Help:IPA/Sanskrit

This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Sanskrit on Wikipedia.

It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Sanskrit in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them. Integrity must be maintained between the key and the transcriptions that link here; do not change any symbol or value without establishing consensus on the talk page first.

For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Shortcut

H:IPA-SA

This page contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Vedic and Classical Sanskrit pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see {{IPA-sa}} and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

See shiksha for a more thorough discussion of the sounds of Sanskrit.

Key

Consonants
IPA^[1]	Nagari^[1]	IAST^[1] ^[2]	English approximation
b	ब	b	about
bʱ	भ	bh	clubhouse
ɕ	श	ś	sheep
d	द	d	do
dʱ	ध	dh	redhead
dʑ	ज	j	juice
dʑʱ	झ	jh	hedgehog
ɖ	ड	ḍ	(American)bird
ɖʱ	ढ	ḍh	(American)birdhouse
ɡ	ग	g	again
ɡʱ	घ	gh	loghouse
ɦ	ह	h	ahead
j	य	y	yak
k	क	k	skin
kʰ	ख	kh	kin
l	ल	l	leaf
m	म	m	much
n	न	n	tenth
ɲ	ञ	ñ	enjoyable^[3]
ɳ	ण	ṇ	(American) burn^[3]
ŋ	ङ	ṅ	bank^[3]
p	प	p	span
pʰ	फ	ph	pan
r^[4]	र	r	(Indian)roti
s	स	s	soup
ʂ	ष	ṣ	(American)worship
t	त	t	stable
tʰ	थ	th	table
ʈ	ट	ṭ	stable
ʈʰ	ठ	ṭh	table
tɕ	च	c	riches
tɕʰ	छ	ch	chew
ʋ	व	v	between wine and vine

Vowels^[3]^[5]
IPA	Nagari	IAST^[2]	English approximation
ɐ	अ, प	a	comma
aː	आ, पा	ā	bra
ɪ	इ, पि	i	sit
iː	ई, पी	ī	feet
ʊ	उ, पु	u	look
uː	ऊ, पू	ū	loot
eː	ए, पे	e	(Scottish) wait
ɐːi̯^[6]	ऐ, पै	ai	hi
oː	ओ, पो	o	(Scottish) old
ɐːu̯^[7]	औ, पौ	au	how
Syllabic Consonants
r̩^[8]	ऋ, पृ	ṛ	Possibly like bird
r̩ː^[9]	ॠ, पॄ	ṝ	longer ṛ
l̩^[10]	ऌ, पॢ	ḷ	bottle
Vowel Diacritics
◌̃	ँ	◌̃/m̐	nasal vowel [ɐ̃], [ãː], [õː], etc.)^[3]
h	ः^[11]	ḥ	head

Suprasegmentals
IPA	Nagari	IAST^[2]	English equivalent
ˈ◌			stress^[12] (placed before stressed syllable)

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c Devanagari consonant letters such as क have the inherent vowel अ a. Thus, क is pronounced ka, even without any vowel sign added. But the IPA and IAST shown here have the consonant k only and do not include the vowel 'a'.
^ ^a ^b ^c Comparison of IAST with ISO 15919 transliteration.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Vowels may occur nasalised as an allophone of the nasal consonants in certain positions: see anusvara and chandrabindu.
^ /r/ may be phonetically realised as [ɽ], [ɾ] or [ɾ̪] in Classical Sanskrit.
^ Sanskrit distinguishes between long and short vowels. Each monophthong has a long and short phoneme. The diphthongs, historically /əi, aːi, əu, aːu/, also have a difference in quality: [e, ei, o, ou]. Rarely, vowels may be extra-long.
^ [ai], [ɐi] or [ɛi] in Classical Sanskrit.
^ [au], [ɐu] or [ɔu] in Classical Sanskrit.
^ [ɻĭ] or [ɾɪ] for most modern speakers. [rŭ] for southern speakers.
^ [ri] or [ɽiː] for most modern speakers. [ru] for southern speakers.
^ [lrĭ] for most modern speakers. [lĭ] in Bengali and Maithili regions.
^ Visarga, added after a vowel.
^ In Classical Sanskrit, stress was predictable by syllable weight: counting from the end of a word, the second-last was stressed if heavy (having a long vowel or a coda consonant); if it was light, the third-last was stressed if heavy; otherwise, stress fell on the fourth-last syllable. Vedic Sanskrit, in contrast, possessed an unpredictable pitch accent.

References

Zieba, Maciej; Stiehl, Ulrich (June 9, 2002). "The Original Pronunciation of Sanskrit" (PDF). Ulrich Stiehl. Retrieved 27 September 2011.

[inherentv-1] Devanagari consonant letters such as क have the inherent vowel अ a. Thus, क is pronounced ka, even without any vowel sign added. But the IPA and IAST shown here have the consonant k only and do not include the vowel 'a'.

[comp-2] Comparison of IAST with ISO 15919 transliteration.

[nasal-3] Vowels may occur nasalised as an allophone of the nasal consonants in certain positions: see anusvara and chandrabindu.

[4] /r/ may be phonetically realised as [ɽ], [ɾ] or [ɾ̪] in Classical Sanskrit.

[5] Sanskrit distinguishes between long and short vowels. Each monophthong has a long and short phoneme. The diphthongs, historically /əi, aːi, əu, aːu/, also have a difference in quality: [e, ei, o, ou]. Rarely, vowels may be extra-long.

[6] [ai], [ɐi] or [ɛi] in Classical Sanskrit.

[7] [au], [ɐu] or [ɔu] in Classical Sanskrit.

[8] [ɻĭ] or [ɾɪ] for most modern speakers. [rŭ] for southern speakers.

[9] [ri] or [ɽiː] for most modern speakers. [ru] for southern speakers.

[10] [lrĭ] for most modern speakers. [lĭ] in Bengali and Maithili regions.

[11] Visarga, added after a vowel.

[12] In Classical Sanskrit, stress was predictable by syllable weight: counting from the end of a word, the second-last was stressed if heavy (having a long vowel or a coda consonant); if it was light, the third-last was stressed if heavy; otherwise, stress fell on the fourth-last syllable. Vedic Sanskrit, in contrast, possessed an unpredictable pitch accent.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

v t e International Phonetic Alphabet keys
Adyghe Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic Modern Standard Egyptian Hejazi Lebanese Tunisian Armenian Assamese Asturian Australian languages Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Berber Breton Bulgarian Burmese Catalan Standard Insular Chinese Mandarin Cantonese Hokkien Jin Wu Xiang Corsican Czech Danish Dari Dutch English Old English Emilian-Romagnol Esperanto Estonian Extremaduran Fijian Finnish Franco-Provençal French Galician Georgian German Standard Alemannic Colognian Greek Greenlandic Gujarati Haitian Creole Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Inuktitut Inupiaq Irish Isan Italian Central Japanese Kazakh Khmer Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Lakota Lao Latin Latvian Ligurian Lithuanian Lombard Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Manx Māori Marathi Marshallese Mauritian Creole Mayan Mongolian Mirandese Nahuatl Navajo Neapolitan Nepali Northern Thai Norwegian Occitan Odia Pashto Persian Piedmontese Polish Portuguese Punjabi Quechua Romanian Romansh Russian Sanskrit Sardinian Scottish Gaelic Serbo-Croatian Shan Sicilian Slovak Slovene Sorbian Spanish Swahili Swazi Swedish Sylheti Tagalog Tai Lue Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Venetian Vietnamese Walloon Welsh West Frisian Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zhuang Zulu
Comparisons	IPA conventions for English English dialects Wikipedia pronunciation respelling Other English pronunciation respellings
Introductory guides	Symbols For English speakers Manual of Style: Pronunciation

Key

See also

Notes

References