--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "at_man_and_brahman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > My understanding of why Maharishi > did that was to underscore that > Sanskrit formalizes the general > linguistic principle that consonants > must be "voiced," with a following > vowel. By default, the vowel is "a," > though the other vowels can be used > if specified. In this "northern thing," > the consonants voiced with "a" are > left without the written "a" just because > it's already there by default in the > pronunciation. > > For instance, in order to pronounce > "yog," you have to voice "a" very quickly > to get out the final consonant. Pronouncing > yog-a, makes the "a" much more emphasized > than it needs to be. > > Cardemeister, who apparently has expert > credentials in Sanskrt, can probably add > clarity here.
Dunno about "credentials" and "clarity". As to Sanskrit, I'm just a dilettante. I think at first Maharishi wrote "Jaya Shrii Guru Deva". Later it was changed to "Jai Guru Dev". IMO, the latter is the Hindi version of the former. In the devanaagarii script the consonant characters contain "by default" a *short* 'a'. Syllables containing any other vowels have a special diacritic to indicate that. If a word doesn't have the short 'a' at its end, there's a special diacritic calle "viraama" that "eliminates" it from the consonant character. http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ehei/naasad.jpg (In addition there are special charaters for initial vowels, for instance the first character in a chapter.) http://www.hermetics.org/images/gif/aVedicSanskrit.gif (initial vowels characters - diacritics attachet to consonant characters) Hindi is also mostly written in devanaagarii, I believe. It's weird that in transliterated Hindi at least the short a-letters at the end of words seem to be mostly dropped out but when one listens to Hindi, it seems like they are pronounced anyhow. That's my impression anyways. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "benjaminccollins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > In the south of India (Tamil Nadu for example) they laugh about all > > those dropped letters as a "northern thing"...which by the way, is an > > insult. > > > > > > > > > > > POWER of YOG > > > > > > > > So, in addition to "jogging" it would be good > > > > to do some "yogging"? (Those Hindi "truncated" > > > > forms of Sanskrit words make me furious! &%#!&?...) > > > > > > I thought that drop the final 'a' stuff was MMY bringing the language > > > back in tune with Natural Law or somesuch. Your furiousness with it > > > must be unstressing from the intense purity. > > > > > > Aleksanteri To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
