PRONUNCIATION.
The general reader should remember as a rough rule that in the
oriental names the vowels are pronounced as in German, and the consonants as in English, except c which is pronounced as “ch,” ṅ as “ng” and “ñ” as “ny.” In particular, words like Buddha are pronounced as if spelt in English “Bŏŏd-dha,” Ṣākya Muni as “Sha-kya Moo-nee,” and Karma as “Kur-ma.”
The spelling of Tibetan names is peculiarly uncouth and startling to the English reader. Indeed, many of the names as transcribed from the vernacular seem unpronounceable, and the difficulty is not diminished by the spoken form often differing widely from the written, owing chiefly to consonants having changed their sound or dropped out of speech altogether, the so-called " “silent consonants.”[1] Thus the Tibetan word for the border-country which we, following the Nepalese, call Sikhim is spelt ’bras-ljoṅs, and pronounced “Dén-jong,” and bkra-s’is is “Ta-shi.” When, however, I have found it necessary to give the full form of these names, especially the more important words translated from the Sanskrit, in order to recover their original Indian form and meaning, I have referred them as far as possible to footnotes.
The transcription of the Tibetan letters follows the system adopted by Jaeschke in his Dictionary, with the exceptions noted below,[2] and corresponds closely with the analogous system for Sanskritic words given over the page. The Tibetan pronunciation is spelt phonetically in the dialect of Lhasa.
- ↑ Somewhat analogous to the French ils parlent.
- ↑ The exceptions mainly are those requiring very specialized diacritical marks, the letters which are there (Jaeschke's Dict., p. viii.), pronounced ga as a prefix, cha, nya, the ha in several forms as the basis for vowels ; these I have rendered by g, ch’, ñ and ’ respectively. In several cases I have spelt words according to Csoma's system, by which the silent consonants are italicized.
