Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/29

xx by a short blow with the tip of the tongue against the base of the teeth.

g is approximately the English g in gun.

j and ch approach the sound of those letters in English but are enunciated in a drier way.

h is the well-known aspirate, but it is also very distinctly sounded at the end of a syllable, e.g. in bòh, sah, sahbat, however much the untrained European ear may miss it. The h has also its full sound when it occurs after another consonant; in pha, kaphé, dhòë, that, lheë, it is sounded as distinctly as in uphold, red-heat, out-house, etc., at the beginning as well as in the middle of words.

ng is sounded as in bring but it also used as an initial, e.g. in ngeu. This consonant, as also the m, is pronounced very nasally.

ny usually stands for the single sound which in French is represented by gn, e. g., in oignon.

r in the predominant dialect is sounded as a very soft guttural, so that this letter dwindles away at the end of a word and is not marked by us in our system.

s sounds like the English th in think; but it is uttered in a very palatal way by the pressure of the front part of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Untrained ears often confuse this sound with t.

The remaining consonants need no explanation.

a is sounded as in French; i as ea in sea and beat; u as oo in too and soon; é as ay in say or ai in sail; è as in the French père or (in closed syllables) as in set; ō as in boat, home; ò as in the French sort but this vowel often occurs in open syllables and is then pronounced very long.

eu is a vowel very difficult for European organs of speech to exactly reproduced; it approaches closest to the French eu and the German ö, but one should try to utter it with firmly closed teeth and without pushing the lips forward in the least, so that the distance between the corners of the mouth is rather increased than decreased. The back of the tongue must be pressed against the palate and between these two one should force out the breath steadily with the least possible opening of the glottis. Unaccented, this vowel resembles the indeterminate vowel in the French je, le, se.

ë is a very slightly marked vowel which only appears in the prolongation of others, e.g., of i, è, u, ò and eu (thus ië, èë, uë, òë, euë, in which the soft connecting semi-vowel y is heard in the case of the