Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/306

 SECTION VII : SPECIAL PHENOMENA OF INITIAL, INTERIOR, AND FINAL SOUNDS.

Preliminary Observations. 180. We have often been able to notice in Section IV that the condition under which a phonetic change takes place consists in the fact that the sound in question is an initial, interior, or final sound. Thus Original IN a changes in Bĕsĕmah into ĕ when it ends a word, but otherwise remains unchanged. We will not discuss these phenomena again in this place, but will deal with a series of phonetic facts which are particularly characteristic of the nature of the initial, interior, and final sounds and which we have, on that account, reserved for this Section. Hereto belong also the phenomena connected with the enunciation of vowels, whether as initial, medial, or final, in words.

Initial, Medial, and Final Enunciation. 181. The enunciation of IN words, that begin with a vowel, may be soft, hard, or aspirated. Hard enunciation, that is to say the sounding of a hamzah before the vowel, is evidenced for a considerable number of IN languages (see § 142), and we may therefore with very fair certainty ascribe this phenomenon to Original IN. Moreover, hard and aspirated enunciation may interchange. "At the beginning of Achinese words h and q occasionally interchange, either because one dialect uses q and another uses h, or because the choice between them is left to the fancy of the individual speaker " (Snouck Hurgronje). The Minangkabau vocabulary contains a great number of words beginning either with or without h such as hindu and indu, "mother". Rh