Why short "a" sounds like "er"

Discussion
23

Thanks Ven for the guide. I have edited the formatting for clarity, I hope this is okay.

May I suggest a couple of changes?

  1. “o is like ou in ought”: Change this to “o in got”. “Ought” is, for me anyway, a different sound. It’s IPA phoneme /ɔː/, whereas the correct sound is /ɒ/. This, I have just learned, is known in linguistics as the “cot/caught merger”.
  2. I’d also change the example “church” for “c”. If I hold my hand in front of my mouth when saying “church”, the initial ch is more heavily aspirated than the final. This is only inviting unnecessary confusion.
  3. Also, since “ch” is almost always aspirated in English, it should be used as an example of “ch” not “c”. A better example of “c” in English is the “ch” in “mischievous”.
  4. While we’re at it, “barn” is another misleading example. The “r” is pronounced in many varieties of American English, so the pronunciation of father and barn are quite distinct.

Also, the description of aspirates and non-aspirates is not quite correct. English normally aspirates hard consonants (stops). To be sure, we don’t usually aspirate them as heavily as Pali, because they are not so differentiated. However this distinction is so subtle that it is ignored in the IPA phonetics system. A chart might clear it up:

English |       p   |
Pali    |  p  |  ph |

So the English “p” is the same phoneme as Pali “ph”, but it falls somewhat towards “p” in Pali.

For those who don’t know what we’re talking about, here’s how to learn the aspirations. The first step is to hold your hand in front of your mouth and feel the breath. You can clearly feel a puff of air after the p in “pill” and not after the b in in “bill”. The puff of air is called aspiration. To get the Pali sound, just emphasize this a little more.

To get the unaspirated Pali “p”, pronounce the same word with an “s” in front. Compare “pill” and “spill”. In “spill”, the aspiration is almost entirely absent (There are dialectical differences here, but this should mostly work.) Try the same with “kill” vs “skill”, “till” vs “still”, and so on. (Incidentally, this is exactly the same phonetic phenomena we see in Sanskrit skandha vs. Pali khandha.)

Once you can not only feel the difference but hear it as well, try pronouncing “spill”, then dropping the “s” while keeping the rest of the word the same. The “pill” that remains sounds similar to the English “bill”, but is not exactly the same (“b” is voiced). When you can pronounce a “p” that is neither aspirated nor voiced, this is the Pali “p”.

Incidentally, “ph” and “th” are never pronounced as in the English “f” and “th” in “thin” or “there”. These sounds don’t occur in Pali. This is a basic mistake that you hear quite commonly, even among, ahem, Buddhist studies academics.

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24

@Jayantha

Thanks so much!

25

Interesting. I’m not sure if “er” is a sensible way to describe it, but Sri Lankan’s definitely don’t use the simple short “a” that is use by Thai people.

Surely you agree that the Thai and Sri Lankan pronunciation of tassa is different?

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26

If I may, I would also like to present a couple of modifications :slight_smile:

If you listen to the American English, cot is actually pronounced very open, so the American ‘cot’ is frequently perceived as /kat/ by foreigners. The British/Australian /ɒ/ is indeed closer to the Pali /ɔ/ but still very different - when I was doing my bachelor studies in English I had to learn how to pronounce the /ɒ/ sound for about a month. The truth is the English phonetical system, whether British, Australian or American, doesn’t have any correspondence to Pali /ɔ/ at all. I would say the English /ɔː/ as in broad or sawed is the closest counterpart:

  1. The English vowels have three different realizations depending on the coda of the syllable: it can be open, voiced closed or unvoiced closed. The first variant, as in law, is not very suitable as this vowel is just too long. The third is not suitable as well because unvoiced codas are very often realized in non-American English with glottal stops (think of the British pronunciation of brought as /brɔːʔt/ or even /brɔːʔ/ in some positions), so it doesn’t work as well.

  2. The so-called long vowels aren’t actually that long. The phonetical difference between the short and long vowels is less relevant and obvious in the American pronunciation, so when reading the following examples keep in mind Ajahn Brahm’s way of speaking. Terribly sorry for not knowing much about Australian English, but Australia is for many students of English what Laos is for most Western Theravada Buddhists: we know that it exists and that is pretty much it. So, phonologically /ɔː/ in sought is of the same duration or even shorter than /ɒ/ in sod. The phonologically relevant feature of /ɔː/ is its tensity. If the Venerable Ajahn allows you to put your hand on his Adam’s apple when he’s speaking you will feel how it becomes somewhat tense when pronouncing sought and remains not tense when pronouncing sod. Just try to omit the tense part in /ɔː/ as in broad, and you will have a pretty decent Pali /ɔ/.

The English ch is kinda aspirated but not really the same way as in the Indo-Arian languages. In English, the aspirated element of the /tʃ/ sound is /t/ as /tʰ/ is almost always aspirated in English, hence /tʰʃ/. In the Indo-Arian languages the aspirations come not in the middle of the sound but rather towards its end, hence /tʃʰ/. So yeah, I would use ‘mischievous’ as an example for c but wouldn’t use church as an example for ch. A better approximation would be ‘catch him’.

It is not really misleading. The British /bɑːn/ and American /bɑːrn/ differ in the use of /r/, which doesn’t necessarily affect the quality of the vowel. So, this one is okay.

The advice I would give to practically all Pali reciters speaking Germanic languages would be to practice the dental pronunciations of /t/ and /d/ (nevermind the /r/, I abandoned all hope on that one). I personally can’t really listen to English chanting because the alveolar pronunciation of stops tends to detract me too much. The best way to figure out the correct place of articulation is to analyze their pronunciation before interdental consonants as in read this or put that. And thanks for the expert presentation of the aspirated consonants, it was really impressive and well-done. Sadhu!:anjal:

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Oh, by the way, if you happen to come across the audiobook version of Ven. Bodhi’s In the Buddha’s Words, you won’t believe your ears. It is so abundant with /bʊdəˈvʌkənə/, /ˈʌrɪjəʊ ətˈθɑːŋɡɪkəʊ mʌɡəʊ/ and other phonetic delicacies that Ven. Buddhaghosa would take the vow of solitary forest living if he heard it.

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:anjal:

Dear All,

Not sure if this was brought up already. But here is the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta chanted by Dhammaruwan. Maybe this would help? I tend to pronounce Pali the way it is chanted here, ever since I started listening to his chants. Good enough for me. I think as long as the enunciation of the words are clear and convey what is to be conveyed, it is good enough! It’s all preference really!

Hope this helps a bit so as not to rack your poor minds :relieved:

Enjoy your vassa :joy:!

in mettā,
russ

:anjal:

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That’s got the “er” sound (to my ears) for the short "a"s at the end of tassa.

Arguing over what is “correct” would be somewhat pointless. In practice, “correct” is what the rest of the participants are doing… :slight_smile:

Which means short “a” (ah) when at my Thai Wat, and “er” when visiting with Sri Lankans…

30

wow so much added since last night! overwhelming hah. This is a wonderful lesson in perception… how to “hear” the same word in a different way, not easy.

@mikenz66 I’ve listened to that 3 year old chanting( and actually I’ve met him as an adult now and was at his recent ordination) that sutta a couple dozen times at least, I definitely don’t hear an “er” , I do hear an “uh” though lol.

It’s almost like two people trying to explain their perception of the color blue to each other haha. In the end it doesn’t REALLY matter much, even in one place among 10 monks you will have people pronouncing things differently. There is no “Pali Police” that will be called to your door.

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“Uh” is fine. You do hear a difference between the Sri Lanakan and Thai pronunciation of that syllable, don’t you?

32

I’ve listened to both, I suppose there may be a bit more of an “inflection”? if thats the right word, I’m no linguistic scholar, on the Sri lankan chant with the tail end of tassa.

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:sob: It is not /ə/ as in later, it is more /æ/ as in bad. Just believe a linguist, please :cry:

@Jayantha

I don’t want it to be perceived as an offence, because I mean it as respectfully as I can, but this statement of yours means you have to train your ear a lot :anjal:

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I’m happy to defer to a linguist. I think at least we do agree that there is an obvious difference.

However, as you’d know, it’s always problematical to try to specify sounds by saying “it’s like the English word X”, since the English dialects vary so much. Down here we tend to drop the “r” off “car”, for example, so, to us Americans overemphasise it… Conversely, Americans don’t seem to pronounce the “l” in “golf”, or the first “c” in “antarctic”…

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I find Dhammaruwan’s chants when he was a young child so powerful. There’s also a beautiful recording of him chanting the mettā sutta (as an adult) but I don’t know how to attach the mp3 file here. If anyone wants to tell me how, I’d be happy to for anyone interested who doesn’t have it.

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Hi Linda,

We’d love to have the audio here. Best put it on it’s own thread, and include the SuttaCentral ID (Snp 1.8) somewhere in the post.

To add the mp3, if it’s online, just paste in the URL and it should work. If you have it locally, use the upload button on the editor window. (Uploading is preferable, as URLs change a lot) If you have any problems, just let me know.

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@sujato
Thanks Bhante. I’ve uploaded the mp3 of Dhammaruwan (as an adult) chanting the mettā sutta (Snp 1.8) here. It was origianlly on Dharma Seed so I hope it’s okay to repost here (if not, let me know and I’ll remove it)

And in doing so, I noticed that awhile ago @Russel had uploaded a video of Dhammaruwan chanting as a child.

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Thanks so much, that’s great. Just remember, when posting any resource, please include the SuttaCentral ID somewhere in the post. That way we can find and link to it from the sutta.

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39

Ven. Yuttadhammo’s 1st pali lesson at around 17 minutes onwards: http://static.sirimangalo.org/diraudio/Yuttadhammo/Pali/
explained that the vowels should sound the same no matter where they are - something about the Sanskrit background he had that ‘conditioned’ him to say that.

Having learnt Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu, I can understand why there are two possible sounds for short a: i.e.
a as in u in hut (the one in textbooks)
a as in “er” (e.g. in father)
We have the same situation in the language in usual usage, but in my early teens, there was a movement towards ‘standard language’ (bahasa baku) where (in oral examinations), the textbook sound was to be used at all times.

So “tassa” sounds:
Ven. Yuttadhammo: tassa
My Sri Lankan Pali teacher use ‘er’ most of the time when ‘a’ was at the end of a word: tasser

40

That’s what I thought also especially since Malay has its root in Sanskrit (or rather, Indic language) too, so maybe tassa sounds like tasse the way saya sounds like saye.

41

Can I tag onto this thread and ask about v’s as they haven’t been covered in the above?

In @Jayantha’s example, and at the Sri Lankan temple I attend, the v’s are much harder than how I’ve heard them from Aussies /Thai-lineage westerners.
So ‘Bhagavwato’ VS ‘Bhagavhato’

I see no note on this in the Bhavana book, but BSWA lay chanting book has it noted as ‘softer than English v, near w’

Thanks

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While we’re on the pronunciation topic, o’s and e’s are always long right?

I’ve heard before that they’re actually dipthongs where o=a+u and e=a+i ?