|
.lang
by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.
Contents of this page
Language and Script
Introduction -- Ven. Narada Thera
Diacritical marks -- John Bullit
Forms a and ɑ
Pronouncing the letters AU, AW - DJPD16
Pronouncing the letter O - DJPD16
Pali language and me -- UKT
Geography and history --
www.geocities.com
indx-pali |
Top
Contents of this page
-- UKT
In Myanmar, whenever we speak of "language", we usually mean the written
form or the script, but in the West, especially the linguists, mean it to be the
spoken form or speech. Bringing speech (spoken language) to the fore brings in the unsolvable problem of choosing which form, from
which place, spoken by which group of people to represent what we are going to
call the authentic language. Would you say that how the people in Mandalay speak
is the representative form of Burmese? Are not the forms spoken in Arakan, in Tavoy,
and in Yangon Burmese language? This question of choosing which form becomes
irrelevant if we are to stick to our time-honoured adage:
|
.
We shall call the written form Myanmar, and the spoken form Burmese. In this paper Myanmar means the script (akshara) and not the spoken form. Taken together, we shall use the term Burmese-Myanmar. What I am trying to do is to write in Romabama, a one-to-one transliteration, which can be rightfully called Burmese-Latin. Similar terms would be English-Latin, French-Latin and Spanish-Latin, where English, French and Spanish are languages and Latin is the script (alphabet) used by western European languages. One of my aims in studying Pali as a language is to perfect Romabama.
Nobody really knows how the original Pali sounded like. We try to reproduce
the language by using the rules of writing the akshara which fortunately is
based on phonemic principals. When Burmese-Myanmar speakers reproduce Pali, the
sounds would be influenced by Burmese, and when people of Sri Lanka do likewise,
the sounds of Pali would be influenced by their local tongue - Sinhalese. It is
rather unfortunate for the Burmese-Myanmar speakers, that the so-called
International (or English) Pali is based on Pali-Sinhala and Sanskrit-Devanagari.
How the Burmese-Myanmar speakers pronounce the Pali words containing the character
r6c5 
{tha.} is not necessarily less "authentic" than those of the International
Pali where {tha.} is pronounced not as /θ/ but as /s/. Yet, some people in Myanmar
(including some learned monks) tend to look down on their own Pali sounds and try to emulate
the sounds of International Pali.
from: An Elementary Pali Course, by Ven. Narada Thera
http://www.vipassana.info/pali%20contents.htm -- in Tipitaka font
www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/ele_pali.pdf --
downloaded pdf file
in TIL archive
Pali (or <Pāḷi> with diacritical marks)
was the language spoken by the Buddha and employed by Him to expound
His Doctrine of Deliverance. Māgadhī
is its real name (UKT: notice the long vowel a with a bar over it), it being the dialect of the people of Magadha
{ma-ga.Da.} - a district in Central India. Pali (literarily: "line" or
"text"), is, strictly speaking, the name for the Buddhist Canon. Nowadays
the term Pali is often applied to the language in which the Buddhist texts or scriptures
were written. The Pali language must have had characters of its own, but at present they are extinct.
UKT:
I must respectfully disagree with the author, Ven. Narada Thera, of An Elementary Pali Course, on "The Pali language must have had characters of its own, ... ." Pali (if not at the time of Gautama Buddha) had had its own script -- the Asoka script, which is now known as the Brahmi script. Asoka script was in use about 250 years after the life-time of Buddha. It has surprised me to find that the Burmese-Myanmar script has many similarities to those of the Emperor Asoka who himself, like the Buddha, was not a Brahmin (religion - Hinduism). Incidentally, I must point out that Buddhism is not an "off-shoot" of Hinduism. Buddhism and Hinduism are at the two extreme ends: Buddhism is based on Anatta doctrine (roughly the non-existence of a permanent Soul), the exact opposite of Hinduism which is based on the permanence of the Soul or Atta.
Pali is written in the script of the land: Myanmar script in Myanmar, Sinhala in Sri Lanka and Thai in Thailand -- the three prominent Buddhist countries where Theravada school of Buddhism has taken root. However, the Pali in this paper is in Latin script. To make a distinction between various Pali texts, I will designate the text in this paper as Pali-Latin or English-Pali (E-Pali). Pali-Latin follows the Pali-Sinhala pronunciation. The one that I am familiar with is the Pali-Myanmar (or M-Pali). One major difference between Pali-Latin and Pali-Myanmar is the pronunciation of words involving Myanmar characters
{sa.} and
Pali-Myanmar Romabama Pali-Latin Meaning {sé-ta.na} cetanā intention {thi-la.} sīla character Pali-Latin words from: PTS Dictionary Which pronunciation is more authentic is debatable, since there are claims that before the Aryan (language: Sanskrit) domination of India, people living in the area where the Buddha originated spoke a language(s) which had Tibeto-Burmese roots. And therefore Myanmar pronunciation -- Burmese being a Tibeto-Burmese language -- should be closer to the original Magadha pronunciation. The following are examples of what you would find on the internet.
Pali means “text.” Pali is the language in which the oldest texts of Buddhism are written. In some senses it is an “artificial” language, in that these texts contain traces of dialects from various geographic regions and various points in time. Nevertheless, we can say that Pali is very close to the language actually spoken by the Buddha. -- http://www.geocities.com/derekacameron/pali.html
"In 1996, an archaeological dig unearthed a "flawless stone" placed there by the Indian Emperor Asoka in 249 BCE to mark the precise location of the Buddha's birth. When Asoka visited Lumbini, the Buddha's birthplace, it was a flourishing village. Asoka constructed four stupas and a stone pillar with a figure of a horse on top. The stone pillar bears an inscription "King Piyadasi (another name for Asoka), beloved of the gods, having being anointed 20 years, came here himself and worshipped saying 'Here Buddha Sakyamuni was born'. ... Buddha was born (ca. 624 BC) in Lumbini, now called Rummindei, not far from Kapilavatthu, Nepal, and died (ca. 544 BC) in Kusinara, now called Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh, India." -- http://vitalog.com/cgi-bin/profile/content.cgi?id=1605 .
It would be safe to assume that the language Asoka spoke would be the language of the majority of the region. How did it sound like? Was the language an Indo-European language or Tibeto-Burman? Of course, being born into the ruling class it would be safe to assume that Asoka knew the language of the ruling class. Was the ruling class Sanskrit-speaking Indo-Europeans? Or, was he of the original natives of the region -- the Tibeto-Burmese speakers.
Actually, we are more interested in how the Buddha spoke. Being of the same stock as Asoka, it is reasonable to assume that he must have spoken just as Asoka would be speaking a couple of centuries later.
Here, I must emphasize that I am not suggesting that Pali and Burmese are the same, or that Burmese was descended from Pali. What I am suggesting is that the pronunciations of words of one language would be close to that of the other.
As an illustration of what could have happened during the days of the Gottama Buddha and Emperor Asoka, we can look at the struggle for language domination in Manipur (India -- across the border from Myanmar). There in a small area are two groups of people contending for the recognition by the central government of their language as the official language of the area. One group, who claim themselves to be the direct descendants of the Aryans, claim that the other group (who happened be the majority) pronounce many words incorrectly because they are the Tibeto-Burmese speakers. The following is an excerpt from an article by Ashim Kumar Singha, 2002, http://manipuri.freeservers.com/
"Manipuri community is comprised of Aryans and Kuki-chin people and thus the people of this community speaks in two distinct languages namely "Meitei language" and "Bishnupriya Manipuri language". As the Meiteis entered Manipur from the east, their language is of the Tibeto-Burman group. The Bishnupriyas entered Manipur from the west and so their language is of the Indo-Aryan group. ... Some phoneticians have vaguely and partially viewed the Bishnupriya Manipuri language as a resultant language of Magadhi Prakrit and Bengali language. But it is a fact that Magadhi Prakrit was the language of demons and the low-caste fellows whose tongues were not so sharp but very slow to utter any thing; whereas the tongues of the BPM speakers are very sharp to utter any of the Indo-European languages having a close affinity with the original I.E. sounds. In fact, BPM traces its origin to the Sauraseni -Maharastri Prakrit that is more Sanskritic than the Magadhi Prakrit and the superficial of the Magadhi Apabhramgsa on it is simply the resultant of the local Give and take principle due to long neighbored associations. As for instance Tvara-Tvari is originally a BPM word that has spread to Bengali and Cachar which means quickly. "
The question of how the Buddha spoke has no definite answer. And yet, I would venture to suggest that the pronunciations of Pali-Myanmar would be closer to Magadhi Prakrit. This in effect would suggest that Pali-Myanmar pronunciations should have precedence over the so-called International Pali.
Note:
• It is regrettable that some people in the West, especially non-Buddhists, mistakenly take Pali to be the language of Bali, an island in Indonesia, where the majority of population is of Hindu faith.
• During my recent visit to Myanmar, 2005-2007, I visited the Manipuri community in Yangon, and met Saya Kalasan, a noted astrologer. According to him, most of the people in his community are of Meitei group, and to his knowledge the Bishnupriya speakers have died out in Myanmar.
edited excerpt from Coping with Pali diacritical marks and fonts A Guide to Learning the Pali Language by John Bullit, -- http://www.accesstoinsight.org/pali/index.html
Alas, there is no standardized method for displaying Pali's accented characters on computer screens.
UKT: To overcome this problem, Myanmars who can read Myanmar script should use Myanmar script. For those who cannot read Myanmar, I suggest they use Romabama which is a one-to-one transliteration to Myanmar. Romabama characters are presented within { }.
Over the years, many different methods have been adopted in an attempt to express Pali diacritics using the limited character sets available to personal computers. Some of these strategies are:
• Ignore them altogether. This is the method generally used here at Access to Insight (although I have used the palatal nasal ñ because it is easily implemented using HTML). For example, the first precept would be written thus:
panatipata veramani sikkha-padam samadiyami.
-- Pali-Myanmar
{pa-Na-ti.pa-ta wé-ra.ma.Ni. theik~hka-pa.dän tha.ma-di.ya-mi.} -- RomabamaUKT: According to
{pa-Li. a.Bi.Daan-hkyoap} by
{lèý-ti-paN~Ði.ta.} U Maung Gyi, the
{wa.} in {wé-ra.ma.Ni.} has a "dot in the centre of the circle"
(p.441). According to U Tun Tint, such a character should not be in Pali-Myanmar. However, it is present in Mon-Myanmar and it is pronounced like {pa.} but unlike the plosive {pa.}, it is an implosive.
• The Velthuis scheme: double the vowels, punctuate the consonants.
This scheme was originally developed in 1991 by Frans Velthuis for use with his
"devnag" Devanagari font, designed for the TEX typesetting system
(see »http://www.ctan.org/). Pali and
Sanskrit scholars have since adopted it as a standard technique in Internet
correspondence (see, for example, the
»BUDDHA-L discussion group and the
»Journal of Buddhist Ethics).
In the Velthuis scheme two basic rules are observed:
-- Long vowels (those usually typeset with a macron (bar) above them) are
doubled: aa ii uu
--
For consonants, the diacritic mark precedes the letter it affects. Thus, the
retroflex (cerebral) consonants (usually typeset with a dot underneath) are:
.r .t .th .d .dh .n .m .s
.l. The guttural nasals (m
or n with a dot above) are represented by "m and "n . The
palatal nasal (n with a tilde) is ~n.
This scheme is precise, although it does take some getting used to:
paa.naatipaataa verama.nii sikkhaa-pada.m samaadiyaami.
{pa-Na-ti.pa-ta wé-ra.ma.Ni. theik~hka-pa.dän tha.ma-di.ya-mi.} -- Romabama
• Fake it using HTML. HTML has a few characters that take care of some of the letters OK. For the long vowels you can use some sort of accent: ä ï ü, à ì ù, â î û etc. The palatal n is straightforward: ñ. Whatever method you adopt, be consistent. Example:
pâ.nâtipâtâ verama.nî sikkhâ-pada.m samâdiyâmi.
{pa-Na-ti.pa-ta wé-ra.ma.Ni. theik~hka-pa.dän tha.ma-di.ya-mi.} -- Romabama
-- UKT
• Use capital letters. Capitalized letters represent letters with an accompanying diacritic. This method is simple, but it has ambiguities (e.g., how to distinguish between palatal and guttural n?). Example:
pANAtipAtA veramaNI sikkhA-padaM samAdiyAmi.
{pa-Na-ti.pa-ta wé-ra.ma.Ni. theik~hka-pa.dän tha.ma-di.ya-mi.} -- RomabamaUKT: As long as you are within one system, or within one book, the problem of diacritical marks does not arise. However, if you are referencing or using other books and sources, as I am doing now, you must be careful to note the kind of system the author is using. For example, I am finding that PTS Dictionary and Ashin Narada seems to be using different systems.
-- UKT:
You may think that the following characters are the same:
a U0061 / ɑ U0251
ā U0101 / ɑ̄ U0251+U0304 (diacritical sign is known as macron).
They are not.
• a U0061 represents
{a.}, and ɑ U0251represents the akshara
{AU:} which has the sound
{au:}.
• a with a bar (macron) over it, is not an IPA (International Phonetic
Alphabet), and the use of such a symbol is very confusing to new comers into the
field -- my own experience.
The symbol which corresponds to Myanmar
{a.}
was given as ɑ U0251 in the original Ashin Narada's text , however, since
Pali-Latin characters are not IPA characters, both a U0061 and ɑ
U0251 would have been appropriate for Pali scholars, but not for phoneticians: (there are websites, such as
http://www.metta.lk/pali-utils/pcourse.html,
which uses Times New Roman font, writing the symbol for
{a.}
in Times_CSX+ font to make it appear as ɑ U0251).
It is to be noted that in PTS, a
U0061 is
{a.}, and o is
{AU:}. However, the PTS belongs to Pali scholars and its a
U0061 is NOT /a/; and its o is not necessarily /o/. My personal friend U
Tun Tint (MLC -Myanmar Language Commission) always insists that Pali o is
Burmese-Myanmar {au:}, and, for instance, {ko} should be kou . Please
note that U Tun Tint is the chief editor of
Myanmar Orthography (MOrtho),
Myanmar Language Commission (MLC), 1986, pp292. The following is from
Myanmar-English Dictionary, another MLC publication.
{ko}
/|kou|/ - particle polite prefix to a young man's name. -- MEDict013
{kau}/|ko|/ - n. 1. glue; gum; paste. -- MEDict011
Please note that MLC transcriptions, being different from IPA, are given as /|...|/.
In a lighter vein, I would add: if you are of my same age you can call me
{ko kyau-htun:}, NOT
{kau kyau-htun:}. Well that would make me a "sticky" person -- I am already a
"stick-in-the-mud" to my good and forgiving friends like Ko Tun Tint.
Now, we should ask ourselves: why this confusion over Burmese-Myanmar {au:} and {o} . For this we turn to Daniel Jones Pronouncing Dictionary, DJPD16.
DJPD16 p41. The vowel letter combinations [au] and [aw] are similar in that their most common pronunciation is /ɔː (US) ɑː/ , e.g.:
vowel-sound /ɔː/ (US) /ɑː/
<sauce> /sɔːs/ (US) /sɑːs/
<saw> /sɔː/ (US) /sɑː/
However, there is more variation in the case of [au]. When followed by [gh] in the spelling realised as /f/ , it is pronounced as /ɑː (us) æ/ , e.g.:
vowel-sound /ɑː/ (US) /æ/
<laugh> /lɑːf/ (US) /læf/
The combination [au] may also be produced as /ɒ (US) ɑː/ , e.g.:
vowel-sound /ɒ/ (US) /ɑː/
<Australia> /ɒsˈtreɪ.li.ə/ (US) /ɑːˈstreɪ-/
<because> /bɪˈkɒz/ (US) /-ˈkɑːz/
In addition
Other sounds associated with the combinations [au] are:
vowel-sound /əʊ/ (US) /oʊ/
<chauffeur> /ˈʃəʊ.fəʳ/ (US) /ʃoʊˈfɝː/
And, in rare cases:
vowel-sound /eɪ/
<gauge> /geɪdʒ/
In weak syllables
The vowel combinations [au] and [aw] are realised with the vowel /ə/ in weak syllables, and [au] may also result in a syllabic consonant or an elided vowel, e.g.:
vowel-sound /ə/
<awry> /əˈraɪ/
<restaurant> /ˈres.tər.ɔ̃ːŋ , ˈ-trɔ̃ːŋ/ (US) /-tə.rɑːnt, ˈ-trɑːnt/
DJPD16 p373. The vowel letter [o] has several pronunciations. The two most
predictable strong pronunciations linked to spelling are:
• a monophthongal pronunciation, sometimes described as 'short' in British
English /ɒ (US) ɑː ɔː/ and
• a diphthongal pronunciation, sometimes described as 'long' /əʊ (US) oʊ/.
In the monophthongal pronunciation, the [o] is generally followed by a consonant which closes the syllable, or a double consonant before another vowel, e.g.:
vowel-sound /ɒ/ (US) /ɑː ɔː/ - monophthongal (short pronunciation in Brit. Engl.)
<cod> /kɒd/ (US) /kɑːd/
<robbing> /ˈrɒb.ɪŋ/ (US) /ˈrɑːbɪŋ/UKT: It is important to note that the /ɒ/ corresponding to Burmese-Myanmar {au} is considered to be monophthongal by DJPD16. Its corresponding vowel
. It is noteworthy that we find a similar split vowel in Bengali ো (U09CB) with a similar sound as in Burmese-Myanmar. However, in Hindi-Devanagari, it is not a split vowel: ो (U094B).
The diphthongal pronunciation usually means the [o] is followed by a single consonant and then a vowel, e.g.:
vowel-sound /əʊ/ (US) /oʊ/ - diphthongal (long pronunciation in Brit. Engl.)
<code> /kəʊd/ (US) /koʊd/
<robing> /ˈrəʊ.bɪŋ/ (US) /ˈroʊ.bɪŋ/
In many cases, the monphthongal pronunciation results from the above kind of spelling, e.g.:
<gone> /gɒn/ (US) /gɑːn/
<copy> /ˈkɒp.i/ (US) /ˈkɑː.pi/
Also, the 'long' pronunciation occasionally appears in words where the vowel is followed by a single consonant and no vowel, e.g.:
<control> /kənˈtrəʊl/ (US) /-ˈtroʊl/
When [r] is followed by [o], the strong pronunciation is one of several possibilities: /ɒ (US) ɔːr/ , /ɔː (US) ɔːr/ , /ʌ (US) ɝː/ or /ɜː (US) ɝː/, e.g.:
vowel-sound /ɒ/ (US) /ɔːr/
<forest> /ˈfɒr.ɪst/ (US) /ˈfɔːr-/vowel-sound /ɔː/ (US) /ɔːr/
<foremost> /ˈfɔː.məʊst/ (US) /ˈfɔːmoʊst/vowel-sound /ʌ/ (US) /ɝː/
<borough> /ˈbʌr.ə/ (US) /ˈbɝː-/vowel-sound /ɜː/ (US) /ɝː/
<word> /wɜːd/ (US) /wɝː-/
And exceptionally, /ʊ/, e.g.:
<Worcester> /ˈwʊs.təʳ/ (US) /-tɚ/
In addition
There are other vowel sounds associated with the letter [o], e.g.:
vowel-sound /ʌ/
<colour> /ˈkʌl.ər/ (US) /-ɚ/vowel-sound /uː/
<move> /muːv/vowel-sound /ʊ/
<woman> /ˈwʊm.ən/vowel-sound /wʌ/
<once> /wʌnts/vowel-sound /ɜː (US) ɝː/
<colonel> /ˈkɜːnəl/ (US) /ˈkɝː-/
And, exceptionally:
vowel-sound /ɪ/
<women> /ˈwɪm.ɪn/
In weak syllables
The vowel letter [o] is realised with the vowel /ə/ in weak syllables, /ɚ/ in American English when followed by an [r], and may also be elided in British English, due to compression or realisation as a syllabic consonant, e.g.:
vowel-sound /ə/
<observe> /əbˈzɜːv/ (US) /-ˈzɝːv/
<forget> /fəˈget/ (US) /fɚ-/
<factory> /ˈfæk.tər.i/ , /-tri/
-- UKT
I have attempted to study Pali as a language -- not as part of the Theravada
{hté-ra.wa-da.} Buddhism -- many times in my life. The first time was in
Myanmar and the Pali that I learned was the Pali-Myanmar (M-Pali). After coming
to Canada, I tried to learn Pali a couple of times on the Internet. Of course it
was the Pali-Latin (E-Pali), and the lessons were from An Elementary Pali Course, by
Ven. Narada Thera.
I had prepared my lessons formerly in Tipitaka font. These files which you are reading now
were part of my first attempt to study Pali. I have now changed the font to Arial Unicode MS.
If the IPA character schwa [ ə ] appears on your computer with almost the
same shape as
{hka.}, then be assured that most of the characters that is displayed on your
computer screen is correct. Even though you are using Arial Unicode MS, there
is always a chance that what you are seeing may not be the same as what I have
intended. This can be due to the operating system of your computer.
It should be borne in mind that Pali is written in many scripts which would bring about
differences in pronunciation. Which pronunciation is more authentic is debatable. Pali written
in English (the form presented in this paper) was probably was based on Sinhala and Sanskrit.
As such, Pali-Latin would
have different pronunciation for some words, particularly those involving the
Burmese-Myanmar consonants
r2c1
{sa.} /s/ and r6c5
{tha.} /θ/. To make the paper more intelligible to a native-Myanmar,
I have included Pali-Myanmar (the same as Burmese-Myanmar) characters
and their transliterations in Romabama. The Romabama words are displayed within { }.
See continuation of Pali language and me (cont.) on further study of Pali.
from: http://www.geocities.com/indoeurop/tree/indo/pali.html
The Buddhist Canon in Sri Lanka is written in Pali (see UKT note below), so the language is still used as a sacred one in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But its homeland is India, and Pali originally was one of western dialects which later acquired certain eastern characteristics. Later together with Buddhism it spread within the South Eastern Asia, and a lot of scientific, religious and literature works were written in it already when it was forgotten in India. There are in fact four kinds of Pali: the Canon Pali, the literature Pali, the commentary Pali and the modern Pali; the last one has got a significant number of local borrowings and peculiarities and is no longer classical.
UKT note: It is statements like this that usually lead non-linguists astray. Pali is a spoken language, written in the script of the land where it is used: for example in Myanmar, it is written in Myanmar script. Strictly speaking Myanmar script is an abugida and not an alphabet. We should note that abugidas are scripts based on phonemic principals, whereas the alphabets are not. Abugidas preceded the IPA by thousands of years. The first abugida was that of Emperor Asoka.
Pali Phonetics: Pali phonetics is rather simple: 5 simple vowels, no diphthongs and sonant vowels, aspirated and non-aspirated consonants. Pali phonetic laws prohibit the usage of a great number of fricative consonants together, all words end in a vowel.
UKT:
The above statement seems to be inconsistent with the usual statement that "the Pali
alphabet consists of forty-one letters -- 8 vowels (Sara)
{tha.ra.} , and 33 consonants (Vyañjana)
{byiÑ:}".
This is due to the failure to differentiate between the spoken form of a
language and its written form.
Nominal Morphology: In morphology the number of vowel interchanges decreased in comparison with Sanskrit; there is a trend of unification of types of noun declension and verb conjugation, and the number of cases is six at maximum.
Verbal Morphology: The verb has only three tenses and two aspects: ancient Indic languages Vedic and Sanskrit used much more of them. The system of syntax is well developed and uses many auxiliary parts of speech in analytical constructions.
Lexicon: Pali is interesting for its vocabulary which is totally unnatural and is created only in order to reflect the ideas of the religion.
Script: Brahmi script.
Close contacts: Languages of the Southeast Asia contributed much to the "modern" variety of Pali. Of the Indic languages, Pali is rather similar to Sanskrit.
For more information, see:
• Indo-European Chronology (Indic)
• The Routes of Indo-Aryan Migrations (essay including the glossary)
• Links
End of TIL file
