Talk:Sanskrit/Archive 2

message: I noted at least one mistake ("Sanskrit is the official language of India", instead of just "an official language of India"), and a couple of phrases that should be rewritten.
"a pure Language native only to bHaratha (Today's India)"; (I believe that is a reference to the fact that Sanskrit means "excellently made" or "pure" in Sanskrit, though it should be confirmed with non-Wikipedia sources) 
"Sanskrit was the language for thousands of years even before anything similar to language with lexicon, phonetic and ontological definations occured elswhere on the globe." (I guess this is a reference to Panini, but that's ~ 2.5 thousand years back, not thousands of years back).
The rest of the article should probably be checked over for inaccuracies that either might have crept in or might have been added by zealots of various types
Arun
:Those phrases and others were added recently by one user () and, needless to say, have now been removed. But I agree that this article does need improvement in other places. StradivariusTV 00:45, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: Isnt the basic meaning just "put/written together" in the sense of Codification?
Which is the best Font to view this page, some of the letters are missing in my browser?
-- 84.159.189.7 16:58, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought about an interesting alternate meaning.  In Red Pine's translation of the Heart Sutra, he translates samskar as memory. "Sanskrit" can in the same way mean "that which is memorized"? Somewhat plausible considering that most ancient Sanskrit texts, like the Vedas were transmitted for at least a thousand years by memorization generation after generation before they were written down. deeptrivia (talk) 18:09, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning 

message: I have heard that Tagalog is actually the closest living language to sanskrit, sharing more in common with it than any indian language.  However, googling "tagalog sanskrit" gets me way too many hits that have nothing to do with what I am trying to find out.
Anybody got advice or know this to be not true?
*Tagalog is an Austronesian language so any similarities between it and Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, would proabably be due to lexical borrowing and/or Sprachbund.--Hraefen 00:06, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the Indo-European loanwords in Tagalog are from Spanish, not Sanskrit (nor its daughter languages).  I think if you modify your google search to look for Spanish rather than Sanskrit, you'll find what you're looking for...although perhaps not what you expected. ;-)  Tomertalk 18:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tagalog 

message: The article Jana Gana Mana begins: "Jana Gana Mana ... is the first of five stanzas of a poem by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, written in the highly sanskritized Bengali language." - There's been some question about whether it's meaningful or appropriate to use this expression "sanskritized Bengali language". Can anyone contribute to this? (Please discuss in Talk:Jana Gana Mana.) Thanks. -- Writtenonsand 16:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jana Gana Mana: "sanskritized Bengali language" 

message: He guys, I just added two Indic scripts from Indonesia to the one which is already in the article. What do you think of it? Meursault2004 22:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good job! deeptrivia (talk) 18:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sanskrit in Javanese and Balinese script 

message: The article says that  is a rare consonant in the world's languages.  I've never seen an aspirated fricative anywhere.  I've seen aspirated affricates, but those are different.  If no language has an aspirated fricative then maybe this should be changed to murmured . AEuSoes1 19:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote it. It is from the book Principles of Historical Linguistics by Hans H. Hoch (Mouton de Gruyter, 1991).Cygnus_hansa 10:18, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  rare or impossible? 

message: what "IPA slashes"? I thought IPA is commonly enclosed in square brackets, while phonological transcriptions are between slashes. Far from "even more confusing" I would find square brackets  rather an improvement. dab (ᛏ) 20:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: IPA convention is to enclose phonological transcriptions in slashes /like this/ and phonetic transcriptions in brackets [like this].  Magicalsaumy would like this to change to have spaces between the brackets and slashes / like this / and [ this ].  This isn't an issue of slashes vs brackets. AEuSoes1 21:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I realize you were talking about spaces. I am talking about slashes. That's two unconnected points. Since we are dealing with phonetic transcription here, I was suggesting we replace the slashes with the more correct square brackets. dab (ᛏ) 14:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slashes 

message: The article is very well written and has every possibility to become a featured article. I used the to write a school report on Sanskrit language and I got a A+ grade in it!! --Spartian 07:24, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: you mean you presented the article as your own work in school and got a good grade? When will teachers learn to google? The article is presently still rather far from FA level. It needs quite some cleanup. But we could put it on WP:PR, and it could be there in a couple of weeks. dab (ᛏ) 13:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Lol. I didn't copy and paste the article. But yeah this article is very informative --Spartian 18:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured article 

message: This article claimed that the pitch accent was not present in Sansrkit as codified by Panini. This ignores the fact that Panini's derivation builds the pitch accent using the device of anubandhas, has a large section devoted to the accent of compounds, and a shorter section devoted to when finite verbs retain their accent in a sentence. We should not confuse modern grammars of "Classical Sanskrit" and Panini's grammar.
Also, the usual descriptions of the stress accent (eg, Macdonnel, "Sanskrit Grammar for Students") say that the stressed syllable is penultimate to preantepenultimate, not one of the last three syllables.
NathRao 17:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sanskrit is not a stress-timed language. It is a syllable-timed language, like Latin. And yes, it seems that the pitch accent was lost by 6th century AD, not BC. Classical Greek also lost its pitch accent almost by the same time.Cygnus_hansa 22:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Panini and pitch accent 

message: This is likely to erupt into a controversy.
The usual dates of Panini (5-4th c BCE) and the Epics (post-Mauryan at the earliest. extant Mahabharata likely even latter) make it unlikely that the Sanskrit Epics are pre-Paninean. As Oberlies categorically states in the introduction to "A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit", this is not defensible from linguistic point of view. The justification is the rest of that book.
NathRao 17:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relative Dates of the Epics and Panini 

message: Sanskrit has found its origin in the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization. it has nothing to do with Aryan invasion. and all such theories have been proved wrong. Sanskrit is not part of the Indo-European language in fact English has come from Sanskrit. Sanskrit has 400 grammar rules. please get these facts correct
::Dear Anonymous. Before making your Hindutvavadi claim, I want to ask you something. How much do you know about Linguistics, especially Historical Linguistics? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, let me guesssss...... Nothing. You know nothing about linguistics. Without any knowledge in your brains, you have read some crap on the internet and this is what you have claimed here. And we have not claimed anything here related to Aryan invasion, for your kind information.Cygnus_hansa 22:53, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you provide any evidences or sources please. In that case we can throw the whole Indo-European hypothesis into the dustbin, including the historical linguistics. Meursault2004 13:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Huh ??? I was just being cynical. Meursault2004 17:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

text: so when someone supports your bizarre POV but looks like an idiot doing it, you claim they're actually someone secretly trying to discredit your cause? Genius. --Krsont 22:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  sanskrit not an Indo-European language 

message: Not related to the Sanskrit article, but I read the name of the Barmakids political clan (famous for it's Viziers!) originally came from the Sanskrit (or maybe Pali) Pramukh, which I've seen translated in various places as "High Priest", "Abbot", "President", "Administrator" ... could one of you fine folks help me find the proper Devangari (or whatever script is historically appropriate) writing ?
(Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Pramuck was etymologically related to Brahmin, though I haven't seen any evidence for that, beyond that they're both designations for a priestly function and "BRM" is close to "PRMK". But then, I have no idea how Sanskrit etymology works.)
I also have the same question for the name Nava Vihara (New monastery / new temple), though it's not as important. Thank you! flammifertalk 08:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: प्रमुख - It's related to "मुख्य" ("mukhya") which means "important". -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "नव विहार" - Nava Vihara -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:39, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

text: You're welcome. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help on transcribing a name in Sanskrit (and etymological info.) 

message: I have modified the number of speakers in Info box. References are given below.
Languages in descending order of strength - India, states and union territories : 1991 Census 
Population by Language, Bilingualism, Trilingualism : Scheduled Languages : 1991 CensusBharatveer 13:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1991 Census-language data 

message: Over on the article on Indo-European ablaut there has been a request for examples from other languages (at present we refer to English, German, Latin and Greek).  Any chance of some of you Sanskrit experts looking over there to see if you have anything to add?  Possibly a whole sub-section on ablaut in Sanskrit would be justified?  --Doric Loon 14:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ablaut 

message: Once again, Vedic Sanskrit has the full richness of a natural language. Classical Sanskrit as defined by Panini, otoh, is much reduced and streamlined for regularity. It is this Paninean Sanskrit that is "computer friendly"; it arguably qualifies as an engineered language in some respects, but it is not "more computer-friendly" than other "engineered languages spoken by humans" such as Lojban (because it is not fully artificial, it is a compromise between the natural language it is based on and Panini's principles of regular morphology). Paninean Sanskrit is notable as the earliest known attempt at such regularization, but it doesn't do Sanskrit justice to reduce it to that, seeing the full irregularity of Vedic grammar. dab (ᛏ) 11:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Few people spoke Sanskrit (post-Vedic or Upanishadic Sanskrit to be specific) as their mother tongue in Panini's time, and second-language learners were probably having difficulty with the extreme irregularity and randomness (12 ways of forming infinitives) of Vedic Sanskrit . I suspect that Panini made some of the regularisations and simplifications based on parallel developments in the Prakrits, but made sure to stay slightly archaic and very conservative - especially in terms of phonology. Also, the inflectional grammar had probably been simplified in various ways by speakers of various languages (even post-Paninean Epic Sanskrit does not fully conform to classical grammar, probably because further developments had taken place in the writers' mother-tongues), and Panini probably tried to make these simplifications uniform (as opposed to various forms used by various people) and more regular. --Grammatical error 15:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "computer friendly" 

message: Someone changed my vowel classification, making the ऋ, लृ etc as alveolar approximants. They are in fact retroflex approximants, (Sanskrit: mūrdhanya), VERY CLEARLY classified as such by the Sanskrit grammarians and MW Sanskrit dictionary. I am going to make the necessary change. Further, let me be clear that the Sanskrit grammarians do NOT define any alveolar articulation. For them, coronal articulations are either dental or retroflex.Cygnus_hansa 22:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So words like "Rishi" are meant to be pronounced ? Are you sure? I've never heard anyone pronounce it like that (Sanskrit doesn't even have the retroflex approximant as a normal consonant phoneme and the retroflex lateral approximant only exists as an allophone of intervocalic  in Vedic Sanskrit). I have always heard something like --Grammatical error 05:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The section is about pronunciation as supposed to be according to the old grammarians, not as realized in modern times.Cygnus_hansa 06:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My native language is Malayalam and we have the retroflex approximant as a phoneme but we never use it in any borrowed Sanskrit words, so I'm rather surprised at the fact that Sanskrit "r" and "vocalic r" are meant to be retroflex. However, since you say that the ancient grammarians do indeed classify them as retroflex, I'll stop arguing. --Grammatical error 06:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowels 

message: Every so often a spammer using an IP address that starts with 64.228.225. spams links to bogus web sites. I have tracked down and reverted all I could find, but I'm getting a little sick of tracking all these articles on my watchlist (it's up to 263 pages by now). Can I ask the regular, frequent editors of this article to keep an eye out for this person? If they hit again, please revert the edit and warn the spammer. If you have the time, check out what other edits they made that day and revert them as well -- or just let me know and I'll do it.
The link they like to add to this article is [http:// sanskrit ipfox com/ Sanskrit Etymological Sources - Cognates]. The real point of the link is to build search engine rankings for the commercial links at the bottom of the page; the same spamdexer is linking similarly bogus pages for Hindu mystical figures and U.S. country music stars -- all with the same links at the bottom of the page.
The spammer also recently created an account, User:Borgengruft.
For more info, see:
* Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive117#Link-spamming from someone in the IP address block 64.228.225.xxx
* Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive118#Update -- now using Borgengruft?
* User:A. B./To do list#Abusers
Thanks for your help.--A. B. 06:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: if it's the same url all the time, we just need to add it to the :meta:Spam blacklist, I'll suggest that on meta. dab (ᛏ) 09:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just learned of this resource and left a note there -- only to see that you had beaten me to this! I'll leave a note on your talk page.--A. B. 14:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help wanted for a [[Sanskrit]] link spammer 

message: Why did ḥ replace final s in -a stem declension, but not in -i stems and -u stems? As far as I know, final "s" is always changing into ḥ in pronunciation. --82.139.47.117 20:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ḥ 

message: Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence / Knowledge Representation
* Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence by Rick Briggs, Roacs, NASA Ames Research Center. Published in AI Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 1985 
any idea ?
-- 172.174.175.119 11:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: wow. never mind that there has been a "computational linguistics" section here for ages, don't let mere facts distract you from your paranoia, IAF. Yes there was a "Sanskrit & AI" fad in the 1980s. Worth mentioning, not much to it. dab (ᛏ) 18:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence ?? 

message: I found this article's PR entry, and since I just want to make a few points about the introduction and article organization instead of giving a section-by-section review, I'm commenting here. Per WP:LEAD, the introduction really should be 3 paragraphs.  That last sentence about the article's scope should become an italicized "disambiguation-type" statement at the top of the article. Something along the lines of This article focuses on Classical Sanskrit. For the pre-Classical form of the language, see Vedic Sanskrit.  Since there is already a main article on that, the summary here can be condensed further. Perhaps a summary mention of some grammatical features can be put in the lead in the sentence's place, because there are many grammar sections. -Fsotrain09 18:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: Hello fellow wikipedians,
Understand the wikipedia project to provide authentic sources alone.This article features sanskrit is speaken nationwide in India . mm . This is a dead language dears. and u r giving as much hype to make it alive. - what is your problem with comprehension? Nowhere the article says it is " speaken nationwide in India" . It says Sanskrit is used ofr liturgical and religious purposes and has lots of prestige, which is true.
Please provide some useful or if u dare give REAL facts about sanskrit.There are a bunch of blog entries to defame sanskrit than that of its promoters. No false info —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.36.96 (talk • contribs) February 21, 2006
:Hellø feller 59.92.36.96? Zø whæt længuaigzhe ærest thøu spaekin'? Nøt B1FFian isit? Rursus 21:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It is not the nationwide language dears 

message: In section Sanskrit#Vowels, it is mentioned that IAST /a/ is equiv. to English schwa. Isn't it a little closer a short IPA /ɑː/ ? Also, as noted in section Sanskrit#Phonology, is IPA /ŗ/ pronounced /ri/ in modern Sanskrit? I have heard /ŗg/ being said as it is in the name of the veda, and, in Malayalam, the name of Christ pronounced /kŗsθu/. Kummini 16:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, IAST /a/ is NOT the short form of IPA /ɑː/ . It is a central vowel, and it is pronounced as schwa (the open-mid central vowel). Yes, for sandhi purposes, the ancient Sanskrit grammarians agree that a + a = IPA /ɑː/ . And the Pandits of modern India are no longer to speak vowel-like /ŗ/ , they approximate it as /ri/. Exceptions are always there, though. Cygnus_hansa 20:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Most Sanskrit pandits from Tamil Nadu across pronounce /ŗ/ as r. Lay speakers of Telugu pronounce it /ru/, while the /ri/ pronounciation from what I understand is dominant in the North. I've tried to clarify this, but feel free to change the wording. Ambarish 05:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronouncing Vowels 

message: Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Translation--D-Boy 19:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  translators needed at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Translation]] 

message: The motto of the Indian Navy is 'Shano Varuna' - meaning 'May the Lord of the Oceans be Auspicious Unto Us' according to the Indian Navy site:
I would like to know is it Shan No Varuna as stated in the Indian Navy page of wikipedia or is it Shan O Varuna. Which one is correct. Kindly help. Thank you.
Chanakyathegreat 10:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Motto of the Indian Navy 

message: Hi.
Should the name of this page be changed to "Sanskrit language", to conform with the titles of other language pages, like English language, French language, German language, Navajo language, Chinese language, Korean language, etc.? 74.38.35.171 03:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think so.   — Athænara </font>  ✉  03:59, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it should comply with the emerging standard.  For an example of why this matters, see the documentation on Template:DisplayTranslations which by default supports a pipe to a language page if the language has a page named Sanskrit_language (or Whatever_language). Buddhipriya 05:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason why the examples 74.38 gave have language at the end is because English, French etc. don't necessarily refer to the language. If you click the links, you will that notice that they are Disambiguation pages because they can refer to English people, English culture, English language ... The reason why Sanskrit and Hindi don't have language at the end is because they can only refer to the language, nothing else! Most languages are named after a particular ethnic group or culture and hence the name can have other meanings. To be honest, if standardisation helps the technical problems, I don't mind it being changed. But bear in mind that I have never someone say "I study Sanskrit language" whereas "I'm interested in the Punjabi and Spanish languages" sounds more familiar. GizzaChat © 07:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: DaGizzaji, could there not be "Sanskrit Literature", "Sanskrit drama", "Sanskrit Philosophy", "Sanskrit Poetry", etc.? Perhaps I did not understand what you meant. Buddhipriya 03:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: that's not the point. The correct designation is in fact "the Sanskrit language", and "Sanskrit" just by ellipsis. The title should be "Sanskrit language" for reasons of encyclopedicity; otherwise, it's a bit like having the article on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe reside at Goethe. dab (𒁳) 20:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text:  Just random thoughts, do we need to change the title of Esperanto to "Esperanto language"? Are there Sanskrit people, like French people, Navajo people, Chinese people, Korean people? Considering things like this, Sanskrit's naming case is a bit different than these other languages. We badly need French to be a disambig page, because it might be linked with sentences like "X was French" as well as "X is a book in French". This problem would never arise with links to Sanskrit.  I don't know if this means the current article name is fine. deeptrivia (talk) 22:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name of the page? 

message: "Old Javanese – English Dictionary", written by professor P.J. Zoetmulder in 1982. I dont have the info on the book thoughBakaman 02:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  javanese 50% assertion 

message: I've read unsourced assertions that claim that Pāṇini was the first person to actually name the language Sanskrit as "Sanskrit."  Is this true?  If so, what did users call the language before Pāṇini came along to write his grammar? Patiwat 07:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: good question, but your unsourced assertion is mistaken. Panini didn't call Sanskrit Sanskrit. It is first so called in the Mahabharata. In the Vedas, there is just "language", "vak". "Sanskrit" is an adjective added to that, "samskrta vak" = "posh language". dab (𒁳) 08:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The old grammarians used the term bhāṣā, especially when distinguishing it from chandas, the term for "vedic" (cf. chandasi bahulam).  rudra 12:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: that would be "spoken" as opposed to "hymnic" -- we shouldn't infer a sense of historical depth or language change here, but a distinction between different registers. I don't know any Vedic term for non-Indo-Aryan languages. Just as in Greece, foreign language wasn't even recognized as language proper. The ShBr has mleccha for any "barbarians" that aren't part of Vedic culture, including, of course, linguistically, but I am not aware that Vedic texts show any interest in such "barbarian" language at all. Interest in languages that aren't either your own, or your  religion's liturgical language, only arises in the 16th-17th century as part of the European "Enlightenment" (the Jesuits seem to have begun it, starting with Athanasius Kircher, and possibly some Renaissance precursors. Before that, "grammar" always meant either "our grammar", or "the grammar of the language of the gods"). dab (𒁳) 13:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Pāṇini the first to call Sanskrit "Sanskrit"? 

message: I totally disagree with the current opinion that Sanskrit पे (IAST e) and पो (IAST o) are pronounced as long /eː/ and /oː/. The Old Prussian language shows, that theese characters have to be pronounciated and written as ei [ei] and ou [ou].
For example OP. deivs 'god', Skr. devaḥ, must be deivaḥ, OP. dātvei 'to give', Skr. dātave, must be dātavei, Latvian govs 'of cow', Skr. gos, must be gous etc.
The Skr. ai really comes from long diphthong āi, au from āu, so along theese changes the short diphthong ai turns into ei and au - into ou. e: and o: are later developments from ei and ou and can't be introduced in Classic Sanskrit!
And now abaut a before t. Indo-Iranian languages have the feature, that tautosyllabic n or m (ṃ) falls out in some cases before t and in the end of the word. And in order to preserve ethymology, such a(n)/a(m) have to be written in IAST by using character ą [an].
So the Skr. šata '100' must be written as śątą (<*čamtam 'hand', cf. Latvian cimds 'glove', čamdīt 'to fumble, to paw'), not śata!, nava as navą (<*navam 'new'), dataḥ 'tooth' as dątaḥ (<*adhantas 'eating') etc. Cognates Proto-Baltic čimtan/cimtan '100' and dantas 'thooth'. Roberts7 01:41, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The "e" and "o" are pronounced as long /eː/ and /oː/ though if what you are saying is valid, then the pronunciation may have been different in Vedic or an earlier form of Classical Sanskrit. The fact is nobody pronounces "e" and "o" as ei and ou anymore. Even ऐ and औ ([IAST]]: ai and au) are pronounced as either /əi/ and /əu/ by those well educated in Sanskrit but more commonly as /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ whenever Indians in the twenty-first century need to speak in Sanskrit. If you want to add your technical details on pronunciation, please add the rough dates of when that form of pronunciation died out. Thanks GizzaChat © 05:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The main question is why the pronounciation of Sanskrit पे and पो was defined from nowadays pronounciation? We are speaking about Classic Sanskrit not Hindi or other later language, which of course can have newer sound system. I think that pronounciation of पे and पो  as ē and ō is only an assumption! Imho wrong assumption. The talk isn't about how somebody is pronouncing now theese sounds, but how they were pronounced in ages of Classical Sanskrit. Of course if we are speaking about nowadays, then in Latvian and Lithuanian Sanskrit पे and पो  are pronounced as /ie/ and /uo/ (in some words still the oldest /ai,ei/ /au/ is preserved), e.g. Skr deivah, Old Prussian deivs, East Baltic dievas; Skr. roupāsa, Scyt. laupāsa, Latv. lapsa (<*laupusa<*laupāsa) engl.'fox', Latvian verb laupīt 'to rob, thieve' (fox is an thievish animal). So then why not to pronounce पे and पो as Baltic /ie/ and /uo/? E.g. Skr. devaḥ [dievaḥ], gos [guos] - Latvian guovs 'of cow'.My opinion is that पे and पो couldn't be pronounced as [ē] and [ō], because even in nowadays in Baltic languages are preserved the pronunciation of पे and पो  as /ai/ and /au/, then how the Sanskrit, which is older than Modern Baltic languages, could have newer sounds?!So there is necessity to strictly separate Sanskrit pronounciation in nowadays and the Sanskrit pronounciation in the past. Imho Sanskrit with modern pronounciation is not Classic Sanskrit anymore, it's some dialect of Sanskrit and so must be defined!   Roberts7 15:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: the monophtongic pronunciation is that given in the pratishakyas. It is anyone's guess when /ai/ and /au/ became monophtongs, and if the Rigvedic pronunciation might still have been diphtongic, we don't know, it's prehistory. They were monophtongs in 200 BC, and likely in 500 BC. That's well before the bulk of the Classical Sanskrit corpus. You are free to speculate about the proper historic pronunciation of Rigvedic Sanskrit, but it will be just that, speculation. dab (𒁳) 16:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Can someone provide a book reference for these interesting issues? Buddhipriya 17:38, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sanskrit ''e'' and ''o'', as also ''a'' before ''t''.