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Re: General

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R. Skrintha • June 25, 1997 


         
Dear BhagawathA-s,

Sri N. krishnamachari wrote:-

>Thus, we write the word as Brahma (with m coming after h) , bur peonounce it 
>as Bramha (with the h after the m).  Unfortunately, he has not given the
>reason for why it is done this way.  The fact that he has explicitly referred to this
>word and indicated that this is an esception at least answers the issue of how
>to pronounce the word.  I have not yet understood why this word is pronounced
>the way it is, and so there is still something more to learn on this issue.

In earlier times, the Sanskrit /h/ was voiced (prouncounced with a vibration
of the vocal cords caused by air forced from the lungs; eg., sounds like
b, g, d and all vowels) unlike the visarga which was voiceless (ie., not 
voiced). Such a /h/ is usually called a "breathy voice", since it involves a
full emission of breath and also vibration of vocal cords. Any voiced sound
like /b, g, d, m/ etc can be pronounced with a breathy voice, to result in
sounds like /bh, gh, dh, mh/, etc.

  It appears that in words like {brahma} and {jAhnavi}, as the orthography
indicates, the breathy sound came before the sonorant (/m/, or indeed /l/,
/n/), but over time the it became simultaneous with the sonorant, leading to
sounds like /mh/ which are anlogous to /bh/, /gh/ etc., except that there
was no seperate orthographic provision for them. Maybe that's the reason
why the old spelling was retained. Apparently, sounds like /nh/, /mh/ and
/lh/ abound in Prakrit, the form of Sanskrit spoken by common people in
those times. 

A somewhat similar situation arises when the word {ask} gets to pronounced 
/aks/ by some (this transposition in pronunciation is referred to as
metathesis in linguistic parlance)!! However, i suspect that the transposition 
of the /m/ and /h/ in pronunciation happens in not all spoken forms of 
Sanskrit.

Hari Om,
srikanth