Why do write ब्रह्मा as Brahma in english

•

u/pikleboiy Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Because it's spelled as Brahma in devanagari and English tends to borrow the Sanskrit pronunciation of the devanagari writing for Hinduism-related stuff, not the Hindi spoken pronunciation (e.g. yoga, Rama, karma).

Also, idk what you're talking about. I've always pronounced it as Brahma (ब्रह्मा) in Hindi, not Bramha (ब्रम्हा).

Edit: "Krishna" was a bad example, since it is also pronounced like that in Hindi.

•

u/No_money6476 Apr 27 '26

Isn't "Krishna" itself a Hindi pronunciation, or at least modern pronunciation of Sanskrit? Original pronunciation of ऋ is vocalic R, not "ri"

•

u/pikleboiy Apr 27 '26

Sure, but English doesn't have a vocalic r either, and it tends to get adapted as ri in English too (e.g. "rishi", "Sanskrit")

•

u/khroshan Apr 27 '26

English, particularly American English, actually has lots of vocalic R's. The R sounds in nurse, letter, dollar, standard and many other words in American English are all vocalic R's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel

The reason Rishi, Sanskrit, etc are pronounced with "ri" by English speakers is because they are being borrowed as they are spoken by speakers of NIA languages so it passes through a Hindi filter before being adapted into English.

•

u/CreativeCommunity779 Apr 28 '26

It wasn't an american "er" sound in sanskrit either. It's very clear from ancient grammar and phonetic texts that it is a syllabic tap. They pronounced it as a र् with a tiny vowel fragment called svarabhakti or ajbhakti before and after it. Like saying अर so fast that the entire sequence is the length of one short vowel. Not like the modern ri or ru but also not like the english r at all.

•

u/khroshan Apr 28 '26

This doesn't seem right. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ṛ_(Indic)) has this sound as ɻ̩ which is a syllabic voiced retroflex approximant, basically, there's no tapping involved. It's also the sound of the American "er" in some dialects.

•

u/CreativeCommunity779 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

That, like many of wikipedia's descriptions of sanskrit sounds, not only directly contradicts early phonetic sources such as the shiksha and pratishakhyas, but would cause serious problems in Sanskrit grammar if it were true.

Yajñavalkyaśikṣā says:

ऋलोर्मध्ये भवत्यर्धमात्रारेफलकारयोः । तस्मादस्पृष्टता न स्यादृऌकारनिरूपणे ॥

Translation: In the middle of ऋ and ऌ is half a matra of repha (र्) and lakāra (ल्), therefore untouchedness (lack of direct tongue contact like in vowels) is not in the definition of ऋ and ऌ.

In other words, ऋ and ऌ are not untouched like the other vowels because they partake in the touching that consonants do, having र् and ल् contained within them.

From Panini's grammar and his commentators there is even more evidence. There is a sandhi rule that न preceded by ऋ र् and ष् is turned into ण within a word. However, Panini's rule रषाभ्यां नो णः समानपदे only gives र and ष, not ऋ. Yet the rule is supposed to apply for all three. How can that be? His commentators explain that this is because ऋ has र contained within it, thus including the sound र् makes the rule apply to ऋ as well. They also state that the र् is only in the first half of long ॠ which doesn't make sense if it's a single pure sound, but does make sense if only the final sound (a vowel) is what is drawn out to make a long vowel.

Then the rule रदाभ्यां निष्ठातो नः पूर्वस्य च दः states that for words like past participles, if there is a final र् before the affix, instead of being त it will become ण. So you have गत but पूर्ण not पूर्त. But कृ becomes कृत not कृण. Why? Commentators also explain this. They say that while कृ contains a र sound, it is not final. There is the svarabhakti or vowel fragment before and after it, so there is a slight vowel between र् and the affix, thus the rule does not apply and you get कृत.

All of these verses and sutras and commentaries only make sense if what I said previously is true and ऋ is a र् sound with a tiny vowel on either side. A syllabic approximant would render these verses and grammatical rules completely nonsensical and impossible to interpret. Wikipedia is just frequently very wrong on this topic.

Also, if you look at old relatives of Sanskrit like Avestan, they frequently write their equivalent to ऋ like ara with three letters despite being metrically only one vowel.

•

u/khroshan Apr 28 '26

Thanks for the detailed input, I appreciate that you took the time to provide me with all this information! So ऋ is essentially a syllabic tap. In that case, how was ॠ pronounced?

•

u/CreativeCommunity779 Apr 28 '26

Like the syllabic tap ऋ (र् with a tiny vowel before and after it) but the final vowel fragment at the end is extended.

•

u/No_money6476 Apr 27 '26

Yes, but only because these examples come from Hindi/Bengali pronunciation I suspect... otherwise it might well have been adapted as "ru" (like in Marathi) or "ər" (like "purdy" in American English)

•

u/Easy_Charge898 Apr 28 '26

Gujarati has ru or ra not ri

•

u/Dibyajyoti176255 दूसरी भाषा (Second language) May 02 '26

Meanwhile, Odia Has Ru!

•

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/weirdgirl0304 Apr 27 '26

Not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa_deletion_in_Indo-Aryan_languages

•

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/CreativeCommunity779 Apr 28 '26

Your schwa deletion is preventing you from even hearing final अ correctly and not hearing it as आ. You also fundamentally misunderstand the visarga. It represents a breath after a vowel, not a schwa sound. राम is pronounced in Sanskrit as rāma (not rām or rāmā) and रामः is rāmaḥ with a breath.

•

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/CreativeCommunity779 Apr 28 '26

How is अ a half sound? It is the same length as इ or उ

•

u/pikleboiy Apr 27 '26

I never said that English perfectly replicates the Sanskrit pronunciation; as with all other loanwords, English adapts it to its own phonology. My point was that English is adapting the Sanskrit pronunciation, not the Hindi one. In Sanskrit, there was no word-final schwa-deletion, and so that sound was loaned into English and changed to fit English phonology.

•

u/ashishb_net Apr 28 '26

So the problem is that there is no way to communicate schwa in written English.

A can be schwa or aa sound.

•

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/Minskdhaka Apr 27 '26

English speakers don't pronounce it as "Rāmā". They pronounce it as "Rāmə". Which is close to the Sanskrit pronunciation.

The problem lies with "karma, which English speakers pronounce as "kārmə" instead of the more correct "kərmə".

•

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/Traditional-Light-10 Apr 27 '26

Native American English Speaker here, can confirm I pronounce it closer to Rāma. Even if Hindi doesn’t allow a schwa in that position, in English it would be weird to have ā in an unstressed syllable like Rāmā, so we usually use a instead. Same goes for Karma (basically kārma rather than karma), Krishna, etc. just like with Greco-Latin data, criteria, etc.

•

u/pikleboiy Apr 27 '26

Clearly their pronunciations are wrong

It's not wrong; the word in English is simply not the same as the word in Sanskrit. This is like saying that the Spanish are pronouncing "Carlos" wrong because it doesn't sound like "Karl," or that Hindi pronounces "राम" wrong because there's no word-final schwa.

Schwa is weak a sound not ā, it's श्री राम not श्री रामा।

In Sanskrit. English does not have word-final schwas.

Idk why you don't want to accept that English speakers are pronunciating those words wrong. 🤦‍♂️

Because different is not the same as wrong. Idk why you don't want to accept that not everything that differs from Sanskrit is wrong.

•

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/pikleboiy Apr 27 '26

Dude, it's English, not Sanskrit. You're not stating a fact about English; you're stating a fact about Sanskrit that is not applicable to English. Did you not read my comment? क्या तुझे पढ़ना नहीं आता है? अगर आता है, तो तूने मेरी बात को क्यों नहीं पढ़ा?

•

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

•

u/pikleboiy Apr 27 '26

Abe chutiye hindi/sanskrit me jo uccharan hai wo hi angreji me hoga koi badal nhi jayega tum sbke bolne se.

Are you stupid? Why in God's name would English pronounce things as Sanskrit and Hindi do?

•

u/kantmarg Apr 28 '26

r/confidentlyincorrect

•

u/Weird-Ad-1512 Apr 27 '26

It is read as Brahma not Bramha. Same goes with Chihn (चिह्न), it's not Chinh.

•

u/Dibyajyoti176255 दूसरी भाषा (Second language) May 02 '26

IG, This Is A Tendency While Pronouncing ह्र, ह्ल, ह्ळ, ह्न, ह्ण & ह्म As र्ह, ल्ह, ळ्ह, न्ह, ण्ह & म्ह Respectively! (Across Many New Indo-Aryan Languages!)

•

u/deathisyourgift2001 Apr 27 '26

Is it not spelled the same in Hindi, or am I missing something?

•

u/doom_chicken_chicken Apr 27 '26

It's pronounced differently than it's spelled in Hindi

•

u/deathisyourgift2001 Apr 27 '26

Not according to the rest of the comments

•

u/doom_chicken_chicken Apr 27 '26

I mostly hear it pronounced bramha in Hindi

•

u/sasur_ka_nati Apr 27 '26

I also feel same.

•

u/smallaubergine 🇺🇸 विद्यार्थी (Student) Apr 27 '26

spelling it in Roman characters is not necessarily "in English". It's still Hindi language just written in Roman characters.

•

u/Educational-Yam-2910 May 01 '26

In tamizh we don't have the h sound so i always thought it was pramma and same with krishna whcih we say as kirichuna or kannan It shocked me when I read that y'all in the north say Brahma or krshn it couldn't come of in tamizhs tongue as we don't have the hr sound or the sh sound or the consonants clusters like y'all do

•

u/sasur_ka_nati May 01 '26

Nice to know. I am actually currently living in tamilnadu, I have noticed vice versa in tamil also.

•

u/NeedleworkerGreat851 मातृभाषा (Mother tongue) Apr 27 '26

Words written in Devanāgari script are pronounced just like they are written, so yes, the ह is pronounced before म। And that's how it is written in the Roman script too, no difference.

•

u/Dibyajyoti176255 दूसरी भाषा (Second language) May 02 '26

IG, This Is A Tendency While Pronouncing ह्र, ह्ल, ह्ळ, ह्न, ह्ण & ह्म As र्ह, ल्ह, ळ्ह, न्ह, ण्ह & म्ह Respectively! (Across Many New Indo-Aryan Languages!)

•

u/ATallSteve May 03 '26

Because English borrows the Sanskrit pronunciation, not the Hindi pronunciation since Hindi has nothing to do with Hinduism. It’s also spelled as Brahma in Devanagari

•

u/FuckPigeons2025 Apr 27 '26

Sankrut has a sandhi rule where if there is a jodakshar with ह in the 2nd position, the ह moves to the front.

eg. ब्रम्हा becomes ब्रह्मा.

This is where Brahma comes from.

•

u/CreativeCommunity779 Apr 28 '26

Nope. The rule is that ह before consonants causes it to be pronounced deeper in the chest instead of in the throat, making it more like a sigh. No rule whatsoever that it is pronounced after.

देवनागरी Why do write ब्रह्मा as Brahma in english