This is a lightly edited transcript of an interesting WhatsApp conversation on 3rd June, 2023 on phonetics, prestige registers and sound conservation in linguistics, that I should bring to this moribund blog.
Conversant in italics.
Hello sir. A question I’m asking out of laziness since I found it convenient to ask you directly 
[This is something I regularly face. The skipping of Google, not the emoji.] Do any of the Marathi grammatical texts/ works explicitly talk about when n where to pronounce the two forms of เค ‘s , เค’s & เค’s ? In my personal experience, I’ve never seen any of my school Marathi teachers explain these aspects w.r.t pronunciation. I guess, native Marathi speakers are already familiar with this phonology since they are taught from childhood & this phonology might be an unwritten rule I reckon which may not need any explicit explanation. In my case, Marathi isn’t my mother tongue & I’ve had a hard time in figuring out when & where to pronounce the correct form of เค, เค & เค ….
[I responded with three Instagram reels by a comic Marathi influencer:]
Nice one
... but nevertheless, some of my queries still remain unanswered esp when the usage of the sounds is somewhat ambiguous. Take for instance, in Marathi a conjunct of ‘เค’ with another เค is usually enunciated as ‘cca’ as in, เคเค्เคाเคฐ ... but I’ve heard of words like ‘ เคเค्เคं ‘ wherein the เค्เค is pronounced as ‘tstsa’ ... This is one example I can think of atm ... [at the moment]
There r similar such ambiguities that I’ve found in the language… both in the spoken & written form 
The ch/chch effect you see in tatsam Sanskrit words, where there is prestige associated with Sanskrit pronunciation. The ts/tsts effect is seen in tadbhav/deshi words that lack the prestige baggage. Pronouncing utstsaar is not inconsistent with Marathi phonetics, but it is perceived as illiterate. On the other hand, uchchaar is inconsistent with Marathi phonetics, since it retains its original Sanskrit phonetics.
Yes on a larger level, tatsama words retain the Sanskrit pronunciation….
Prestige effect. Creating an upper-caste/lowered-caste shibboleth.
& another peculiar feature I’ve noticed… Some of the words directly borrowed from Farsi/ Urdu having ‘za’ sound switch over to ‘ja’ sound when pronounced in Marathi…
Couple of examples I can think at the moment is - ‘เค़िंเคฆเคी ‘ & ‘เค़िเคฆ्เคฆ ‘. The Farsi-Urdu เค़िंเคฆเคी becomes ‘เคिंเคฆเคी ‘ by substituting za with ja & same in the case of เค़िเคฆ्เคฆ > เคिเคฆ्เคฆी in Marathi ...
Once the prestige factor goes, the phonetic rules come back with a vengeance. Persian parvฤh (worry) becomes adopted into Kannada as paravagilla with the 'g' inserted as per Kannada phonotactics.
Haan.. anothe common word - ‘roz’ (Persian/ Urdu) > ‘roji’ (Marathi)
In Hindi also, people will naturally say jidd, but be corrected by Urdu snobs as zidd. Unless of overcorrected by Urduphobes to เคนเค्เค . Phonotactics (what sounds are allowed when and where) is learned within a language organically and unconsciously, which outside learners don't have access to. That's where your problem stems from — and why you sound like an outsider.
Sarkari Kannada has quite a few Farsi words…& even in spoken register too… On Twitter, one would come across an amusing fight b/w Kannada purists vouching for the Samskrita-nishta Kannada while on the other side you’ve got ppl purging Sanskrta words off Kannada … Two extremes… the latter ones are often mocked by the term ‘olatagaras’ ( ‘bobda’ version of the word ‘เฒนೋเฒฐಾเฒเฒಾเฒฐ’ )
[After this the conversation trailed off, but I've keptthis much in, as a reflection of the power of phonotactics.
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