Page:A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Use Amongst the Aborigines of Western Australia.djvu/11

 undertake the task of editing and publishing it in Eng- land, in order to avoid the expense and difficulty which would have attended the printing of it in the colony. The sounds of the letters are adopted from the ortho- graphy recommended in the Journal of the Royal Geo- graphical Society. The consonants are to be sounded as in English, except that G is invariably hard; the vowels, for the most part, as in the following English words :--A, as in father, except when it has the short mark (ă) over it, or at the end of a word, when it is to be pronounced as in the first syllable of mamma; E, as in there, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of a word; I, as in fatigue; 0, as in old; Ow, as in cow, now; U, as in rude. With Y some liberty has been taken; it is used Both as a consonant and a vowel With its consonant form there is no difficulty; it is to be pronounced as in you, your, yoke. As a vowel it must invariably be sounded long, as in my, thy; and this sound in the middle of a word, after a consonant, is to be given to it unless separated from the preceding letter by a hyphen, when it becomes a consonant itself, as, for example, Gyn, one. Y is here a long vowel; but in Gyn-yang (once) the y of the first syllable is a long vowel, and of the second is a consonant;-- the same as in Byl-yi (a small leaf); By-yu (the Zamia fruit). The nasal sound, Ng, is of such frequent occurrence in the Australian language, as to have rendered its introduction