Pronunciation of word final "a" in sanskrit

[Chandan R. Narayan]

Its somewhat difficult to make sweeping statements like the one below...
my parents are from Karnataka, my name is "chandan", my father's name
"nArAyaN", my uncle's name "ranganAth", etc. We are very much "from the
South".
I think your question has to do with the tendency to shorten  schwa
(saMvRta a) to zero word finally, thats all. See pANini on saMvRta and
vivRta. This schwa deletion is typologically common.
chandan





chandan r. narayan || cnarayan at socrates.berkeley.edu


On Wed, 26 May 1999, Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote:

>  The south had a full word-final "a", it seems.
>  Probably why modern personal names differ a little
>  between north and south.
>
>           --------------------------------------------
>            north             |     south
>           ---------------------------------------------
>            shiv                     shivan
>            narayan                  narayanan
>            ganesh                   ganeshan
>            ram                      raman
>            lakshman                 lakshmanan
>            gopal                    gopalan
>
>            and so on.
>
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