Andy,

Thanks for the refreshingly original look Pali. Interestingly, Sanskrit, the final
.m is generally pronounced an "-m" (accented I suppose). And listening to the way
most Sinhalese pronounce spoken Pali, the word may be spelt "dhamma", but is often
pronounced "dharma" (i.e. dhaa/ma).

May there be less hungry people wherever you live, too.

Sukhi.

P.

Andy wrote:

> Dear Venerables; Hi Group;
>
> WARNING: Just some "untraditional thinking" from one guy who is *not* an
> expert in Pali and *not* and expert in languages!
>
> Dear Dimitry;
>
> I had this same question about stress and emphasis when I started my Pali
> studies. I am not satisfied by the current thinking about Pali
> pronunciation, so I did a mini-analysis. I have not yet taken the time to
> formalize my thinking in a systematic way. Here are a few notes and a few
> questions I've had for some time.
>
> Premises:
> a) Pali would be very easy for any human being to pronounce. A Buddha would
> not teach in a language which was hard for any human being to speak
> "out-loud". He knew that the teaching would move to different languages and
> cultures. 2,500 years ago, most people were illiterate and they used
> speaking for teaching and learning. Pali would have to be able to move
> easily with the teaching.
> b) Whoever created the romanized Pali transcription system would have
> included *all* of the information necessary to pronounce the Pali word
> correctly (including stress and emphasis).
>
> Clues:
> a) the underdot m that is so commonly used at the end of words
> b) Pali word order
> c) the use of the letter "h"
> d) the doubling of hard and soft consonants.
> e) word inflection redundancy
>
> General Stuff:
>
> I'm not really an "expert" in languages. I only speak English (various
> centuries), French, German (a couple of centuries), Italian and Spanish. I
> know some Pali, and at various times over the years I've studied a tiny tad
> of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Thai. Still, I think it would be fair to
> say that I do have a good "overview" of the construction and pronunciation
> of human languages.
>
> I also enjoy composing music. Basically, it is my (limited) knowledge of
> formal musical notation that is the root of my thinking about Pali
> pronunciation.
>
> In the context of figuring out Pali pronunciation I would say this:
> a) The easiest and most fun language to speak that I know is Italian. The
> *sounds* are very easy to pronounce and they fit easily together.
> b) German is interesting because of word order. Since the word order is very
> formal and verbs (in anything more than a simple sentence) will occur at the
> end of a sentence, a person needs to speak slowly and very clearly. The
> listener needs time to keep track of all the bits and pieces of the
> sentence. Then, at the *end* of a sentence, the listener will also need a
> short moment to "put it all together and think about it".
> c) Most Asian languages are interesting because they are tonal, making them
> "harder" to pronounce.
> d) word inflection redundancy is typical of very old languages - where
> people spoke many regional dialects; most people were illiterate; books were
> expensive luxuries; and teaching was done by speaking (not reading). The
> inflectional redundancy would help people figure out what the speaker was
> trying to say (Example: the inflection of the adjective should agree with
> the inflection of the noun. If the speaker messed this up, there would be
> enough information in the sentence for the listener to figure out what the
> speaker was trying to say.)
>
> My Current Working Hypothesis:
>
> a) The overdot and underdot marks are *not* used to change the pronunciation
> of the character. They are used as stress and emphasis marks. A specific
> case: the underdot-m (.m) at the end of a word. I see no need for this to
> have the rather annoying and difficult "ng" sound - again and again and
> again - in a sentence. I think that this is simply means "pronounce m - and
> emphasize it a bit and wait a split-second to make it easy for the listener
> to note that this is the end of the word before you roll into the next word.
> The listener needs a split-second to become aware of the inflected ending,
> figure out what it might imply, and mentally note it for use when the verb
> finally shows up later in the sentence."
> b) In English, we have long vowels and short vowels. We also have aspirated
> vowels (like "happy"). The "h" character is used in Pali to create an
> aspirated vowel anywhere in a word. Again, this aspirated vowel is used more
> as a mechanical device so that the pronunciation of the word has correct
> *timing*, stress and emphasis. I think it is more
> c) The doubling of consonants. Obviously, the doubling of a hard consonant
> is a "timing and emphasis" mark. You don't "pronounce it twice". (Example:
> dukkha. You don't say duK-Kha. You say doo-Kha.) Which means that romanized
> Pali is *not* perfectly phonetic, where every character is pronounced. The
> doubling of soft consonants (Example: dhamma.) is also a stress and emphasis
> mark.
>
> To create a fictious example: duka, dukka, dukha, dukkha - according to my
> current theory, where's the timing, stress and emphasis? du-ka, du-Ka,
> du-kHa, du-Kha.
>
> Another fictious example: dama, damma, dhama, dhamma - da-ma, da-Ma, dHa-ma,
> dHa-Ma.
>
> Another fictious example: rata, ratta, ratha, rattha / ra.ta, ra.t.t.a,
> ra.tha, ra.t.tha - ra-ta, ra-Ta, ra-tHa, ra-Tha / rat-a, RAT-a, rat-Ha,
> RAT-ha
>
> Putting it all together (another fictious example): dama.m, damma.m,
> dhama.m, dhamma.m - da-mam da-Mam, dHa-mam, dHa-Mam.
>
> The overdot n ("n) works to tie the n to the following consonant and avoid
> triple consonants. A triple consonant would make it impossible to tell where
> the emphasis went. Example: sa"ngha. This is pronounced sang-gHa. If it was
> written sanggha we could have san-Gha as our pronunciation. To confirm this,
> I used my software to looked all of the words using the "n character in the
> Paliwords dictionary. There are 587 basewords that use "n. None of them have
> triple consonants. (ie "ngg, "nbb, "nkk, etc.)
>
> Fictious exampels: sangha, sa.ngha, sa"ngha - san-gHa, SAN-gHa, san(g)-gHa
>
> I think the only character that has a different "sound" as a result of an
> inflection mark is ~n, where I think the "nyuh" sound commonly used is
> correct.
>
> I do not think that Pali uses "tonality" at all.
>
> Questions:
>
> a) What was the nationality of the person who created romanized Pali?
> b) What year did that person create it?
> c) What form of English (British, American, India) did they know?
>
> WARNING AGAIN: Just some "untraditional thinking" from one guy who is *not*
> an expert in Pali and *not* and expert in languages!
>
> thanks and peace from
>
> Andy
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Äìèòðèé Àëåêñååâè÷ Èâàõíåíêî (Dimitry A. Ivakhnenko)
> [mailto:sangha@...]
> Sent: Sunday, June 09, 2002 9:20 PM
> To: Robert Eddison
> Subject: Re[2]: [Pali] Accent in Pali
>
> RE> What do you mean by accent? Are you referring to pronunciation or
> RE> to stress/emphasis?
>
> Stress/emphasis - where it is placed in Pali words?
>
> Best wishes,
> Dimitry
>
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