INDOLOGY FAQ. Re. Varanasi

[Valerie J Roebuck]

I also agree with George about this. I have found publishers pretty 
amenable about diacritics. However in case of argument it is 
certainly worth making the point about treating Sanskrit with the 
same respect as French or German. There is also the fact that 
omitting diacritics can cause confusion between different words (cp. 
the kali/kAlI point).

It's not a great problem to write a pronunciation guide, and I don't 
think anyone minds if you recycle one you've done before, especially 
if you replace the examples with ones relevant to the current work.

Valerie J Roebuck

At 1:15 pm +0100 16/2/10, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
>On 15 February 2010 22:45, george thompson <gthomgt at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>I agree about publishers, George.  Like many on this list, I'm sure, I've
>had my share of arguments with publishers about accents.  I've found it
>helpful to draw an analogy with French or German.  It wouldn't be acceptable
>to print those languages without their accents, and nor is it acceptable for
>Sanskrit.
>
>You said,
>
>>  I would also like to complain about a decision that was made by the editors
>>  of the Clay Sanskrit Library.  This is a great and valuable collection of
>>  translations, but I think that they made a bad decision when they chose to
>>  ignore diacritic marks in their translatons.
>>
>
>There's lots to discuss about the various Clay decisions, but one thing I
>quite like is the use of the acute accent to mark stress or ictus.  While
>ictus isn't the same as vowel length, it's pretty close to gauravam, and
>people who know nothing of Sanskrit and don't have access to a teacher do
>rather well reading such accented words out loud.
>
>Best,
>Dominik