ṝ rarely used in mantra, pronounce as for ṛ but longer.ṃ nasalise preceding vowel so that oṃ as in the French b on (although it is very common to hear it rhyme with bomb, I believe this is technically incorrect).In Pāli before a double consonant as in b ed (e.g. (the most common vowel mispronuciation).įollow this and your mantras won't sound too awful. If an "n" has diacritics - ie ṅ, ñ and ṇ pronounce it 'n'.If an "s" has diacritics - ie ś or ṣ pronounce it 'sh'.the a sound in 'but', vs the ā sound in father. A dash over a vowel makes it longer, e.g.ṃ, ḥ and ṛ which you can treat as though English with no dots.Curl your tongue back when there is a dot under the letter, except for.A rough guideĪbout 80% of pronouncing Sanskrit can be covered by a few basic rules Since a wrongly pronounced word usually means something different, it is worth making the effort. Some of the Indian sounds such as the various nasal consonants are indistinquishable for most of us,Īnd the retroflex stops are difficult to distinguish from dental stops. Pronouncing Sanskrit and other Indic languages such as Pāli accurately can be quite difficult for native English speakers.
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