Pronounciation of Samgha?

Is the pronunciation of this name the same as ‘sangha’? As in the sangha of monks and nuns?

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Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

Hi Adrian

I use this guide when I’m stuck.

https://www.bps.lk/pali_misc/palipron.html

Hope this helps!

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In the Sinhala BJT edition, this Therī’s name is spelled Saṅghā (සඞ‍්ඝා). This might be a question for Bhante @Sujato since he knows the most about the manuscript.

Although some people would not agree, basically the ṁ sound and the ṅ sound is the same. As I understand, the ṁ only occurs inside words before the semivowels (y, r, l, v). E.g. Saṁyutta.

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Excellent! Thank you both for your replies :anjal:

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Ven @Snowbird, I’m a little confused. I am only just learning to read Sinhala characters but am used to seeing සංඝා as in the three refuges or ratana sutta (but as සංඝං), which is how it’s spelled සංඝාථෙරීගාථා here.

In reference to the OP, you’ll notice that Sangha is spelled as per your screenshot in the 3 refuges too. here

I believe there is an old thread explaining this choice of ṁ vs ṅ somewhere on the forum, where Bhante Sujato explains this choice. Alas I can’t find it. However, this thread might be of assistance.

So basically what you are looking at is the same as when you would take refuges etc.

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Ah, yes. This is the modern way of writing Sinhala. In modern Sinhala the binduwa (that circle) completely replaces the proper ṅa letter of ඞ‍. If you have a copy of one of the BJT books, you can see in the front that there is an alphabet chart. There you will see the “correct” way to write ṅa. But now the binduwa is used. However, that’s not a reason to start using the ṁ in transliteration.

But when that ṅ/ṁ sound comes before the semivowels, it is written with a binduwa, as in Saṁyutta: සංයුත‍්ත

[not quite related, but you will also notice that in literary Sinhala as used in the BJT there is not vowel remover (allkirima) and instead the letters touch each other. Those are the two big differences in traditional/literary Sinhala writing and modern.]

Yes, I don’t know why the manuscript here has it that way. If you use the “hover” dictionary you can see that there it is spelled saṅgha.

Here is the relevant part in the thread you linked to:

But to be clear, they are pronounced in the same way.

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Thank you Venerable :anjal:

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