Thanks for sharing! I always love looking at the hand-painted advertisements when I'm back in India. I almost never see it in the cities these days (billboards have taken over), but back in my parents' villages, a lot of older painted advertisements (like Maha Cement) are still there on the walls that run past the main street.
On a side note, I have an HTTP200 license plate and I want to get some nice Indian truck style lettering saying HORN <HTTP200> PLEASE around it :)
bjackman 34 days ago [-]
I visited India about 10 years ago and I often saw hand-painted advert murals for global products like Coca-Cola. I thought this was a really cool thing to see! It's nice to hear these things are still visible. I wonder if anyone is still painting them? It would seem surprising, but then it was certainly surprising to me 10 years ago too so I would not bet my life against it.
kamaal 34 days ago [-]
>>I wonder if anyone is still painting them?
Yes, its quite thing even today. The banners tend to tear and fly away due to high winds.
So painting is still a thing in pretty much all over India. I even knew a neighbour who would do it. Like he painted our street address on our home. He also did many such things on highways.
Not sure if you know this, most such painters are illiterates and will have a hard time writing anything by hand. So its less of a font painting, more like a art form for them.
Only a while back, even movie posters were painted and quite honestly they would be stunning. I have seen them as a kid and would inspire awe.
On a tangential note, a classmate of mine had a flare for it, and he even did some projects with making huge mega massive stunning artistic displays with paint and thermocol, not sure what he is doing now, but back then those things looked quite impressive.
zem 34 days ago [-]
a project that has been on my todo list for years is to crowd source the dividing line between "horn ok please" and "sound ok horn" (I saw the latter for the first time when I lived in Bangalore, but I gathered it was the common version in the south, which implies the existence of a border marking the transition)
What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood.
muststopmyths 34 days ago [-]
"horn please", to tell people to honk while passing.
OK was originally a separate thing that used to occur in locations other than between the two words. I distinctly recall this from my childhood. Don't know the origins of it but there is some suggestion on the internet that it was copied from Tata trucks which had the logo of the OK soap (a lotus).
They could occur in the current order, but it was not necessary. It should still be read as separate from the "horn please" phrase.
As the country became functionally more illiterate over the years (yes, probably a controversial opinion :) ), the three words were just rote copied inline and painted on trucks, with the meaning lost to time.
I would love to see a reliable source for this. All I have ever found is people on the internet asserting this to be true, but no actual evidence (in the form of contemporaneous pictures or documents from WW2).
__rito__ 34 days ago [-]
It is just Horn Please. OK is a historical artefact.
During WW2, due to fuel shortages, Indian trucks often switched to Kerosene.
OK means: "On Kerosene". OK was painted on the back of trucks and other vehicles to warn other drivers to maintain a safe distance because Kerosene is highly flammable.
Due to another meaning of OK, they just kept doing it. [0]
More flammable than gasoline? I’m not buying this one at all.
detaro 34 days ago [-]
It says "than diesel" in the link, but I don't think diesel engines would've been common at all at the time. To my knowledge they only became popular post-WW2.
gopalv 34 days ago [-]
> What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood.
I was told that this was the polite honk triplet - the two honk call and one honk response.
"honk honk" / "honk"
"horn ok" / "please"
lelandfe 34 days ago [-]
As a type nerd, wowza; this is why I come to HN. I'd never even think to look for this. Thanks for the share.
Love the over the top Amrit D.J. Band ones; they remind me of old school Barnum & Bailey signs.
bapak 34 days ago [-]
The Philippines has similar billboards and painted jeepneys you might like. Lots of signs have now been replaced by advertisement banners though (Coke prints your store sign, all signs look the same, coke logo bigger than your store name)
manas96 34 days ago [-]
I've always observed a curious thing within India regarding the Devnagari (Hindi) and Latin (English) scripts. Essentially all English words are always written in Devnagari, but it's rarely the other way around. For example it is much more likely to see इंग्लिश टू हिंदी than "angrezi se hindi".
My personal theory is that this is because you can make every sound you hear in English using the Devnagari script, but not the other way around.
vinay427 34 days ago [-]
> My personal theory is that this is because you can make every sound you hear in English using the Devnagari script, but not the other way around.
This is not very close to true. English (even a given accent) has a rather high number of phonemes, and they don’t overlap very closely with Hindi. What is probably more relevant here is that Devanagari is relatively phonetic so writing in it is useful to describe English pronunciations, more so than the English script is for Hindi (or English, for most unfamiliar words).
I think both you and GP are correct, but in different ways.
It's true that the English language has a very large number of phonemes... but accents tend to regularize/restrict these phonemes. For example, a typical bilingual speaker of Indian English and Hindi will replace instances of the /æ/ phoneme (as in "blast" or "fast") with another phoneme like /a:/ (as in "father"). Which isn't that unusual since /æ/ is pretty uncommon among languages.
Other rare English phonemes include the dental fricatives, i.e. the "th" sounds in "ether" (voiceless) and "either" (voiced). Speakers of Indian English often replace this with a dental stop, a "t" sound (voiceless) or "d" sound (voiced). (Note that Devanagari has a _lot_ of stops, so this is one place where it cannot be cleanly encoded into the Latin alphabet without diacritics.)
So overall: while I think Devanagari can't encode e.g. American English, it can actually do a pretty solid job of encoding Indian English, but not the other way around.
awalGarg 33 days ago [-]
Sounds like a reasonable theory but do you have an actual example? The one you gave:
> For example, a typical bilingual speaker of Indian English and Hindi will replace instances of the /æ/ phoneme (as in "blast" or "fast") with another phoneme like /a:/ (as in "father"). Which isn't that unusual since /æ/ is pretty uncommon among languages.
does not apply to Indian languages because most of them have daily-use-words with the /æ/ sound.
ashishb 34 days ago [-]
> My personal theory is that this is because you can make every sound you hear in English using the Devnagari script, but not the other way around.
Not true.
There are phonemes which are similar but distinct.
For example
- `v and w` map to the same thing in Hindi
- th and थ are allophones but different sounds
Hindi written in Devanagari is highly phonetic (not perfect but near perfect). However, English is not phonetic at all. E.g., "Th" in Then is different from the "Th" sound in Father.
devilbunny 34 days ago [-]
We must be using different forms of English, then, because they sound the same to me. “Thin” and “then” do not.
umeshunni 34 days ago [-]
Indeed.
In US pronunciation, Then is ðɛn and Father is ˈfɑðɚ.
In UK (received), Then is ðɛn and Father is ˈfɑːðə(ɹ).
In Indian English, Then is ðɛn and Father is ˈfɑːd̪ə(r)
ashishb 34 days ago [-]
Sorry I meant think and not then.
anon291 34 days ago [-]
Devanagari has much more phonetic structure than English spelling.
The English Latin letter arrangement holds a tenuous phonetic connection to pronunciation half the time, whereas the devanagari usually indicates exactly how you say it.
anilgulecha 34 days ago [-]
Perhaps explains why Indian accent is the way it is - most of the time it's a literal phonetic translation. Words like "champagne" are source of joke for any English learner, but even a simple word like "nature" has a phonetic translation of "Na two rae".
As a Bollywood superstar famously quotes: English is a funny language.
anon291 33 days ago [-]
It's that plus the fact that half of spoken Hindi is actually English words cobbled into the language similar to how English was latinized due to the normans and french
OJFord 34 days ago [-]
I'm not sure if I don't understand, or completely disagree, but if you look anywhere 'digital' like Reddit for example, a lot of Hindi is written in Latin script. WhatsApp too in private communication, where people don't have or haven't understood how to use a devanagari (or transliterating) keyboard on their phone.
As a Britisher learner it's frustrating¹ actually, because there is a standard for how to do this - IAST, for Sanskrit/derived generally - but of course that's not what native speakers use casually. E.g. your 'angrezi se hindi' would be 'añgrezī se hiñdī' but anyone writing Hindi with those accents is foreign or an academic. (Also people will casually write 'ay' instead of 'e' ए or 'ee' for 'ī' ई, etc. cf. 'paneer'.)
[1: The frustration is because it leads to ambiguity, whereas IAST is 1:1 and so preserves the phonetic nature of devanāgarī, and tells me exactly which t/d/r sound, if it's aspirated, etc. which a fluent native layperson's anglicised interpretation really doesn't. They might write gora & gora and know from context if that's gora or ghoṛā, but if I don't already know the word a gora like me is stuck.]
ashishb 34 days ago [-]
Many foreign learners have written about it.
Essentially, one can follow conventions around oneself or try to write and get an English spelling that sounds closest to Hindi pronunciation. And there are no academic rules around it that one is taught in schools in India.
I learnt about IAST only after seeing how foreigners transcribe Sanskrit texts in Latin.
> your 'angrezi se hindi' would be 'añgrezī se hiñdī'
That should be 'aṅgrezī se hiṅdī' per IAST.
In Devanagari: अंग्रेज़ी से हिंदी
If it were ñ instead of ṅ, the Devanagari would be अँग्रेज़ी से हिँदी which is incorrect.
OJFord 33 days ago [-]
Thanks, I'm slack on that because I can't type it!
(I also am often unsure which is correct, since as you no doubt know it's so common to drop the चंद्र and write हूं for example where it's properly हूँ )
tanduv 34 days ago [-]
In a lot of "technical" situations, people tend to opt for the well established English counter parts for nouns or concepts. eg even a native Hindi speaker will use कंप्यूटर / computer over संगणक / Sanganak
davchana 34 days ago [-]
Related, there are many painters, who work as employees at truck repair or denting painting shops, and write generic words like TANK on Diesel Tank, or like OK BYE TATA on rear bumper, or simply names, with dome petals around them. They start with a yellow rectangle, and then paint black lines as negative space, eventually bringing out yellow letters out.
asadm 34 days ago [-]
I am a noob, but is the Zohran Mamdani (new NYC mayor candidate)'s campaign also using this style of typeface for the logos etc. It looks similar.
lelandfe 34 days ago [-]
From a search it seems it was largely born from NYC bodega signage (which is ~every culture on the planet; my bodegas over the years have been Pakistani, Senegalese, Ghanaian, Haitian, Mexican...) but some Bollywood posters' influence (one article says he asked for it specifically, others that that's just an inspiration). So, yes.
rmk 33 days ago [-]
It would not be surprising, because Mamdani's mother is Mira Nair, a renowned filmmaker (who is primarily makes movies for a western audience, but is heavily influenced by Bollywood).
knifie_spoonie 34 days ago [-]
Do you have any links that we can check out? I'm curious to see what they look like now.
34 days ago [-]
OJFord 34 days ago [-]
Tangential novel recommendation: A House for Mr Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)
Wow, it seems this newspost isolated all Hindi Speakers (mostly Indians !!! ) watching news.yc
shayonj 34 days ago [-]
This is v cool! thanks for sharing
artur_makly 34 days ago [-]
Can someone now Vibe-code a web font-generation tool that converts these typographic gems into full embeddable web-fonts?
ethan_smith 34 days ago [-]
Fontself Maker for Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop or Glyphr Studio can convert vector drawings of these sign paintings into usable web fonts, though capturing their hand-painted nuances remains challenging.
On a side note, I have an HTTP200 license plate and I want to get some nice Indian truck style lettering saying HORN <HTTP200> PLEASE around it :)
Yes, its quite thing even today. The banners tend to tear and fly away due to high winds.
So painting is still a thing in pretty much all over India. I even knew a neighbour who would do it. Like he painted our street address on our home. He also did many such things on highways.
Not sure if you know this, most such painters are illiterates and will have a hard time writing anything by hand. So its less of a font painting, more like a art form for them.
Only a while back, even movie posters were painted and quite honestly they would be stunning. I have seen them as a kid and would inspire awe.
On a tangential note, a classmate of mine had a flare for it, and he even did some projects with making huge mega massive stunning artistic displays with paint and thermocol, not sure what he is doing now, but back then those things looked quite impressive.
What the heck does "HORN OK PLEASE" mean anyway? I had seen it my whole childhood.
OK was originally a separate thing that used to occur in locations other than between the two words. I distinctly recall this from my childhood. Don't know the origins of it but there is some suggestion on the internet that it was copied from Tata trucks which had the logo of the OK soap (a lotus).
They could occur in the current order, but it was not necessary. It should still be read as separate from the "horn please" phrase.
As the country became functionally more illiterate over the years (yes, probably a controversial opinion :) ), the three words were just rote copied inline and painted on trucks, with the meaning lost to time.
See: https://trucksfloor.com/en/blog/horn-ok-please-on-indian-tru...
During WW2, due to fuel shortages, Indian trucks often switched to Kerosene.
OK means: "On Kerosene". OK was painted on the back of trucks and other vehicles to warn other drivers to maintain a safe distance because Kerosene is highly flammable.
Due to another meaning of OK, they just kept doing it. [0]
[0]: https://www.fr8.in/blog/why-is-horn-ok-please-written-behind...
I was told that this was the polite honk triplet - the two honk call and one honk response.
"honk honk" / "honk"
"horn ok" / "please"
Love the over the top Amrit D.J. Band ones; they remind me of old school Barnum & Bailey signs.
My personal theory is that this is because you can make every sound you hear in English using the Devnagari script, but not the other way around.
This is not very close to true. English (even a given accent) has a rather high number of phonemes, and they don’t overlap very closely with Hindi. What is probably more relevant here is that Devanagari is relatively phonetic so writing in it is useful to describe English pronunciations, more so than the English script is for Hindi (or English, for most unfamiliar words).
A very incomplete list of languages by approximate number of phonemes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...
It's true that the English language has a very large number of phonemes... but accents tend to regularize/restrict these phonemes. For example, a typical bilingual speaker of Indian English and Hindi will replace instances of the /æ/ phoneme (as in "blast" or "fast") with another phoneme like /a:/ (as in "father"). Which isn't that unusual since /æ/ is pretty uncommon among languages.
Other rare English phonemes include the dental fricatives, i.e. the "th" sounds in "ether" (voiceless) and "either" (voiced). Speakers of Indian English often replace this with a dental stop, a "t" sound (voiceless) or "d" sound (voiced). (Note that Devanagari has a _lot_ of stops, so this is one place where it cannot be cleanly encoded into the Latin alphabet without diacritics.)
So overall: while I think Devanagari can't encode e.g. American English, it can actually do a pretty solid job of encoding Indian English, but not the other way around.
> For example, a typical bilingual speaker of Indian English and Hindi will replace instances of the /æ/ phoneme (as in "blast" or "fast") with another phoneme like /a:/ (as in "father"). Which isn't that unusual since /æ/ is pretty uncommon among languages.
does not apply to Indian languages because most of them have daily-use-words with the /æ/ sound.
Not true. There are phonemes which are similar but distinct.
For example
https://ashishb.net/linguistics/hindi-english-phonemes-that-...Hindi written in Devanagari is highly phonetic (not perfect but near perfect). However, English is not phonetic at all. E.g., "Th" in Then is different from the "Th" sound in Father.
In US pronunciation, Then is ðɛn and Father is ˈfɑðɚ.
In UK (received), Then is ðɛn and Father is ˈfɑːðə(ɹ).
In Indian English, Then is ðɛn and Father is ˈfɑːd̪ə(r)
The English Latin letter arrangement holds a tenuous phonetic connection to pronunciation half the time, whereas the devanagari usually indicates exactly how you say it.
As a Bollywood superstar famously quotes: English is a funny language.
As a Britisher learner it's frustrating¹ actually, because there is a standard for how to do this - IAST, for Sanskrit/derived generally - but of course that's not what native speakers use casually. E.g. your 'angrezi se hindi' would be 'añgrezī se hiñdī' but anyone writing Hindi with those accents is foreign or an academic. (Also people will casually write 'ay' instead of 'e' ए or 'ee' for 'ī' ई, etc. cf. 'paneer'.)
[1: The frustration is because it leads to ambiguity, whereas IAST is 1:1 and so preserves the phonetic nature of devanāgarī, and tells me exactly which t/d/r sound, if it's aspirated, etc. which a fluent native layperson's anglicised interpretation really doesn't. They might write gora & gora and know from context if that's gora or ghoṛā, but if I don't already know the word a gora like me is stuck.]
I learnt about IAST only after seeing how foreigners transcribe Sanskrit texts in Latin.
See this amazing article by a Polish journalist https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/spell-it-out-should-english-...
That should be 'aṅgrezī se hiṅdī' per IAST. In Devanagari: अंग्रेज़ी से हिंदी
If it were ñ instead of ṅ, the Devanagari would be अँग्रेज़ी से हिँदी which is incorrect.
(I also am often unsure which is correct, since as you no doubt know it's so common to drop the चंद्र and write हूं for example where it's properly हूँ )
This website is put together by a friend who runs - https://3sided.co.in