{"id":5276,"date":"2016-04-25T16:47:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T15:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2016-04-25T16:47:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T15:47:22","slug":"the-jungle-books-taught-you-some-hindi-without-you-realising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/the-jungle-books-taught-you-some-hindi-without-you-realising\/","title":{"rendered":"The Jungle Book’s taught you some Hindi without you realising…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The majority of us have seen The Jungle Book or at least can hum along to \u2018The Bare Necessities\u2019. And we are super excited about the release of the new Jungle Book adaptation, so we thought we would find out how Rudyard Kipling came up with all of the animals’ names.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the film is set in India, many of the names are based on the Hindi <\/a>translation of the animal themselves. For example \u2018Baloo\u2019 is based on the Hindi word Bh\u00e3l\u016b which means bear. Bears represented the idea of protection, courage and physical strength. The bear showed authority and was seen as a good omen and arguably Baloo is Mowgli\u2019s main carer. Similarly, Bagheera is almost the same word as Baghir\u0101 which means black Indian leopard. This is the same with Hathi, which is the exact word for elephant in Hindi.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kipling also used influences from Persian and Arabic, with the tiger’s name \u2018Shere Khan\u2019. The word for tiger in Persian<\/a> is just \u2018Shere\u2019 which is followed by the Arabic <\/a>word for lord \u2018Khan\u2019. Kipling surrounded Mowgli with animals that all represented strong and powerful companions. All of the animals that looked after Mowgli were given characteristics, which made them ideal for looking after the young boy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this,\u00a0the main characte, Mowgli\u2019s name hasn\u2019t come from Hindi or any other Indian language. At times he is named \u2018the frog\u2019 due to his lack of \u2018fur\u2019 and inability to sit still, or \u2018man cub\u2019 by the wolves that raise him, but his name doesn\u2019t actually translate into anything; Rudyard Kipling made it up. Kipling also stated that Mowgli is meant to be pronounced, mow-gli, with the \u2018mow\u2019 rhyming with \u2018cow\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

The influence of Hindi and other Indian languages in The Jungle Book comes from Kipling\u2019s upbringing in India. He was born there before moving to England to be educated when he was 5, and once he’d completed his education he returned to India. The book is based on the Indian jungle \u2018Seonee\u2019 (now known as seoni) however, he had never actually visited this place. Kipling actually used stories from his friends to set the scene of the jungle. Maybe his\u00a0friends told him about the singing bear in the jungle…<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The majority of us have seen The Jungle Book or at least can hum along to \u2018The Bare Necessities\u2019. And we are super excited about the release of the new Jungle Book adaptation, so we thought we would find out how Rudyard Kipling came up with all of the animals’ names. As the film is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[466,24],"tags":[313,118,917,72,738,1445,1531,383,1532],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}