The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

t unaspirated as in "stop"

t' aspirated as the tin "top"

ts/tz as the ds in "reads"

ts' /tz' as the ts in "its"

2. Vowels and finals:
   a as in "father"
   ai as the i in "high"
   ao as the ou in "out"
   ei as the e in "they"
   en as the un in "unable"
   eng as the ung in "rung"
   i as in "sit"
   ih as the ur in "church"
   ou as the o in "go"
   u as in "rhubarb"
   ii as it is pronounced in German
   ui as the entire word "way"

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Japanese. The transliteration system used in this book is the Hepburn sys-
tem, which has few peculiarities, but the following principles should be kept
in mind:

1. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian. Thus o, e, i, a are sounded as in
   "do, re, mi, fa;' although the e in "re" should be short and clipped. U is
   generally like the u in "rhubarb," although often, especially at the end of a
   word, it is barely pronounced at all. Vowels written with macrons-o,
   ii-have the same quality as if they were written without macrons, but are
   sounded for a longer period of time. Y is pronounced as in "quickly," and
   not as in "why."


2. Consonants:
   r as the unaspirated tt in the American pronunciation of "little"
   gas in "go"


3. Double consonants-nn, pp, kk-should be pronounced distinctly as
   double, like the nn in "unnecessary."

Tibetan. Like English, Tibetan has a spelling system in which many of the

consonants are silent. The Wylie transliteration reproduces all of the letters

used to spell a word, but is absolutely useless as a guide to pronunciation. In

this book, words and names are introduced in a phonetic rendering, followed

by the Wylie transliteration in parentheses, after which the phonetic rendering