Caebhin,

Thai sounds are very Chinese. In fact, Thai is a marriage of Chinese monosyllabic
sounds with Indians alphabets, result in a versatile and beautiful language (I read a
Thai king's translation of Merchant of Venice, sound better then Shakespeare's!)

Thai has a large vocabulary of Sanskrit and Pali words. As in all the SE Asian
Theravada countries, there are two kinds of language: the vulgate (if I may call it
that) spoken daily, and the sacred language which is more complex and beautiful.

The vulgate (like modern Hindi) tends to apocopate most of the Indian (Sanskrit and
Pali words). that it, drop the final vowels, so Buddha becomes Phut, Dharma become
Tham.

Despite the Chinese sounds, Thai is a more accurate tool for learning Sanskrit or
Pali than say English (that is, if one has a command of Thai). For example, it is
easy to remember the long and short vowels in a word in the Thai system. Short vowels
have glottal stops, while long vowels and open, and so on.

Sukhi.

P.

Caebhin Howell wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I have a question about Pali-Sanskrit-Thai. Many Modern English words have
> Latin roots; but it doesn’t mean you know Latin. I know Thai has a lot of
> Pali words, mostly because Buddhism is such a large part of the culture.
> But I don’t know if it is ‘recognizable’ as Pali. I do know if I
> can’t find a Buddhist term to change the spelling a little for a Sanskrit
> word. But other than that, I have no experience with Sanskrit. Leading me
> to wonder how much Pali is built in to Sanskrit?
>
> Can anyone tell me which pronunciation is closer to pure Pali, Thai or
> Sanskrit? And how much does knowing Pali actually help in learning Thai or
> Sanskrit?
>
> Thanks
>
> _
> _ooOoo_
> o8888888o
> 88" . "88
> (| -_- |)
> O\ = /O
> ____/`---'\____
> .' \\| |// `.
> / \\||| : |||// \
> / _||||| -:- |||||_ \
> | | \\\ - /'| | |
> | \_| `\`---'// |_/ |
> \ .-\__ `-. -'__/-. /
> ___`. .' /--.--\ `. .'___
> ."" '< `.___\_<|>_/___.' _> \"".
> | | : `- \`. ;`. _/; .'/ / .' ; |
> \ \ `-. \_\_`. _.'_/_/ -' _.' /
> ===========`-.`___`-.__\ \___ /__.-'_.'_.-'================
> Yours in the Dhamma `=--=-'
> Kevin
>
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