Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/91

 Besides these ten, there is in Australian a peculiar vowel sound ■which appears only iu a closed syllable, and chiefly before xhe nasal ng ; it takes the short sound of either a, e, i, o, or u. For instance, we have the word for ' tont^ue ' set down as t a 1 1 a n g, talleng, tulling, talluu, and the Avord for 'hand' as m a t a, m e t a, m i t a ; and so also with other examples. I regard these variations as proceeding from an obscure utterance of a, the same dulled a which appears in English in the word ' vocal,' and is represented by other vowels in the English ' her,' ' sir,' ' son.' I have introduced a as the sign for this sound ; a, there- fore, as iu the syllables of talag, etc., will mean a dull, volatile sound of a, which, iu the various dialects, may have any one of the other short vowels substituted for it. In the Malay language similarly, the a — that is, the letter ain, not fjhain — takes the sound of anj'- one of the short vowels.

These six paragraphs seem to contain all that is noticeable iu the long and short sounds of the vowels a, e, i, o, u.

Then, we have the diphthongs ; «/, as in ' eye' ; oi, as in ' coin' ; au, as in 'cow'; iu, as in 'new'; but ai is apt to become o/, and sometimes, though rarely, ei.

The summary of the vowel sounds will thus be : — Vowels — a, i, u ; i ; 0, 5 ; a, 8, i, u ; u ; a (volatile). Semi- vowels — w, y. Diphthongs — ai, oi, au, iu.

I have admitted lo and y, because they are already established in Australian words. I consider lo, as a vowel, to be entirely redundant in our alphabet ; y may be useful at the end of an open syllable to represent the softened sound of i. Even when w ov y stands as an initial letter in such words as wata, yuring, ■they are both superfluous, for wata might as well be written uata, and yuring as luring. But in words such as wa-kal, 'one,' the w stands lor aui original h, and is therefore a consonant ; and, similarly, in yarro, 'an eg?,' the y probably represents a primitive Jc. In such cases, lo and y are consonants.

COXSOXAXTS.

The (jufturals are Jc, y, Ji, ny. The ^ is a much more frequent sound in Australian than its softer brother y ; indeed, I am iuclined to think that we could safely regard k as the native sound of this guttural, and set down y as merely a dialect variety of it. Eor the reasons given above, I discard the use of h at the end of an open syllable ; as an initial, h occurs in only a few words, such as h i 1 a m a n, 'a shield ' ; but the guttural- nasal ny is one of the distinctive sounds of the Australian alphabet, and is the same sound as the ny in the English word, the beginning of a syllable severs the Australian language from the Arvan family, and gives it kinship with the African.
 * sing.' It appears both as an initial and as a final ; its use at

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