Brāhmaṇa, Brahmā, Bráhman, Brahmānda are different words.

[kralaro]

I'm sharing something which may be useful to Hindu newbies. In my and Wikipedia's knowledge:

Brāhmaṇa ( ब्राह्मण )
is one of the 4 varna ("pillar of the society") referring to priests and teachers.

Brahmā ( ब्रह्मा )
is the god (deva) of creation and one of the Trimūrti, the others being Vishnu and Shiva.

Bráhman ( ब्रह्मन् )
"is beyond the grasps of words"
"being, consciousness, bliss"

Brahmānda ( ब्रह्माण्ड )
means universe as an expansion of a cosmic egg (Hiranyagarbha), or the macrocosm. Brahmanda Purana discusses cosmogenesis.

There are also Brāhmaṇas ( ब्राह्मणम् ) which are part of the Hindu śruti literature. They are commentaries on the four Vedas, detailing the proper performance of rituals.

[Miss Hepburn]

I surrendered and said Brahma bec others here did....when
I had used Brahman mostly...
This helps.

[kralaro]

You're a Brāhmaṇa (you were a professional teacher, right?) who has experienced Bráhman (from "I want to taste sugar, not be sugar" thread).

[Vinayaka]

Generally it's just Brahma, the God, and Brahman the underlying consciousness principle that get confused.

There is also Brahmin, the priest, used interchangeably with Brahmana in your post above.

Indeed it takes awhile to get used to Sanskrit words, so thanks for posting this.

[kralaro]

Originally Posted by Vinayaka

Generally it's just Brahma, the God, and Brahman the underlying consciousness principle that get confused.

There is also Brahmin, the priest, used interchangeably with Brahmana in your post above.

I'm a Hindi speaker; in Hindi we call universe as brahmand (the 4th word on my list) so when I first read about "merging one's consciousness with Brahman", I thought they are talking about merging one's consciousness with universe

The English word Brahmin is an anglicized form of the proper Sanskrit word Brāhmaṇa. They both differ in pronunciation. But it may be better to use Brahmin on English medium spiritual forums to avoid confusion; thanks for mentioning.

[Vinayaka]

Good to know you speak Hindi. So now I have a question on that.

Is the dropping of the 'a' merely a Sanskrit to Hindi thing, or are there other factors?

example dharma to dharm, Ganesha to Ganesh, Vinayaka to Vinayak, moksha to moksh, marga to marg, natha to nath etc, and the list goes on.

Is it just a general thing applied to all words, or are there specific instances where it's done that might change the meanings as well?

[kralaro]

When I wrote Brāhmaṇa, Brahmā, Bráhman, Brahmānda and Brāhmaṇas; I used IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) symbols.

Now onto your questions. This most probably is longer than you wanted.

For both Sanskrit and Hindi, Dharma/Dharm is written in Devanagari script as धर्म and this word has the same meaning in both the languages. Even though both languages write it as धर्म but in Sanskrit it's pronounced as Dharma and in Hindi, the last 'a' is dropped and it's pronounced as Dharm.

Brahmā (the deva of creation) is pronounced the same way in both Sanskrit and Hindi.

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Now you may have question that in Hindi, why isn't the ending 'ā' sound in Brahmā dropped like the ending 'a' of Dharma is dropped?

Answer through difference in pronunciation:
In Brahmā the last 'a' is pronounced like the 'a' in English word "car", while in Dharma the last 'a' is pronounced like the 'a' in "euphoria". When a Sanskrit word ends in a consonant immediately followed by the 'a' of "euphoria" then while speaking in Hindi, speakers drop that last 'a'. But when a Sanskrit word ends in a consonant immediately followed by the 'a' of "car" then that last 'a' is Not dropped when the word is spoken in Hindi.

Answer through Devanagari script:
Brahmā is written as ब्रह्मा ; note the vertical line ( | ) at the end. When a Hindi speaker sees that line he understands that 'a' is to be spoken. Dharma is written as धर्म ; a Hindi speaker sees no vertical line at the end so he says Dharm. When there's no vertical line at the end of धर्म then why do Sanskrit speakers speak 'a' sound at the end of धर्म? Because the 'a' sound is inbuilt in the consonants of धर्म. How/Why it's inbuilt? It's like the English consonant 'b' is spoken individually as 'bee'. To cancel this last 'a' sound in Sanskrit, a slanting line is put at the bottom; for example "Tat" of "ॐ Tat Sat" is a Sanskrit word; "Tat" is written in Sanskrit Devanagari as तत् . There are two त in तत् and the second one ( त् ) has a slanting line at the bottom which cancels the last 'a' sound. If the bottom slanting line is removed, it would become तत = ta + ta = Tata in Sanskrit.
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Originally Posted by Vinayaka

are there specific instances where it's done that might change the meanings as well?

In either Sanskrit or Hindi, there's no rule of dropping the last 'a' to change the meaning of word. But there's a rule in Sanskrit in which "ah" sound is added at the end of words. Suppose I'm forming a sentence that Rāma (राम) did this work then in the Sanskrit sentence I'll add "ah" sound at the end of Rāma to make the word Rāmaḥ (रामः). This "ah" sound is specified with ":" at the end of words. You may know this sound from its use in the word Namaḥ (नमः) which is used in mantras.

If word "Vinayaka" is used in English sentence as "Namaste to Vinayaka" then Sanskrit translation of this sentence is "Vinayakam Namami". I added 'm' at the end of "Vinayaka" to give the sense of "to Vinayaka"; the English word "to".

[Vinayaka]

Thank you.

[Mystical Warrior]

Originally Posted by kralaro

When I wrote Brāhmaṇa, Brahmā, Bráhman, Brahmānda and Brāhmaṇas; I used IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) symbols.

Now onto your questions. This most probably is longer than you wanted.

For both Sanskrit and Hindi, Dharma/Dharm is written in Devanagari script as धर्म and this word has the same meaning in both the languages. Even though both languages write it as धर्म but in Sanskrit it's pronounced as Dharma and in Hindi, the last 'a' is dropped and it's pronounced as Dharm.

Brahmā (the deva of creation) is pronounced the same way in both Sanskrit and Hindi.

-----
Now you may have question that in Hindi, why isn't the ending 'ā' sound in Brahmā dropped like the ending 'a' of Dharma is dropped?

Answer through difference in pronunciation:
In Brahmā the last 'a' is pronounced like the 'a' in English word "car", while in Dharma the last 'a' is pronounced like the 'a' in "euphoria". When a Sanskrit word ends in a consonant immediately followed by the 'a' of "euphoria" then while speaking in Hindi, speakers drop that last 'a'. But when a Sanskrit word ends in a consonant immediately followed by the 'a' of "car" then that last 'a' is Not dropped when the word is spoken in Hindi.

Answer through Devanagari script:
Brahmā is written as ब्रह्मा ; note the vertical line ( | ) at the end. When a Hindi speaker sees that line he understands that 'a' is to be spoken. Dharma is written as धर्म ; a Hindi speaker sees no vertical line at the end so he says Dharm. When there's no vertical line at the end of धर्म then why do Sanskrit speakers speak 'a' sound at the end of धर्म? Because the 'a' sound is inbuilt in the consonants of धर्म. How/Why it's inbuilt? It's like the English consonant 'b' is spoken individually as 'bee'. To cancel this last 'a' sound in Sanskrit, a slanting line is put at the bottom; for example "Tat" of "ॐ Tat Sat" is a Sanskrit word; "Tat" is written in Sanskrit Devanagari as तत् . There are two त in तत् and the second one ( त् ) has a slanting line at the bottom which cancels the last 'a' sound. If the bottom slanting line is removed, it would become तत = ta + ta = Tata in Sanskrit.
-----

In either Sanskrit or Hindi, there's no rule of dropping the last 'a' to change the meaning of word. But there's a rule in Sanskrit in which "ah" sound is added at the end of words. Suppose I'm forming a sentence that Rāma (राम) did this work then in the Sanskrit sentence I'll add "ah" sound at the end of Rāma to make the word Rāmaḥ (रामः). This "ah" sound is specified with ":" at the end of words. You may know this sound from its use in the word Namaḥ (नमः) which is used in mantras.

If word "Vinayaka" is used in English sentence as "Namaste to Vinayaka" then Sanskrit translation of this sentence is "Vinayakam Namami". I added 'm' at the end of "Vinayaka" to give the sense of "to Vinayaka"; the English word "to".

A million thanks for that excellent explanation. I have been slowly figuring this out on my own but I didn't know the part about the vertical line at the end of the Sanskrit.

[sunsoul]

I didn't think the Brahman translation did the word justice... When I checked you seemed to have avoided choosing the 'unchanging reality' option which seems to me the most frequently used meaning.