"th" in Pali

[serg_o]

th: like 'tea' but with the tip of the tongue striking the back of the top teeth rather than the palate.

Fine! It's just like in Russian so in this case I don't need to learn anything new.
Theravada, theravada, theravada...

[David N. Snyder]

It is not that hard.

Thanks tilt,

I know, I think it mostly has to do with putting in at least 15 minutes per day. I find that if I work on my lessons and then put them aside for more than a week, then I have to go back to the beginning. I just need to adjust the time management and make sure I do at least 15 minutes per day.

[fig tree]

I think it has to do with incorrect spellings from the original translations from Asian languages to English;

The fact that in English we use "th" for what we do is the product of an interesting series of historical accidents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_th.

Pronunciations are not my forté.

The musical term pronounced like "forté" is spelled "forte" and means "loud". The other word spelled "forte" that means "strong point" was pronounced like "fort" until people began confusing it with the other one.

Fig Tree

[Dhammabodhi]

Thank you Ajahn for the correction and explanations. I realised another good word which mimicks the Indic 'th' could be 'Thai'.

Metta,
Dhammabodhi

[mikenz66]

Thank you Ajahn for the correction and explanations. I realised another good word which mimicks the Indic 'th' could be 'Thai'.

Yes.

I'm going a little off topic here, but having pulled out my chanting books to check out the Thai spellings I thought I should share it.
For the technically minded, the Thai character for "Th" in "Thai" and the one used in Thai-Pali for the "th" in "Tathagata" both have the same sound but different tone rules. So the second syllable "thaa" will come out as a rising whereas"Thai" is pronounced with a middle tone. As far as I understand, Indic languages such as Pali don't have tones, but SE Asian and Chinese dialects do, so the "musical" chanting by Thai people e.g. http://www.forestmeditation.com/audio/audio.html, isn't in the Pali but in their language.

Mike