Indian Antiquary Vol 54

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 28

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ FEBRUARY, 1925
from previous workers in the same field.” Some of the above paragraphs I do not understand and it seems to me that the argument is a result of mixing up two classes of palatals.
The palatals are the most difficult of the consonants to deal with. They are the inost indefinite of the consonantal sounds, because they depend on the mode of speech : whether one uses the flat of the tongue or its tip or its tip curled over in speaking. E.g., the Englishman's tendency is to use the tip, the American's to use the flat, retaining thus the old English tendency. The result is that the two countries do not produce the same sounds for the same consonants, and what is more readily noticeable the same sounds for the same vowels. This is to say that the classes of surds that in " English "are written ch and t, with their respective sonants, are not pronounced in the same way in England and in America, nor are the vowels that accompany them. The consonants written r and I are also equally affected and are not pronounced in the same way in the dialects of the two countries.
Then there are the “fricatives " represented in English by the surds 8, sh and th and their sonants, which are so close to the palatals that they are in many tongues hardly distinguishable and in some not at all. E.g., A Tamil speaking English' will say 'sea-chick' as alternative to sea-sick ', a habit clearly visible in Tamil versions of the Sanskrit 'script. The Eastern European has always a difficulty here, as shown by their scripts and their methods of writing their languages in Latin' characters, and so have the speakers of the Dravidian languages of India. English has none.
Lastly there are the dentals, varying greatly according to the use of the palate or the teeth combined with the flat, tip or turn over of the tongue in pronunciation. So that one gets a 'hard' (turned back tongue) and soft' (flat of tongue) palatal t and d, as in Sanskrit, or a hard '(tip of tongue) and 'soft' (flat of tongue) palato-dental t and d, as in English. Combined with a purely liquid consonant, y, the soft palatal and palato. dental t and a tend to become pure palatals of the ch and j class. E.g., in English "picture, grandeur, 'honest Injun.'” In some languages, e.g., those derived from the Indian Prakrits, the hard palatal sonant (1) spoken with turned back tongue is so little distinguishable in pronunciation from a hárd palatal r that they are often written in vernacular scripts as alternatives for each other.
Three observations stand out as the result of such considerations :
(1) The two classes of palatals recorded in various recognised scripts in various forios represented in English by ch and j and by t and d are often so close that the boundaries between them are indefinable.
2) It is not practicable, except perhaps for purely phonetical purposes, to try and o inore than generally indicate them on paper.
(3) Every language so varies from its sisters in methods of pronunciation--even every speaker of it from his neighbours (the very formation of the roof of a mouth, of its teeth, and of its tongue, is enough to make a difference in the sounds individuals uttor)--that it is not practicable, to achieve more, for any but specialised readers, than a general indication in any one language of the words of another.
It is, therefore, not necessary to go beyond one's script or language to show another reader of it, except in a few instances, how a particular people talks. One cogent reason is that unless that reader has special knowledge of the reference to another langnage it is useless to refer him to it. It is useless to tell an English reader, not educated ad hoc, that a is pronounced as in German and final n or m as in French, unless be is familiar with those languages--even assuming that the sounds of those letters are constant in them.
The following remarks make clear how dangerous it is to make this kind of comparison. In Alphabets of Foreign Languages transcribed into English (R.G.S. Technical Series : No. 2, 1921), Lord Edward Gleichen and Mr. J. H. Reynolds show that the nasals of French are written in many different ways in French script (p. 30), thus -