Page:A Grammar of the Urdū Or Hindūstānī Language in Its Romanized Character.djvu/28

 the Hebrew, with its triliteral roots, three numbers, etc., downwards.

9. The three 'weak' or 'changeable' letters, Alif, Wāo ), and Ye , of the Arabic Alphabet maybe either consonants or vowels, according to their position in a word. The first, when initial in an Urdu word (and in Arabic sometimes in the middle and even end, if initial in a syllable) is represented by short a in the Romanized system, unless it has over it the diacritical sign Madd meaning 'lengthening,' which in Roman is marked by a long accent, thus, ā. Without this sign it is generally, in Arabic and sometimes in Urdu, accompanied by the sign Hamza , denoting short a. In either of these cases Alif  is regarded in Eastern Grammars as a very weak consonant, compared sometimes to the Greek spiritus lenis, or slight breathing. So Wāw  and Ye  if initial in a word or syllable are consonants answering to initial w and y in our own language.

10. In all other cases these three letters are vowels. But their power and pronunciation depend on certain vowel- signs with which they are accompanied in the Persi-Arabic characters, viz. Fatḥā =short a, Kasra =short i, and Dhamma or Ẓamma = short u, placed respectively above, under, and before consonants to signify short a, i, and u, as  (ba),  (bi),  (bu). But to represent the long sounds of these letters the short vowel-signs are prefixed to their corresponding vowel letters, as (ba),  (bi),  (bu).