The following are the closest approximations in Received Standard English for the words from South Asian languages that are found in this book. The guide is designed primarily for Pali, but is also intended to provide some help with the Sanskrit (including Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit) and Gāndhārī words that occur in the Introduction and Appendices.
a as in cup, not as in cap.
ā as in calm.
i as in pick.
ī as in peak.
u as in took.
ū as in tool.
ṛ (Sanskrit only) is ‘vocalic r’ – r as a vowel. Originally it was probably pronounced as a trilled sound, like an r continued. Today, however, it is generally pronounced as a short ri sound, so ṛddhi sounds much like ‘riddhi’, and ṛṣi, ‘sage’, is often Anglicized as ‘rishi’.
e as in bake.
ai (Sanskrit only) as in bike.
o as in boat.
au (Sanskrit only) as in bout.
a, i, u, ṛ are short vowels; ā, ī, ū, e, ai, o, au are long. In Pali only, e and o are shortened before double consonants, so that the e in mettā and the o in gotta are pronounced short, though the resultant syllables are still long for stress purposes. (The length of syllables is important not only for knowing where to place the stress on words, but also for the metres used in poetry.)
k, g, c, j, ṭ, ḍ, t, d, p, b are unaspirated sounds: practically no breath escapes when they are pronounced, so they sound softer than their English equivalents. kh, gh, ch, jh, ṭh, ḍh, th, dh, ph, bh are aspirated: there is a noticeable escape of air, like an h, when they are pronounced. kh, gh etc. are written with single characters in the Indian scripts, and count as single sounds in pronunciation. Double consonants, such as kka, kkha etc., are fully pronounced, as in Italian.
kh as in blockhead, not as in loch.
gh as in egghead.
c as in chat, not as in cat (which would be spelled with a k in this system).
ch as in chat, but with a more marked escape of breath.
j as in lodge, not as in mirage.
jh as in bridgehead.
ph as in cuphook, not as in physics.
bh as in abhor.
There are two groups of t and d sounds. t and d are true dentals, pronounced with the tongue on the teeth, as in French. ṭ and ḍ are those distinctively Indian sounds, the retroflex consonants. In pronouncing them, the tongue starts from a position bent back against the roof of the mouth, and is brought slightly forward during speech, much as for r.
There is a similar relationship between dental n and retroflex ṇ, and between dental s (like English s) and retroflex ṣ (Sanskrit only – a soft sh sound). In Pali, there is also a retroflex consonant ḷ, as in Pāḷi.
th, dh, ṭh, ḍh are aspirated versions of the t and d sounds, as in pothook, bloodhound, not as in theme or this.
ś (Sanskrit and Gāndhārī) is a palatal sh sound, made with the tongue in the same place as for j, as in pushchair.
ñ comes before c, ch, j or jh, and sounds as in pinch, angel. In Pali, it can also occur on its own, doubled, or as an initial, when it is pronounced ny.
ṅ usually comes before k, kh, g or gh: it is the sound in pink, angle, king.
ṃ nasalizes the preceding vowel, rather like the n in French bon.
v sounds somewhere between v and w, on its own sounding more like v, but after another consonant more like w.
h is pronounced with more resonance than is usual in English, while ḥ (Sanskrit only) is a slightly harsh breathy sound, most commonly at the end of a word (but cf. duḥkha, Pali dukkha).
The stress on words in Pali and Sanskrit is determined by long and short syllables. For this purpose, a syllable containing a long vowel, or any vowel which is followed by more than one consonant, is long. A syllable containing a short vowel followed by a single consonant is short.
In a two-syllable word, the stress is always on the first syllable: Yama, Buddha, gati.
In a three-syllable word, if the second syllable is long, it is stressed: anicca, anattā. If not, then the first syllable is stressed, regardless of length: nāginī, Arahat.
In words of four syllables or more, if the second-last syllable is long, it is stressed: Moggallāna. If not, then if the third-last syllable is long, that is stressed: Ājīvika, Anāthapiṇḍika. If that too is short, the fourth-last syllable is stressed, regardless of its length: Dhammapada, Dhammapadaṭṭhakathā, Tipiṭaka. The stress on words in Pali and Sanskrit is not quite as heavy as that in English.
Gāndhārī, unlike Sanskrit and Pali, is known only from ancient manuscripts and has not survived in literary and liturgical use. Moreover, while Sanskrit and Pali are traditionally written in scripts descended from Brāhmī, in which spelling corresponds more or less exactly to pronunciation, the surviving Gāndhārī texts are written in Kharoṣṭhī script, which does not always distinguish between short and long vowels, or single and double consonants. So while it seems probable that abhiña (Appendix I, v. 5) was in fact pronounced like its Pali equivalent abhiññā, and that kama (Appendix I, v. 20) was pronounced like Pali and Sanskrit kāma, we have no independent evidence for this.