Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/100

78 makes स sound as sh. It is an interesting question, whether the influence of climate has been at work, but one which cannot be gone into here.

§ 25. The nasals of the five organs are even in Sanskrit somewhat affected and over-refined letters. ङ and ञ have characters to express them in all the languages except Gujarati, which, not possessing any of the "pruritus Sanskritizandi," so to speak, does not use characters for sounds which it does not require. Nor does Hindi. In all the other languages, except Sindhi, these characters are only used in Tatsama words as the first element of a nexus. Sindhi, however, has two sounds, ng and ny, for which these two characters are used. They stand alone as pure guttural and palatal nasals respectively. Thus, in सिङु sing-u, "a horn"; अङणु ang-anu, "a court-yard"; अङरु ang-aru, "a coal"; we have derivatives from Skr. शृङ्ग, अङ्गण, and अङ्गार. In Hindi and most of the other languages these words are written with the anuswâra सिंग, अंगन, and अंगार. The sound of the Sindhi ङ is that of ng in sing, ring, which is one homogeneous sound, and as such differs from the Hindi न with anuswâra, which is the ng in finger, linger. In dividing the syllables of these words we should write sing-ing, but fin-ger. The latter is really fing-ger.

Similarly ञ in Sindhi is ny, the Spanish ñ in Señor, extraño, which are pronounced Senyor, extranyo, and in which the ñ is, like the Sindhi ञ, a compendium scripturæ, or simpler way of writing ne or ni, as in the Latin senior, extraneus. It is, however, not unfrequently for double n, as in año=annus; or for mn, as in daño=damnum, doña=domna (low Latin for domina); or for ng, as in uña=unguis; or gn, as in seña=signum. Thus, कञा kany-â, "maiden," is Skr. कन्या; धाञु dhâny-u, "grain," Skr. धान्य; वञणु vany-anu, "to go," Skr. वञ्चनं. It is, therefore, less strictly palatal than ङ is guttural,