Dear Mahinda,

> In both Pali and Skt, a vowel followed by a consonant is counted as
> a long syllable: a single short vowel is a syllabic unit; when you
> add another sound to it it becomes 2 units. In actual
> pronounciation we can see that this makes sense.

Let's take the word mahaaraaja. If I understand your explanation, the
fist "a" being followed by a consonant is counted as long (2 units).
Does it mean the next "aa" is counted as 3 units? What if the vowel
"a" is followed by 2 consonnants like in "sakkaa". How many units does
it become? 2 units? 3?

One more question if you allow. My first Pali teacher used to be from
Sri Lanka and he would pronounce the last "a" in "mahaaraaja"
differently from the first one, more like in the English word "hut"
rather than in the word "what". Here in Burma they don't seem to make
any difference. Is there any rule regarding the pronunciation of the
"a"s in a word? I had the impression that my Srilankan teacher would
always pronounce final "a" like in "hut" and some "a"s in the middle
of words as well. Like for example in the word "karakaarako". do you
pronounce the 1st, 2nd and 4th "a" in the same way?

Kind regards,

Florent