Page:A Grammar of the Persian Language.djvu/20

 6. An Introduction to the Prosody of the Persians, not more extensive perhaps than that given originally by the Author of the Grammar, but certainly more conformable with the usage of the Orientals, and perhaps more easily reducible to practice. 7. A brief view of the principles of the Arabick Syntax. This I have deemed it important to add, because the Student will occasionally meet with entire periods of Arabick composition in the Persian books he may have to consult, and which he will never be able to understand without such assistance; and because the Arabick and Persian Syntax will serve mutually to illustrate each other: it being a fact that the Persians have now for some ages been cultivating their own language upon the grammatical principles of their neighbours the Arabians. Augmentations, too, will be found in almost every page of the work; but those illustrative of the forms of the Arabick nouns, triliteral and pluriliteral, may be pointed out here as the most considerable.

The alterations made are chiefly these. 1. Instead of supplying every vowel to the examples, as in the last edition, the system adopted by Mr. Professor Shakespear, in his Grammar of the Hindustani, has been taken as being the simplest and best hitherto proposed: because, as it diminishes the number of vowels to be printed, so does it also diminish the number of errors of the press which might otherwise occur. It also affords an opportunity for expressing the and, termed  majhūl, which cannot be done in the other system; and leads the student in some measure towards reading without the vowel marks, which he must sometime do.—I may here remark, that although the distinctions of  and  just mentioned, do not appear to be generally made in Persia, and need not therefore be regarded by