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Notes on the pronunciation of Pāli Pāli was a dialect of northern India in the time of Gotama the Buddha. The earliest known script in which it was written was the Brāhmi script of the third century B.C. After that it was preserved in the scripts of the various countries where Pāli was maintained. In Roman script, the following set of diacritical marks has been established to indicate the proper pronunciation. The alphabet consists of forty-one characters: eight vowels, thirty-two
consonants and one nasal sound (niggahita). Vowels (a line over a vowel indicates that it is a long vowel):
a - as the “a” in about ā - as the “a” in father i - as the “”in mint i - as the "ee” in see u - as the "u" in put ū - as the "00" in cool e is pronounced as the “ay” in day, except before double consonants when it is pronounced as the "e" in bed: deva, mettā; o is pronounced as the "o" in no, except before double consonants
when it is pronounced slightly shorter: loka, photphabba. Consonants are pronounced mostly as in English.
g - as the "g" in get c - soft like the "ch" in church
v - a very soft -v- or -WAll aspirated consonants are pronounced with an audible expulsion of breath
following the normal unaspirated sound. th - not as in ‘three'; rather 't' followed by 'h' (outbreath)
ph - not as in ‘photo’; rather 'p' followed by 'h' (outbreath) The retroflex consonants: t, th, d, dh, n are pronounced with the tip of the
tongueturned back; and l'is pronounced with the tongue retroflexed,
almost a combined 'rl sound. The dental consonants: t, th, d, dh, n are pronounced with the tongue
touching the upper front teeth. The nasal sounds:
n- guttural nasal, like -ng- as in singer ñ - as in Spanish señor n - with tongue retroflexed
m - as in hung, ring Double consonants are very frequent in Pāli and must be strictly pronounced as long consonants, thus -nn- is like the English ‘nn' in "unnecessary”
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