Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/28

Rh vowels present great difficulties to foreigners and of which a correct grasp and imitation can only be acquired by Non-Achehnese after great labour, is written by the Achehnese themselves in the Arabic character. This character is inadequate for representing the consonants and wholly incapable of representing the vowels of the Achehnese. Thus it comes about that the Achehnese adhere to the spelling which represented their language in a bygone age when many sounds now lost or modified occurred in it; thus for instance they write an r at the end of syllables but do not sound it; they write l at the end of syllables but sound it as y or e; s is changed in the same position to h or ih. For all these reasons one can hardly read Achehnese as written by Achehnese without having previously mastered the colloquial.

There can thus be no question of transliterating the native tongue. We must treat Achehnese according to phonetic systems of spelling. The system drawn up by me for the purpose is now generally followed and is here employed with the necessary modifications for English use.

Here follow some remarks on the phonetic value of the letters used, though they can only serve to give the reader a rough idea of the true sound.

The ʾ in words like aneuʾ, baʾ, seuʾōt, stands for a consonant which European orthographical systems usually neglect although it occurs among us. It is that consonant with which all words begin that are incorrectly written with an initial vowel; it arises out of the rush of breath after a sudden opening of the larynx. When this consonant occurs in English between two vowels (e.g. in be ʾout, too ʾold when such words are uttered without the use ef the connecting semi-vowels y and w), it is called the “hiatus”, and in some words—usually interjections—where it occurs as a final, it is altogether omitted in writing just as it is omitted as an initial. In Achehnese (which knows no diphthongs) this consonant plays too great a part to be omitted; it also frequently occurs in this as well as in many other native languages as a final, and is sometimes a weakened form of k, t, etc. We write it as ʾ in the middle and at the end of a word but we leave it unwritten as an initial; this latter concession to European orthographical methods can cause no confusion.

A peculiar nasal variant of ʾ we write as ᶜ; the reader must infer that the vowel following this symbol is pronounced very nasally.

The letters d, t, l and n are uttered (more delicately than in English)