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Rules on final sounds

The rules on final sounds facilitate the pronunciation of words when they stand alone, before suffixes are added and before further Sandhi rules are applied. According to these rules, words can only finish with a vowel, a Visarga (ḥ) or nine specific consonants (k, ṅ, ñ, ṇ, n, m, ṭ, t, p).

Rules on finals sounds

In order to prevent words from ending on other sounds, this rule is applied before any other Sandhi rules (external and internal Sandhi) to:

  • words at the end of a sentence
  • words (without compound words)
  • root words in nominative before case endings starting with a consonant are added

Sep by Step

First, consonant clusters are reduced to the first consonant; for instance, "nt" becomes "t".

As a next step, we encounter the following changes:

  1. plosive sounds, fricatives (except "s") and the aspirate ("h") become unvoiced, non-aspirated sounds at the same place of articulation, i.e.:
  • guttural place of articulation: k, kh, g, gh, h becomes k
  • palatal place of articulation: c, ch, j, jh, ś becomes k (or ṭ)
    Exception: Change not to the palatal but to the gutural/retroflex, unvoiced, non-aspirated plosive.
  • retroflex place of articulation: ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍ, ṣ becomes ṭ
  • dental place of articulation: t, th, d, dh becomes t
  • labial place of articulation: p, ph, b, bh becomes p
  1. "s" and "r" turn into the Visarga ("ḥ").
  2. nasals and semivowels (except "r") remain unchanged.

Please note:

(1) afterwards: application of the other rules on final sounds
(2) or ṭ
(3) or k

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