Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/91

Rh and imperative, कर "thou dost," kara, or koro; चल "go thou," cholo; also in the third person singular of the preterite करिल korilo, "he did," and the conditional करित korito, "if he did." In this latter case the short vowel is a corruption of an older e arising from aï.

In Bengali adjectives the final a is sounded, as बड boro, छोट chhoṭo, where the final a arises from the Sanskrit visarga, through Pr. o, and the word should consequently be written बडो, as in Gujarati. In this, as in some other cases, the Bengali having imparted an o sound to the a, makes it do duty for a long o ओ. Thus, it writes बल, and pronounces bŏlŏ, for बोलो bolo, "speak"; and गम, pronounced gom, for गोहुम, Skr. गोधूम "wheat." In this respect Oṛiya follows the example of Bengali.

Hindi writers often, from carelessness or ignorance, write that which is a combination of consonants in Sanskrit as so many separate letters, thus, दरसन for दर्शन, जुकति for युक्ति; this is merely an irregularity of spelling, and does not affect the pronunciation, which remains the same as in Sanskrit, darśan, jukti.

On a review of the whole matter, the position of the short final a is exactly parallel to that of its linguistic counterpart the final short e of early English, which we have in the modern language everywhere discarded in pronunciation, and in most cases in writing also. We have retained it as an orthographical sign in words such as gate, line, hole, where its presence indicates a shade of pronunciation.

The inherent a in the middle of a word is retained in the modern languages wherever its omission is absolutely impossible, but is omitted wherever it can be slurred over or got rid of.

§ 21. There is little to remark on the pronunciation of any of the other vowels except ऋ. Hindi generally, and Panjabi always, ignore this grammarian's figment, and write it plain and