Tattva-viveka
Simple Sanskrit Pronunciation Guide
Bhrigu - September 9, 2005 8:27 am
Dear Devotees,
as I mentioned in another topic, Vrindaranya asked me to make a simple pronunciation guide for Sanskrit (a Bengali one will hopefully follow soon). As many of you will notice, it is based on the one usually found at the end of BBT books, but (hopefully!) this one is a bit more systematic and exact. I have also made a simple recording of all the different letters mentioned in the PDF. I will make a separate text and recording about Sanskrit metrics, in which many of the sounds here will be illustrated as well.
In the PDF, I have used the standard transcription system used by the BBT, Audarya Press and just about everyone else. It is an accurate and good system which reproduces all the sounds of the Sanskrit language.
When posting verses on the Tattvaviveka or elsewhere, it is not always possible to include all the diacritics. It may not always be that important, either. However, to get even an approximately correct pronunciation, it is extremely important to distinguish between long and short vowels. I propose that we here write "a" for short a (like the a in Krishna) and "A" for long a (like the first "a" in "Rama"). Both the palatal s (with a slash on top) and the cerebral s (with a dot underneath) can be written as "sh".
Bhrigu - September 9, 2005 8:37 am
The audio file is too large, so I'm sending it to Gauravani for uploading on the dowloads page. Perhaps the PDF can also be put there.
Gauravani Dasa - September 9, 2005 11:45 am
Ok, just uploaded both files 
Syamasundara - September 9, 2005 1:13 pm
What page? Where?
Babhru Das - September 9, 2005 9:04 pm
Bhrigu - September 16, 2005 6:17 am
I will make a separate text and recording about Sanskrit metrics, in which many of the sounds here will be illustrated as well.
I just noticed that Gauravani has uploaded it to the downloads-page. The MP3-file has all the verses given as examples of different metres in the text.