Spelling - Balaram or Balarama ?

[Vrindavan]

Spelling - Lord Balaram or Balarama ?

 

Thanks a lot for help

[vanamali]

Balarama (Balaraama) in Sanskrit

 

Balaram or Balram (Balaraam Balraam) in Hindi and probably Bengali

[Vrindavan]

How about the pronunciation of the names too ?

 

Are they different too ?

 

Ba la ram vs.

Ba la ra ma

 

Or same pronunciation of the two spellings ?

Ba la ram ?

 

A bit confused

 

[Avinash]

The problem is that English is not a phonetic language. In other words, the same symbol can be pronouned in various ways. So, we have to decide what symbols we should use if we want to show Sanskrit words in Roman script.

 

Different transliteration schemes are used. I will mention here the two most common ones.

 

1. Put a line above a letter to show long pronunciation and no such line to show short pronuniciation.

 

So, the letter 'a' is pronouned the way 'u' is pronouned in 'cup'.

 

But if you put a small horizontal line above 'a', then it is pronouned the way 'a' is pronouned in 'fast'.

 

According to this scheme, the answer to your question is that the correct spelling is

'Balarama'

 

But there is one modification to be made in the above. The third 'a' should have a small horizontal line above it. (Sorry, I do not know how to do that using my keyboard).

In Balarama, there are four a's. First, second and fourth have short sound. The third has long sound.

 

2. Combination of lowercase and uppercase letters.

'A' is used for long 'a' sound as 'a' in 'fast'.

'a' is used for short 'a' sound as 'u' in 'cup'.

 

So, you should write

'balarAma'.

[Vrindavan]

My English is not good

 

Thus

balarAma

should have three sounds (mostly i heard 3 sounds)

 

ba la rAma (rAma is like one sound)

 

or four sounds ( i heard in one occasion )

 

ba la rA ma

 

please explain more

[Avinash]

There are four syllables:- "ba la rA ma"

Pronounce each syllable.