Many of us have heard the Zandu Balm jingle on TV/ radio… Zandu Balm, Zandu Balm , peeda hari balm (peeda hari is pain relieving) . Till some years ago, whenever I heard this jingle, there would be a dissonance in my mind . The spelling of the product in English was Zandu whereas the jingle was pronouncing the word as Jhandu . For years I lived with this dissonance. Jhandu by the way is derived from Jhanda or flag.
Now Zandu is a Mumbai based company. So one day I mentioned this to a marathi colleague. To my surprise she found nothing wrong, no mis-match in it. On discussing with her, here is what I discovered.
It appears that in Maharashtra the English letter Z is pronounced as Jhed ( actually it is closer to Jhade as in Shade) and not as Zed elsewhere. I will repeat this in Devnagari script . In Hindi Z= ज़ेड (zed) . In Marathi Z= झेड ( jhade). SO quite obviously for a Mumbai company the English spelling of the product as Zandu was correct. So while Zandu might read as ज़ंडू to Hindi speaking people , it is झंडू (Jhandu) to Marathi speaking people.
Some of this confusion can also be seen in Gujarat which adjoins Maharashtra. There is a clan of Kshatriyas known as Jhala Rajputs ( in Hindi झाला ) . They live in Rajasthan and Gujarat. When they spell their name in English, the Rajasthan guys will write Jhala and the Gujarat guys will write Zala.
Many of us have heard the Zandu Balm jingle on TV/ radio… Zandu Balm, Zandu Balm , peeda hari balm (peeda hari is pain relieving) . Till some years ago, whenever I heard this jingle, there would be a dissonance in my mind . The spelling of the product in English was Zandu whereas the jingle was pronouncing the word as Jhandu . For years I lived with this dissonance. Jhandu by the way is derived from Jhanda or flag.
Now Zandu is a Mumbai based company. So one day I mentioned this to a marathi colleague. To my surprise she found nothing wrong, no mis-match in it. On discussing with her, here is what I discovered.
It appears that in Maharashtra the English letter Z is pronounced as Jhed ( actually it is closer to Jhade as in Shade) and not as Zed elsewhere. I will repeat this in Devnagari script . In Hindi Z= ज़ेड (zed) . In Marathi Z= झेड ( jhade). SO quite obviously for a Mumbai company the English spelling of the product as Zandu was correct. So while Zandu might read as ज़ंडू to Hindi speaking people , it is झंडू (Jhandu) to Marathi speaking people.
Some of this confusion can also be seen in Gujarat which adjoins Maharashtra. There is a clan of Kshatriyas known as Jhala Rajputs ( in Hindi झाला ) . They live in Rajasthan and Gujarat. When they spell their name in English, the Rajasthan guys will write Jhala and the Gujarat guys will write Zala.
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