Page:Compendious Syriac Grammar.djvu/42

Rh = z is a soft s as in chosen, German s in Rose, French in choisir or French z in zéro. = ḥ is quite a foreign sound to us, an h rattled in the throat (Arabic ). The East-Syrians pronounce it as a very hard Swiss ch (Arabic ).

= ṭ is an emphatic and completely unaspirated modification of t, in which the tip of the tongue is pressed firmly against the palate;  is a similar modification of  k, produced in the back part of the mouth. and are employed by the Syrians as equivalents for the Greek sounds τ and κ, which at all events were quite unaspirated.

= ṣ is an emphatic articulation of the sound of s, by no means to be rendered as a German z (= ts).

= ʿ is a guttural breathing, again quite foreign to us, which is formed by a peculiar compression of the upper part of the windpipe. It is nearly related to, and even to the Spiritus lenis. Those who render it by the latter sound will make the least considerable mistakes.

= š is the German sch, the English sh, or the French ch.

seems to have been a lingual-dental, not a guttural.

The remaining consonants have nearly the same sound as the corresponding German or English ones.

§ 3. Particles, which consist of only a single letter, i. e. of a consonant with a short vowel, are attached as prefixes to the following word, thus be̊malkā, "in rege", not,  waqṭal, "and killed", not , &c.

Certain short words, and to some extent even longer ones, which together belong to the same idea, are also frequently written as one, though not invariably. Thus or  āf lā "neither", "not even";  or  bar·nāš, "son of man", i. e. "man";  or  kul yōm "every day";  or  kul meddem "quicquid";, more commonly  rūḥ quδšā "spirit of holiness", "the Holy Ghost"; even  instead of  māran Ješūʿ me̊šīḥā "our Lord Jesus Christ", appears. On the fusion