Lesson 2. A The mouth positions (sthana) used by the vowels (svara) are also used by the consonants (vyanjana). Within these five mouth positions the consonants are further classified according to inner (abhyantara-) and outer (bahya-) methods of articulation or effort (prayatna). Like the vowels, there are more consonants in Sanskrit than in English, and thus diacritical marks are used with the Roman consonants to represent further sounds. 2.A.1 The Five Mouth Positions The five mouth positions are considered from within the oral cavity itself. The back of the mouth as it narrows to form the throat, is called the guttural position (kanthya): this is associated with the vowel a. Moving towards the front of the mouth, next is the palatal position (talavya) used by the vowel i; this is followed by the cerebral position (murdhanya) used by r, and the teeth (dantya) used by 1, and finally the two lips (osthya) used by u. The compound vowels make use of two mouth positions: e and ai use both guttural and palatal (kanthatalavya), and o and au use guttural and labial (kanthosthya). kanthya talavya murdhanya dantya osthya guttural palatal cerebral dental labial a i r 1 u 2. A. 2 The Twenty-Five Stops: ka to ma The first twenty-five consonants are calls stops (sparsa) because the complete contact (sprsta) in the mouth fully stops the breath (and hence the sound) through the mouth. These are arranged in five sets (varga) according to mouth position and named after the first letter in the group, for example the five in the guttural column (ka- varga) are stops at the back of the mouth, and the labials (pa- varga) are stops at the lips. The a is added for the sake of pronunciation only: being stops, they need a sound (i.e. a vowel) to stop (or start). The same principle is used in English, for example the consonants 'b-c-d' are pronounced 'bee-cee-dee'. In fact, the word 'consonant' itself is derived from the the Latin cum (together with) and sondre (to sound).
