"th" in Pali

[DNS]

Best wishes,
'd̪ʰʌm-mʌː-'nʌn-d̪əʊ 'bʰik-kʰʊ

Oh crap. This is why Pali is so hard for me to learn.

[tiltbillings]

Now you are just showing off.

I know hothouse is not the best, but it works

Sure, in that it is not two distinct syllables, but focusing on the t-h sound is workable, which is a lot more than one can say for the IPA, an exercise in the severely arcane.

I think there are plenty of other non-arcane methods that are better than 'hothouse', 'madhouse' etc. For example:

th: like 'tea' but with the tip of the tongue striking the back of the top teeth rather than the palate.

ch: like Bob Marley's pronunciation of the c in 'Caribbean' when he sings Buffalo Soldier.

jh: like Linton Kwesi Johnson's pronunciation of the g in 'gather' when he's reciting his poem Di Great Insohreckshan

bh: as the waiter in your local Indian restaurant pronounces the bh in bhindi masala.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

[tiltbillings]

Best wishes,
'd̪ʰʌm-mʌː-'nʌn-d̪əʊ 'bʰik-kʰʊ

Oh crap. This is why Pali is so hard for me to learn.

It is not that hard.

[mikenz66]

I think there are plenty of other non-arcane methods that are better than 'hothouse', 'madhouse' etc. For example:
...
ch: like Bob Marley's pronunciation of the c in 'Caribbean' when he sings Buffalo Soldier.

Venerable, where do you find these gems?

Perhaps you can comment on Joe Strummer's pronunciation in "London Calling" ("London calling, yes I was there TOO, and you know what they said? Well some of it was TRUE!")

Metta
Mike

[Dhammanando]

Hi Mike,

Venerable, where do you find these gems?

Some of it's from past postings to a thread on Pali palatal consonants on another forum and some is what I learned when studying phonetics with Pétur Knútsson at the University of Iceland. A lot of the IPA transcribing tests Knútsson set us were based on pop songs and suchlike.

Perhaps you can comment on Joe Strummer's pronunciation in "London Calling" ("London calling, yes I was there TOO, and you know what they said? Well some of it was TRUE!")

I'm afraid I don't recall how his pronunciation went.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu

[serg_o]

th: like 'tea' but with the tip of the tongue striking the back of the top teeth rather than the palate.

Fine! It's just like in Russian so in this case I don't need to learn anything new.
Theravada, theravada, theravada...

[DNS]

It is not that hard.

Thanks tilt,

I know, I think it mostly has to do with putting in at least 15 minutes per day. I find that if I work on my lessons and then put them aside for more than a week, then I have to go back to the beginning. I just need to adjust the time management and make sure I do at least 15 minutes per day.

[fig tree]

I think it has to do with incorrect spellings from the original translations from Asian languages to English;

The fact that in English we use "th" for what we do is the product of an interesting series of historical accidents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciat ... English_th.

Pronunciations are not my forté.

The musical term pronounced like "forté" is spelled "forte" and means "loud". The other word spelled "forte" that means "strong point" was pronounced like "fort" until people began confusing it with the other one.

Fig Tree

[Dhammabodhi]

Thank you Ajahn for the correction and explanations. I realised another good word which mimicks the Indic 'th' could be 'Thai'.

Metta,
Dhammabodhi

[mikenz66]

Thank you Ajahn for the correction and explanations. I realised another good word which mimicks the Indic 'th' could be 'Thai'.

Yes.

I'm going a little off topic here, but having pulled out my chanting books to check out the Thai spellings I thought I should share it.
For the technically minded, the Thai character for "Th" in "Thai" and the one used in Thai-Pali for the "th" in "Tathagata" both have the same sound but different tone rules. So the second syllable "thaa" will come out as a rising whereas"Thai" is pronounced with a middle tone. As far as I understand, Indic languages such as Pali don't have tones, but SE Asian and Chinese dialects do, so the "musical" chanting by Thai people e.g. http://www.forestmeditation.com/audio/audio.html, isn't in the Pali but in their language.

Mike