>Hello everyone
>
>I'm a beginner, starting out with De Silva's Primer. I'm a bit
>confused about her pronunciation guide; specifically, she has the
>following:
>t is pronounced like th in thumb
>d " " " th in they
>
>When I compare this to Narada's Elementary Course, he doesn't have
>these two letters, only the forms with a dot underneath them.
>
>Do these two letters actually exist, or is it a typo on someone's
>part? How is a word like 'putta' pronounced, for example?

What Da Silva is probably trying to convey is that t and d in Pali
are true dentals. Compared to English t and d, the tongue-tip should
be a little farther forward, and actually touch the backside of the
upper front teeth. (in English, t and d tend to have the tip of the
tongue on the little ridge behind the front teeth, which to Indian
ears sounds more like their retroflex .t and .d) However t and d are
certainly NOT pronounced like thumb and they, they just share their
point of articulation. This sounds a lot more complicated than it
really is, and in practice you can just not worry about it.

Putta is pronounced put-ta, though the thing to remember is that
neither the p nor the t's are aspirated, like they would be in
English. They should sound like they do in English after an s, as in
spiral and stool. If you've never heard of aspiration, I can try to
explain it better, but I'll leave it like this for now.

hope this helps,

/Rett