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NOVEMBER, 1922]
BOOK-NOTICE.
223
unlikelihood of many following in his stops unless such things, and his ideas might well be studied there is a fair prospect of their efforts becoming even by the latest scholars. He used an inverted useful to others.
stop to express an accontuated syllable, thus : ) Having dwelt for years among peoples who " pronounced by many Englighmen and Educated used tones as & principal element in speech, Il Scotchmen." I feel that this device is not only could not help observing the importance of being better but easier to print than (*) to express the able to distinguish them on paper, and also the glottal stop: thus, “what 'on earth is the matdifficulty thereof. I also observed the immense ter?", and "wha' you want is no what we want." difficulty that strangers, with whom the use of I fancy Sir George Grierson's strokes to represent tones was a minor matter (for speakers of all
tones have come to stay, as in pa, pa, pa, pa, but languages use them colloquially), had in both leaming and using them. Englishmen in Burma
novertheless I am not sure whether pa, pa, pa, pad, have to get along without any or at best a limited would not be as easy to grasp and give the printer use of them, and yet their use of the language is less trouble. understood by the educated and more intelligent ! Putting Mr. Bailey's actual method of reprepeople they have to deal with. Speaking to a sentation to the test, I would note his remarks on yokel is another matter. The Chinese have got the pronunciation (governing his transcription) of over the difficulty in a fashion by expressing them
Pürik (a Tibetan dialect). Onp. 2 he talks of sounds on paper under a system of undisguised ideo not represented in the [R. A.] Society's alphabet grams, and the Burmese, Talaings and so on ! One of these is unvoiced (i.e., surd or hard) 1, like by anyatem of "aocents," and then we have the ll in Welsh, which is not a khl or lh or W: it is Sir George Grierson's idea of diacritical strokes. simply l unvoiced." He says : " it is heard in Other methods have been tried: 6.g., special Madpce." I cannot help wondering how his readers spelling, as in Panjabi. But whatever the method,
will pronounce this word to themselves as a result it has to be specially leernt on paper, and when of the explanation. It also makes one wonder if one learnt, the difficulty of the student recorder still has a right appreciation of such Welsh words as Han remains in the accuracy of his own car. So great and of such names as Lloyd, Llanolly, or Llwchwe is this difficulty and the consequent uncertainty
(Anglicised .8 Loughor) : also of such sounds in the of accurate, and therefore scientific, record, that
allied (to Púrik) Burmese language as that of the
common word which the English usually spell hia it is quite a moot point whether, except in cases where tone is an essential feature in a language, it
and the Burmese by the ligature representing Ind. is advisable to ask any but a specially qualified
Let us take another instance which Mr. Bailey observer to note tones on paper at all.
gives on p. 3. He writes :-" If one asks a native In such hands as Mr. Bailey's the record of tones
to say the word very deliberately in two syllables
he will say Ilyaq-mo, but if he says it quickly he is of the greatest importance in explaining linguistic
will say Uyag-mo or possibly llyag-mo, where the changes in the history of words. On p. xi. of his
gor are pronounced in the same part of the Prefaco occurs the following important passage:
throat as q. The numerals give other examples; "The average Panjabi appears quite unable to
thus, we have angnyis or sognyis or sognyia, thirtysay a pure h (other than a kh, etc.), and will
two. This holds for any q which is immediately always substitute for it either the deep or the
followed by a sonant consonant. In fact, we may high tone, yet in daily conversation he frequently uses a pure instead of after a vowel. Thus
state generally that any surd (unvoiced) letter is
liable to be changed to the corresponding sonant if a for the sentence mai těnu dăsnå dis paise ditte
sonant consonant follows, and a may become , as in sāsu, I thee to telling-am-ten pice given were
nyis or nyiz, two, t may become a, and so on." by-him, i.e., I tell you he gave ten pice, he will
To my mind this kind of change from surd to Bay mai unit dahna děh paihe dite hāha, where
sonant is inevitable, and is it worth while to disall the aspirates are pure and non-sonant." Here
tinguish it on paper ? Does it help etymology we have it seems to me an acceptablo explanation
to do so! Take the English sentences: "I missed of the well-known change of a to h in the Indian
seeing him" and "A mist arose." Is there any languages, and even of the use of hin other langua
difference in sound in these sentences as spoken ges to express the , of borrowed Indian words. between missed' and 'mist' ? Should we gain
Mr. Bailey's reinarks (p. xii) on the glottal stop, anything by writing both as miat? So do I ask: 80 very observable in German and common in
is anything gained by writing Ilyagmo for Ayaqmo ? much other speech, are worth reading, but I greatly Or by distinguishing between sognyie, sognyia and doubt whether it is best represented by (*) as
sognyis on paper ? in the sentence: " what on earth 'is the matter ?" Take an expression, such as one may find, as The late Mr. A. J. Ellie (now long doad, alas!) written, in an American book on olence; bad fertile brain in devising means to express Ther wer six words." Does the spelling here
