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<\/a><\/p>\n\n4. The Syllable Dgyu: the Rime<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
The IPA \/y\/ sound in standard Tibetan is only realised when a syllable ends in -ud or -us. This would narrow down considerably the possibilities for the orthography of dgyu.<\/p>\n
Some of the umlauts in the text seem to have been added later, perhaps at the same time the annotations were interscribed, including the underlined title “Appendix II” on top of page 2. The annotations do not seem to be in the same handwriting as the original notes. Compare for example, the capital A of the word Appendix with the capital A’s in the manuscript text. In The Letters of H.P. Blavatsky to A.P. Sinnett <\/i>(BL) the Notes appear as Appendix II. It is therefore entirely possible that the annotations and also the umlauts are the handwriting of the transcriber\/compiler of the book, A.T. Barker. This would be consistent with the spelling in the ML edited by Barker. The umlauts on Dgy\u00fc and Dgy\u00fc Mi however, are not reproduced in BL. In Jinarajadasa’s edition (ETM) of the Notes, the umlauts are absent as well.<\/p>\n
\n5. The Syllable Dgyu: the Onset<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
In Jinarajadasa’s edition, a remark of Sinnett is added, telling that M. himself “wrote out” the table of correspondences between Man and Universe. This means that Sinnet has copied the table from the handwriting of M., instead of interpreting the words from hearing. Interestingly, in the table, Linga Sharira is called Ling Sharir in line 3, we also have Bhut, Purush, Brahm, dropping the final a’s, as in the Sanskrit pronounciation typical of speakers of modern Hindi. Apparently M’s concern was that the words were written as they were pronounced, as opposed to how they were written in the original language. The rendering of the Tibetan terms is therefore presumably also a phonetic transcription for an English target audience.<\/p>\n
In that case, the d in dgyu could not have been a silent letter. Also, English has two sounds associated with the letter g (besides \/\u014b\/ in “thing”), the plosive \/g\/ and the affricate \/d\u0292\/. The dg-combination does not exist with a plosive \/g\/-sound in English, so our dgy-combination would probably be the affricate \/d\u0292\/, the g-sound in “gin”, or something close to it. This is consistent with HPB’s spelling DZYU, for example in SD I, 108. The \/d\u0292\/, and phonemes very close to it, are listed in the following table.<\/p>\n
Possible phonemes for the onset, and their Tibetan Wylie transliteration, in approximate order of distance from \/d\u0292\/:<\/p>\n
6. Dictionaries<\/b>\n<\/p>\n
Combining the ideas on onset and rime, we could try finding some matching candidates for dgyu, using a lexicon. In the following table all combinations are summed up, with the entries found in common dictionaries marked bold.<\/p>\n