Sanskrit : Swan .....

[Guest guest]

Dear esteemed List members

 

In one dictionary we have, the swan is given as " Hamsa " , while

in another one the writer shows this root word as " Hansa " - the

latter writer claims this is also correct as n or m are " nasal " sounds

according to her.

 

Can anyone help us please? Surely the spelling is vital to get

a correct Devanagari rendition of a word?

 

Namaste

 

Ayuta

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

Several 'conventions' had to be invented to represent

pronunciations of Sanskrit words (and many other non-English

languages) into the Roman script. The history of 'diacritic' marks

goes back almost 6 centuries! Diacritics for Sanskrit were adopted in

1894, and are known as the Harvard-Kyoto convention. The Romanised

transliteration in most books follows this.

 

The computer revolution produced another convention, Avinash

Chopde's ITRANS, which could use the standard keyboard to produce

Sanskrit script through its software program.

 

The UNICODE convention has gradually taken over, but the

computer platforms are not yet ready for it!

 

The Sanskrit word for Swan would be written as haMsa in H-K,

ha.nsa in ITRANS. [The actual pronunciation is close to the nasal

in 'ounce'; if written as 'hansa' it would sound like the nasal

in 'bounce'].

 

For fuller details the following may be helpful:

 

http://sanskrit.gde.to/processing_tools/commonerrors.txt

 

To form conjunts with nasals, use

 

N^k, N^kh, N^g, N^gh or ~Nk, ~Nkh, ~Ng, ~Ngh

JNch, JNchh, JNj, JNjh or ~nch, ~nchh, ~nj, ~njh

NT, NTh, ND, NDh

nt, nth, nd, ndh

mp, mph, mb, mbh

 

All the N^, JN, N, n, m can be replaced by .n(overdot), or the

pa, pha, ba, bha series m with M, to keep the printout and

pronunciation correct. The overdot with M or .n is accepted way

but is

technically incorrect, mostly from pronunciation standpoint.

 

To use M or .n for anusvaara

If an anusvaara (overdot) is used within the words (word

internal!)

instead of above mentioned nasals, we suggest that you use

.n instead of M for all the letters except p, ph, b, bh, m.

With remaining letters, y, r, l, v, sh, shh, s, h, L, x, GY

use .n.

So it will be

sa.nskR^ita

sa.nvaada

sa.nlagna

sa.nsaara

a.nsha

sa.nrakshaka

sa.nyama

et ceteraa. It is wrong to ma-kaar for anusvaara in these words.

These .n have different pronunciation than simple M as saMsaara

and is more like with ardhacha.ndrabi.nduu.

 

This is not critical since the output with M and .n is same. The

note

is added more for clarification/information.

 

Please use .n followed by y, r, l, v, s, h instead of M for internal

anusvaar. This to avoid `ma' pronunciation with these letters.

 

A word ending anusvaar with M followed by vowel becomes makaar

 

(word)M and a,aa,i,ii,u,uu,e,ai,o,au as a start of the following

word

become, respectively,

 

ma, maa, mii, mu, muu, me, mai, mo, mau .

 

As an example, kiM aasiita becomes kimaasiita,

ashvatthaM enaM becomes ashvatthamenaM .

 

Hope this helps a litle in the understanding the difficulties in

'transliteration'.

 

(By the way, I learned all this over the years as a volunteer for the

Sanksrit Documents site!)

 

Regards,

 

Sunder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ramakrishna, " Rajah " <rajah@x> wrote:

> Dear esteemed List members

>

> In one dictionary we have, the swan is given as " Hamsa " , while

> in another one the writer shows this root word as " Hansa " - the

> latter writer claims this is also correct as n or m are " nasal "

sounds

> according to her.

>

> Can anyone help us please? Surely the spelling is vital to get

> a correct Devanagari rendition of a word?

>

> Namaste

>

> Ayuta

>

>

>