Dear everyone,

Thanks for the answers. I have very little knowledge of linguistics,
but I gather from the answers that the practice is like some kind of
distortion because of local environment, e.g. the Burmese not having
an 's' sound. It would be nice if eventually some of these answers
could be written up and elaborated in a Pali wiki that Yong Peng has
set up.

Dennis


--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Gunnar Gällmo <gunnargallmo@...>
wrote:

> --- rett <rett@...> skrev:
>
> > >I have notice from recordings of Paali chanting
> > that Shinhalese people
> > >(in particular) pronounce the vowel 'a' differently
> > for different
> > >words, although the Paali textbooks do not indicate
> > that there are two
> > >pronunciations for the vowel 'a'.
>
> I think there is a general tendency in Indo-Ariyan
> languages to reduce short a to a shwa sound when not
> stressed, or (in languages like Hindi) even to drop a
> final a completely, like final e in French
> (dharma>dharm). In modern Sinhalese I think short a is
> pronounced as such when stressed and after h, elseway
> as shwa, and this may have influenced Sinhalese
> pronounciation of Pali.
>
> Gunnar
>
> =====
> gunnargallmo@...