Word splitting & hyphenation conventions in roman transliteration

[John Smith]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Jan Brzezinski wrote:

> Why was tad dhi chosen rather than tadd hi? That way, the latter word
> would preserve its original form, as is usually the case in these
> transliterated sandhis.

Because it only preserves its "original form" by virtue of the fact that
conventional Romanisation uses "h" after a stop to indicate aspiration
-- i.e. one is taking advantage of a "side-effect". Writing "tadd hi" is
an open invitation to incorrect rendering back into Nagari (etc.).

This is not the only case where the initial of the second word undergoes
change: tat zrutvA > tac chrutvA, etc.

John Smith

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