Bevan and other TMO suits tend to pronounce it "Ma-HAR-shi." It seems to be the first "i" that got short shrift, not the "a."
I don't remember who started spelling it "Marshy" here, but it was intended, as I recall, to show disrespect. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> wrote: It probably has something to do with Devanagari script where the short "a" is not written but understood. So only long vowels would be pronounced. "Marshy" sounds the way Indians would pronounce it. As for the technical terms, remember some folks are tossing those around just to impress people, not that they know anything. Then there is the word kapha. There is no "f" sounding word in Sanskrit so kapha should be pronounced more like kappa because the h is an aspiration and doesn't mean we should pronounce it like kaffa. I noted that in a Frontline report on ayurveda where the Indian ayurvedic doctor pronounced the reporter as being "pitta kappa". But that confuses western ayurevedists. My tantra teacher would pronounce yoga "yog" dropping the final a. On 11/06/2013 10:11 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... wrote: Sanskrit/Indian pronunciation has always bemused me. The most obvious example to us is that "Maharishi" should be "Marshy". But most everyone in the world of common folk says "Maharishi". It's the smug insiders who like to say "Marshy". And when it comes to the longer, technical terms used in Advaita-Vedanta the correct pronunciation becomes positively impossible for westerners to grasp - or guess at. I take the laziest course and always pronounce terms as they are written - which is clearly incorrect. The common thread is that there seems to be a collapse of the vowels. Is there some simple rule one can follow so as not to make a fool of oneself? ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> mailto:noozguru@... wrote: An Indian friend who ran an little grocery store had a boy working for her who was from the Punjab. She told me she could barely understand him because of his accent. Indian accents very from region to region. And it also depends on education too. One thing that Maharishi had going for him was that his English was understandable for westerners. Going to ACVA events there were always a wide range of speakers and some folks had difficulty with some of the Indian accents. If you learn some Hindi then you'll understand the origins of Indian accents. I also have heard that there is northern and southern Sanskrit pronunciations. This I found out when I noticed that a friend who had studied Sanskrit elsewhere pronounced words differently than how I learned to pronounce them (from the American Sanskrit Institute materials). On 11/06/2013 07:43 PM, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... wrote: Bhairitu, It's actually cool to have an Indian accent, especially if you're a guru of some kind. Also, if one comes to the USA after 16 years old or so, it's difficult to adopt the American accent even if you tried. One's native tongue is hard to erase. I believe MMY stated that it's better to speak your native tongue for physiological and psychological reasons. Here's Russell Peters on the subject of accents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2W8aGgmn1A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2W8aGgmn1A ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> mailto:s3raphita@... wrote: Re "I tried to help my tantra teacher take some accent-reduction courses. Online there were some videos and they were able to boil down to a few points the way for someone from India to sound American.": Why so? Isn't hearing your own tongue spoken with a foreign accent rather appealing? In fact, it's often regarded as rather sexy to hear English spoken with a Continental accent! Could be a selling point for a tantric teacher . . . ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> mailto:noozguru@... wrote: Seems that British actors are very good at doing various American accents. Although in the commentary of the movie "The Ward" Jared Harris (Richard Harris's son) says there are some British accents that he finds difficult to do. It seems there is a better drama tradition in the UK whereas the US has cut many of their programs from schools. Doing accents shouldn't be that difficult. There are experts in training actors to learn them in short work. I tried to help my tantra teacher take some accent reduction courses. Online there were some videos and they were able to boil down to a few points the way for someone from India to sound American. On 11/06/2013 03:57 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... wrote: Interesting video link. The funny thing is, I've always found the Southern "drawl" one of the most appealing of American accents. I used to work for the BBC and I can tell you that whenever BBC Radio broadcast a play which featured an American character, listeners would always write in to complain about the producer using an English actor or actress and expecting him or her to fake an American accent that sounded obviously phony. Why, O why, they said, doesn't the BBC employ an American actor for the part. And every time that complaint was made the producer was always able to reply that actually the actor used *was* an American! The funny thing is, I'm with the listeners who complained! The accents always sound false. I don't know if they pick Yank actors who have some of the rarer regional variants or the signal compression used by technicians does something weird to the sound. (I wouldn't know what "signal compression" means of course.) On a related note, whenever I've seen Reese Witherspoon or Gwyneth Paltrow do an English accent in a movie role they have been pitch perfect. I suppose imitating an accent is just bread-and-butter routine for an actor but I am in awe at how effortlessly those two pull it off. ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com mailto:fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> mailto:noozguru@... wrote: According to this video, southerners are speaking with a "slowed down" British accent: http://youtu.be/mNqY6ftqGq0 http://youtu.be/mNqY6ftqGq0 On 11/06/2013 01:48 PM, Michael Jackson wrote: you have never been to the South if you think the Brits speak like we do. -------------------------------------------- On Wed, 11/6/13, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... <jr_esq@...> mailto:jr_esq@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Rare Picture of Vivian Leigh To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2013, 4:33 PM I saw her in "Gone With the Wind". She was excellent in the movie, but I did not realize up till now that she was born in England. I suppose speaking like an American Southerner is very similar to the British accent. However, this got me wondering, why aren't there any Brits in England who speak like a Southerner? http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/vivien-leigh-gallery/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/05/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/vivien-leigh-gallery/index.html?sr=sharebar_facebook
