Chomthong Chanting Book - Vipassanasangha - Free

Chanting Book of Wat Phra Dhātu Srī Chomtong Voravihāra
Appendix
Pronunciation Rules For Pāli & Thai
Pāli is the original language of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures, the closest we have to the dialect spoken by the Buddha himself. It has no
written script of its own, and so every country that has adopted Theravada Buddhism has used its own script to transcribe it. In Thailand Pāli
has picked up some of the characteristics of the Thai language. As Thai is a tonal language with five different tones, Pāli syllables got built-in
tones. Furthermore consonant clusters are sometimes difficult to pronounce for Thais. They tend to insert the vowel ’a’ between consonants,
occasionally even in the written Pāli (e.g., davi instead of dvi [=two]). In this cases sometimes the spelling of the CGI or VRI is given, as
otherwise the word couldn’t be found in the Pāli dictionary.
Vowels
Pāli (& THAI) have two sorts of vowels, short − a, i, u (A, I, U, E, O, Ä, Ö, Ü); and long − ā, ī, ū, e, o (AA, II, UU, EE, OO, ÄÄ, ÖÖ, ÜÜ). Unlike long
and shorts vowels in English, the length here refers to the actual amount of time used to pronounce the vowel, and not to its quality. Thus a (A)
& ā (AA) are both pronounced like the a in father, simply that the sound ā (AA) is held for approximately twice as long as the sound a (A). The
same principle holds for the other vowels. Thus, when chanting Pāli (or THAI), the vowels are approximately pronounced as follows:
Consonants
a as in sun / father u as in put / glue i as in bill / machine
e as in hen / they o as in hot / go
ä as in Ma'am ö as in word, girl, fern ü as in ugh!
Consonants are generally pronounced as they are in English, with a few unexpected twists:
c as in ancient
p unaspirated, as in spot
k unaspirated, as in skin
ph as in pie (with the puff off air)
kh as in Korea (with the puff off air)
t unaspirated, as in stop
ü & ï as ng
th as in Thomas (with the puff off air)
ñ as in cañon
v as w
Certain two-lettered notations − bh, dh, óh, gh, jh − denote an aspirated, voiced sound, somewhat in the throat, that we do not have in English
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