Languagle #35: Marathi
दिव्याखाली अंधार
Divyakhali andhar
"Darkness right under the lamp."
What it means
The place right next to the light can be the darkest. An oil lamp lights up the room but casts a shadow directly below it. Said when something is missed by the people closest to it, or when a knowledgeable person misses what is under their nose.
How to say it
DIV-yaa-khaa-lee AN-dhaar
Dh and kh are a d and a k with a breath of air after them. Aa is long, as in 'father'.
Word by word
- दिव्याखाली DIV-yaa-khaa-lee: under the lamp (दिवा, lamp; खाली, under)
- अंधार AN-dhaar: darkness
दिवा, lamp, changes shape to दिव्या when खाली, under, is joined to it.
Where it was found
Marathi calls a proverb a mhan (म्हण). This one is from a list of Marathi mhani on Marathi Vaani.
Similar sayings
- Japanese: 灯台下暗し (tōdai moto kurashi). It's dark at the foot of the lamp stand.
- Chinese: 灯下黑 (dēng xià hēi). Dark under the lamp.
How to recognise Marathi
Marathi is written in Devanagari, the script where letters hang from a line along the top, shared with Hindi, Nepali and Sanskrit. Marathi's best clue is the letter ळ, which Hindi and Nepali don't use. Look too for आहे (is), आणि (and) and the endings -चा, -ची and -चे (of). Hindi uses है, और and का instead, and Nepali uses छ and को.
About the Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 80 million people, mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra, whose capital is Mumbai. It has a literary history going back more than seven centuries, including the devotional poetry of saints such as Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram. It is written in Devanagari, like Hindi and Nepali, with a few letter forms of its own, such as the ळ for a retroflex l.
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