Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages

It also presents a challenge to non-native speakers and speech synthesis software because the scripts, including Devanagari, do not indicate when schwas should be deleted.

According to Masica (1993), there has been not "any attempt to deal with it [schwa deletion] (and medial vowel loss in general) in systematic fashion either descriptively or historically across all NIA [New Indo-Aryan] languages.

[6][7] As a result of schwa syncope, the Hindi pronunciation of many words differs from that expected from a literal Sanskrit-style reading of Devanagari.

[8] Correct schwa deletion is also critical because the same letter sequence is pronounced two different ways in Hindi depending on the context.

[9] While in the word नमक the final schwa is deleted, making it Namak and not Namaka, the similarly spelled word नमकीन is pronounced Namkīn, also dropping the schwa in between the m and k. While native speakers pronounce the sequences differently in different contexts, non-native speakers and voice-synthesis software can make them "sound very unnatural", making it "extremely difficult for the listener" to grasp the intended meaning.

For instance, medial schwas from Sanskrit-origin words are often retained in Bengali even if they are deleted in Hindi.

Eastern (and its sub-dialect, Standard) and Central Assamese retained the schwa in medial positions, like নিজৰা (/niˈzɔɹa/, stream), বিচনি (/biˈsɔni/, handfan), বতৰা (/bɔˈtɔɹa/, news), পাহৰে (/paˈɦɔɹe/, forgets), নকৰে (/nɔˈkɔɹe/, doesn't do), which were deleted in some of the Kamrupi dialect, while some others kept them as /a/.

For instance, drākṣa (द्राक्ष) is the Sanskrit word for grape, but the final schwa is dropped in the Kashmiri version, which is dach (दछ् or دَچھ).

Maithili with increased influence of other languages through coming into contact with them has been showing the phenomenon of schwa deletion sometimes with words that traditionally pronounce schwas.

[12] That is akin to the neighbouring Bhojpuri in which हमरा (meaning mine) is pronounced həmrā rather than həmərā from the deletion of a medial schwa.

[14]: 95–111 However, in places where the schwa occurs in the middle of words, Marathi does exhibit a propensity to pronounce it far more regularly than Hindi.

Words like प्रेरणा, मानसी, केतकी retain the schwa sound in the र, न, and त respectively, often leading to their transliteration by native Marathi speakers in the Roman script as Prerana, Manasi and Ketaki rather than Prerna, Mansi or Ketki.

This arises from the original plural marker -एं (as in फुलें phulẽ, "flowers") having degraded to a schwa in modern speech, and the anusvara serves a purpose as a non-deleted vowel even though it is not realized as a nasal.

Odia in its standardised form retains the schwa in its pronunciation as an open-mid back rounded vowel.

However, deletion is more common in a number of non-standard dialects, as well as increasingly in the speech of urban areas as a result of exposure to English and Hindi.

[17] Similarly, systems that automate transliteration from Devanagari to Latin script by hardcoding implicit schwas in every consonant often indicate the written form rather than the pronunciation.

For instance, the word English may be written by Hindi speakers as इंगलिश (rather than इंग्लिश्) which may be transliterated back to Ingalisha by automated systems, but schwa deletion would result in इंगलिश being correctly pronounced as Inglish by native Hindi-speakers.