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Could someone tell me how to pronounce the word “ārogya” in “Ārogyaparamā lābhā”?
You can give me an audio clip or transcribe it, using phonetic symbols (International Phonetic Alphabets).
Thank you 
ārogya
neuter
Here is an example.
Thank you
My hearing is not so good.
Did he say:
ā – ro – ga – ya
or
ā – ro – gia
or
ā – rog – gia
?
Hi,
It seems to be your second choice, 3 syllables.
A ro gya
Thank you very much.
I wonder if the problem is that with Thai pronunciation of Pali the diphthongs [EDIT:] consonant clusters can be difficult to hear/produce for native Thai speakers. As I understand it is common to insert a vowel between consonants/semivowels in Pali words where it doesn’t actually belong.
Gya is just gya. It’s not gaya, gia, or ggia. I think for native English speakers who are used to so many diphthongs consonant clusters the sound is recognizable as it’s own thing. Of course we have problems with other sounds in Pali.
Thank you for pointing this out, I wasn’t aware it it.
Yes, native English speakers have their own set of difficulties, retroflexed consonants come to mind.
I know that many people don’t use the International Phonetics Alphabets. But using it make it easy for learners from different languages to understand how a sound is pronounced without having to resort to audio clips and good ears (which are not 100% reliable).
So, could you please kindly clarify if ‘gya’ is pronounced as /gɪə/ or /gjɪə/ or /gja/?
Please note that here I use /j/ = y sound, and /a/ is a short vowel.
Sorry, I’m not familiar with using IPA. You are correct that without having a system like that it’s impossible to convey the sounds through writing them.
For sure it’s not your third option “ā – rog – gia” because there is no double g. The o is long.
I also don’t think it is correct to represent it having two vowel sounds in any system. It’s not gi - a. It’s gya, one syllable.
And aspirated consonants.
you mean /gy/ is a consonant cluster with the short vowel /a/?
Or, /y/ is a semi vowel sound working with /a/ sound and makes it sound like a diphthong?
Yes. I think that is correct.
I was wrong to use the word diphthong. Very sorry. I should have said consonant cluster.
Thank you. It is now clear to me, but as the Thai language doesn’t have the cluster ‘gy’, we tend to add a very, very short /a/ between them. So, ‘gya’ will be pronounced by Thai speakers as /gəja/.
It seems to me that the pronunciation of ‘gya’ would be very similar to, if not the same as the first part of jānāti. Jā nā ti
Totally clear, now.
P.S. I asked this question because a Thai Pali expert was criticising our traditional way of pronouncing the phrase above. He was right in saying that we have been pronouncing the first syllable incorrectly (short /a/ instead of long ā. But he got the second and third syllables wrong.
Well, experts like to talk about the right and wrong way to pronounce Pali, but why not have regional accents?
I say tomayto you say tomahto…
It really depends. If a vowel or a consonant sound is made in a slightly different position in the mouth, then that could be an accent. However, putting an extra vowel sound where it doesn’t belong is mispronunciation.
Yes, I often say that about the British spelling and pronunciation of aluminum.
/gja/ (or, since the a is short, /gjə/)
Thanks to the Brāhmaṇs’ fastidiousness, the Pāli/Sanskrit spellings are almost exactly phonetic. You can even use a script to convert Pāli to IPA and it’ll be right most of the time:
/ɑːɾoːgjəpəɾəmɑː lɑːbʰɑː/
Aksharamukha FTW!
Any clue as to when it’s not?
I’m thinking of the nasal substitutions. I’m sure there are other little things a real linguist could nitpick but you’d have to ask Bhante @Dhammanando for those! 