Sanskrit vocalic "r"

[Sherlock]

Should Sanskrit vocalic "r" be pronounced as a plain "r" or as "ri"?

[Jinzang]

Pronunciation of the Sanskrit vowels.

[Sherlock]

That site seems to have removed the recordings for both long and short "r" although I assume they used the "ri" pronunciation since he contrasts it with the plain "r" sound. Anyway, what I actually want to know is if there are still places in India where they use a plain "r" and whether Sakya Pandita mentioned it.

[Huifeng]

Should Sanskrit vocalic "r" be pronounced as a plain "r" or as "ri"?

There are numerous forms of Sanskrit pronunciation.
See what works.

~~ Huifeng

[Sherlock]

I just watched an old video of ChNN explaining the ganapuja and he pronounced "amrta".

[vinodh]

It ought to be pronounced between 'ri' and 'ru'.

Some Indians pronounce it as outright /ru/. But its not correct.

So, the correct modern realization of vocalic "r" would be something between /ri/ and /ru/ - neither /i/ nor /u/ but a pronunciation bordering the two.

V

[Sherlock]

It ought to be pronounced between 'ri' and 'ru'.

Some Indians pronounce it as outright /ru/. But its not correct.

So, the correct modern realization of vocalic "r" would be something between /ri/ and /ru/ - neither /i/ nor /u/ but a pronunciation bordering the two.

V

Are you talking about your local variation of Sanskrit pronunciation? My main question was in reference to the historical pronunciation -- at some point, linguists say it was pronounced as a pure /r/, like the vocalic "r" in some Slavic languages; the Serbian name for their own language is spelled Srpski and pronounced [sr̩̂pskiː] for example. Do any Indians today still pronounce vocalic "r" as /r/?

[vinodh]

Are you talking about your local variation of Sanskrit pronunciation?

This is how the majority of the Indians attempt to pronounce it.

And no Indians will pronounce it as 'r'.

My main question was in reference to the historical pronunciation

As for the historical pronunciation. People are not quite clear.

IIRC in several sources I read it was reconstructed as 'ar' (sort of a rhotic vowel). Because, the Vriddhi and Guna forms for vocalic 'r' are 'ar' and 'aar' respectively. In a similar vein, the Pali equivalents of the Sanskrit words have 'a' in the place of vocalic 'r'.

This would explain why at Sandhi, vocalic 'r' grammatically mutates into 'ar (and the degradation of vocalic 'r' to 'a' in Pali)'. So it seems correct to consider it historically as a rhotic vowel, which at some point became /ri~ru/.

V