Dear Dmytro,
The anusvārais complex and there is not necessarily a simple answer to the question asthere have been different interpretations over the ages amongst Indian andwestern scholars. For a discussion see Whitney’s grammar, §70-73.
In internal sandhi:
My understanding is that the -ṃ sound is a “generic” form of the anusvāra/niggahīta and indicates the vowel is to be nasalized in assimilationto the following consonant (what is called a homorganic nasal).
So, with the example Jim gives, saṃgha is actually to be sounded saṅgha, that is as a velar nasal or ŋ, because it comes before a velarstop, athough it can be written either way.
The palatal nasal ɲ can also be written two ways, eitheras saṃjānāti or sañjānati; again the pronunciation is as palatal , because it comes before a palatal -j-. One also sees this often with anasal before the palatal ca as in nāmañca. Although these are two separatewords, the ca is an enclitic and acts like an appendage of nāmaṃ.
A dental nasal, occurs before a dental stop, e.g. a quoteending in damman ti, where theanusvāra/niggahīta is replaced by the dental -n.Again, although this is “external sandhi” (dhammaṃiti), the ti is such anomnipresent particle, that is acts almost like a case ending.
Nasals before retroflex consonants are rare, but theywould also be assimilated as in saṇṭṭhitaṃ(“established”), which could also be written saṃṭṭhitaṃ and sound the same.
I always assumed that none of these nasals were fullyformed, i. e. that they were “lacking that closure of the organs which is requiredto make a nasal mute or contact-sound (Whitney, §70), but I imagine practicewas different, depending on what part of India one was from.
Between words
Pāli seems to have both forms of orthography; probablymore common is the anusvāra/niggahīta,retained as -ṃ, which seems often tobe the case between words, as in buddho dhammaṃ deseti, not buddho dhamman deseti. This follows the Skt.practice. But although written as dhammaṃdeseti, before the dental d- of deseti, the anusvāra would be pronounced as a dental –n. Whether fully closed or not, I don’t know, but my guess is thatit would be, in order to clearly retain the accusative case inflection.
The above is the Sanskrit practice as I understand it. So
buddhaṃ saraṇaṃgacchāmi, following the homorganic nasal law would actually bepronounced buddhan saraṇaṅ gacchāmi,etc., with the anusvāra/niggahīta assimilatedto the place of articulation of the following consonant (the -ṃ of buddhaṃ assimilated to the dental fricative of saraṇaṃ and the -ṃ of saraṇaṃ assimilated to the velar stop of gacchāmi). But whether it was actually pronounced this way inancient times is impossible to tell and I have certainly heard modernrenditions which are different. But the above would be the most “natural way&rdquo
;phonologically, that is following the shape and place of articulation of the mouth
Mettā, Bryan
From: "Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2015 7:35 AM
Subject: [palistudy] 'Saṁyutta' niggahīta pronunciation
Dear Pali friends,
To ascertain how to transcribe 'Saṁyutta' in Ukrainian and Russian, I would like to know the most reliable version of its niggahīta ancient pronunciation.
Charles Duroiselle wrote:
"ŋ, (niggahīta), found always at the end of words is, in Burma, pronounced like 'm' in, jam, ram; in Ceylon, it is given the sound of 'ng' in, bring, king"
A Practical Grammar of the Pāli Language
http://dhamma.ru/paali/durois/paligram.pdf
I have read in Wikipedia:
"In Vedic Sanskrit, the anusvāra (lit. "after-sound") is a sound that occurs as an allophone of /m/ — at a morpheme boundary — or /n/ — morpheme-internally—, if they are preceded by a vowel and followed by a fricative (/ś/, /ṣ/, /s/ or /h/).
First, the anusvāra began to be used before /r/ under certain conditions, then in Classical Sanskrit its use had extended before /l/ and /y/, replacing earlier [l̃] and [ỹ]."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anusvara
Does this signify that pronunciation on Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has undergone influence from Classical Sanskrit, while Myanmar (Burma) preserved an earlier form?
E. Miller writes in his "Simplified Grammar of the Pali Language":
"Before a 'y' the anusvāra can remain, or the whole group can migrate into 'ññ', as e.g. saṁyoga or saññoga."
https://books.google.com/books?id=yxbHMM5sfpAC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20
https://archive.org/details/simplifiedgramma00mulliala
What does this imply for ancient pronunciation?
Metta,
Dmytro