2. Each letter is connected to a top bar.
Unless otherwise specified, each letter
is followed by a neutral vowel sound,
transcribed as “a”.
ya + ma
yama, restraint
The first of Patanjali’s
eight branches of Yoga.
3. Pronunciation
The “a” sound is usually described as
like “alone” and “sofa” (mid-central
neutral vowel), but it is generally
pronounced closer to the sound in “far”
and “Tom” (open central vowel).
It is never pronounced like “cat”.
4. Do you want to hear the sounds?
The information on this course is from Tilak
Pile’s Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide.
http://www.tilakpyle.com/sanskrit.htm
On that site, you can hear recordings of the
words. This course is focused on reading, so it
does not include audio or detailed guidance on
pronunciation.
5. The Long A
To show a syllable has the “long a” (ā) sound,
an extra bar is added after it.
This is pronounced like “far” or “Tom”, rather than as in
“alone” and “sofa”, and never like “skate” or “hail”.
In Sanskrit, the “long” vowels are primarily distinguished by
actually being longer in duration than the “short” vowels.
nava, nine
nāva, boat
6. Caution!
A few letters already have a bar by themselves.
With a long A they would have two bars.
This is “nāga” (cobra), not “nāgā”
There are only three letters with freestanding
bars like this: ga, śa, and ṇa.
7. The “Silent A”
In some modern Indian languages, such as
Hindi, the short “a” is frequently dropped,
especially in the final position. It is very
common for Hindi speakers to pronounce
Sanskrit terms like “yoga asana” as “yog asan”
when speaking Hindi or English, and you may
see some terms written this way.
In Sanskrit chanting, the “a” is never silent.
