Living Phonologies: Khmer Pronunciations of Pali at the Nexus of Writing and Orality

Abstract By offering the first detailed portrait of how a particular local system for Pali pronunciation functions, this article aims to renew our appreciation of the complex interaction between chanted sounds and written words in Buddhist cultures. Seated at the fulcrum between orality and writing, the diverse phonologies of Pali are constantly evolving sites of debate over the nature of the voice of the Buddha and his teaching in Theravāda contexts. To give a precise account of how the living complexity of Pali unfolds, the findings in this article are based on the phonetic transcription and analysis of fifteen multimedia recordings of Pali liturgical chants in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Cambodia. The range of major and minor variations in Pali pronunciation witnessed during this period, and the contentious debates behind these divergencies, open new paths for understanding the past and present of Pali as a Buddhist language.