Dear Florent,
Sorry, I had not noticed this query. The correct way to break up the
syllables in mahaaraaja is ma-haa-raa-ja (SLLS) and for sakkaa it is sak-kaa
(LL).

I should have said vowel followed by double consonant rather than "vwl
folld by consnt".

It is well known that 'a' stands for two sounds in Skt, Pali, Sinhala etc.
An example is gata, where the first a is an open (viv.rta) vowel and the
second is a closed (sa.mv.rta) vowel (what they call the
"schwa germanicum"). Ac. to the way I pronounce ka-ra-kaa-ra-ko, vwl 1 is
open, 2 and 4 are closed. This accords with the Sri Lankan Pali
pronounciation.

Mahinda




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
>
>
>

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