Re: OT: Help reading Indic transliteration?

At 23:48 14.1.2004, Roger Mills wrote:

>Yes, S-acute is considered a palatal.
More exactly a alveopalatal [s\], hence the Polish
s-acute in the transliteration.
German scholars of course use [C] for their convenience!

>So are "c j ñ" which at least
>conventionally are pronounced [tS dZ] (probably postalveolars) and [J] ( a
>true palatal).
Actually alveopalatal here too, thus [ts\ dz\].  There is
no recognized IPA symbol for a alveopalatal, though some
Sinologists have created a symbol which might be ASCIIfied
as [n\].

>   The series "s - s-dot - s-acute" parallels the other
>consonantal series "t - t-dot - c".  How it was _actually_ pronounced in
>Skt. is probably unknowable;
Indeed it is, since the ancient Indic phoneticians
were quite astute.  It was very important that the
Vedic hymns be recited correctly, or the sacrifice
would be taken by the demons!

>  nor do I know how it's pronounced in Hindi.  It
>could well be [C]; I've learnt it as [S], which is also the usual
>transliteration, as in "Shiva".  And yes, ç is often used.
In Hindi the palatal and retroflex sibilants have merged as /S/.


>(ObConlang!!) My first Kash texts used s-acute for [S] (which proved
>impossible in email at the time), now changed to ç.
For Sohlob I use {c j ç} in HTML but {tj dj(zj) sj} in ASCII/email.
The ASCII version of the transliteration has no {j} outside these
digraphs. (The phoneme /dz\/ has a /z\/ allophone, but I use
{zj} only before {d} in the ASCII transliteration, since I find
the combo *{djd} too darn ugly! :)

>  I
>recall an Indian friend mentioning that they often have to ask "is that
>"21-s?" (which the devanagari s-dot resembles).
Actually it is s-acute which looks like '21'.

At 22:52 14.1.2004, Roger Mills wrote:

>"h with subscr.dot" is indeed a slight aspiration-- in Skt. only in final
>position, where it represent the -s of various endings.  Root raj- > raj-a-s
>written rajah. 'king (nom.)
Actually _rajas-_ nom. _raja.h_ is 'dusk'.
'King' is _raajan-_ nom. _raajaa_.

At 23:07 14.1.2004, Joe wrote:

>Hmm?  S-acute is palatal(sometimes written c-cedilla, in fact).  S-dot
>is retroflex.  I don't think indic languages have postalveolar sounds...
Some of the modern languages/dialects use palatoalveolar phones,
tho alveopalatal is more common, and was the norm in ancient times.
Most Middle IndoAryan languages merged the three sibilants into
a single one which might be either [s\] or [s], and hence some
languages also had [ts dz] for {c j} -- a fact which is reflected
in the Tibetan transliteration of Sanskrit.  There is a name of a
Buddha which occurs Sanskritized both as 'Krakucchandra' and
'Krakutsundara'!  Bengali/Bangla, BTW, has even today only a
single sibilant, which is [s] only before /t_d/ and [S]
elsewhere.  The orthography pretends nothing happened since
Sanskrit!

/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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