m/anusvAra & s/visarga

[Mr B. Philip Jonsson]

At 00:48 +0100 4.11.1997, Jacob Baltuch wrote:
>Do sequences <...sk...>, <...skh...>, <...sp...> or
><...sph...> ever occur in the middle of any Sanskrit word?
>
>Yes, I know there are sandhi rules that normally force
>the conversion of <s> in such sequences to visarga or <S>
>(according to the previous vowel). What I'm asking is,
>are there, by any ill chance, words where, for some weird
>reason, those rules did not function?
>
>The reason I'm asking is this:
>
>Since I do a lot of ASCII input and typing <H> and <M>
>is a pain in the neck. I want to use in <s> for <H> (visarga)
>(or if it comes before a sibilant, that sibilant)
>and <m> for <M>. But before going ahead I want to be
>fairly sure I will always be able to restaure things
>from the context when I need to.
>
>For anusvAra I am 100% sure but I'd thought I'd mention
>it so as to make 101% sure.

I have read this discussion with some amusement.  For my own personal use I
write x for visarga and w (sic!) for anusvAra just because I'm too lazy to
hit shift.
These are easy to replace later with a search-and-replace routine,
especially if the whole file is in Sanskrit.



 OTOH I use C rather than z for the palatal sibilant, because using z for
this value gives me aesthetical jolts, and because in Tibetan I'm used to
have to distinguish:
 c-j (alveopalatal affricates)
 C-J (dental affricates)
 S-Z (alveopalatal sibilants)
 s-z (dental sibilants)
 $ (for the rare retroflex sound in Sanskrit words)
 h (historically a voiced h)
 H (the same as a subscript for vowel length)
 x (Tibetan voiceless velar fricative, but used for Sanskrit h!)
 X (visarga in Sanskrit words)

Gha-le!

Philip