Page:Compendious Syriac Grammar.djvu/53

§ 23. a media into a media, and so forth. was pronounced like (e. g.  "vehemently angry" like ), for  is a media and  a tenuis like  (in spite of the assibilation);  like  (e. g.  "conquers" like ;  "of Zacharias" like ); vice versa  like  (e. g.  "disgrace" like ). Farther was given like  (e. g.  "greedy" like ), and even, with suppression of the emphasis before the last unemphatic , like  (e. g.  "sorrowful" like . The East-Syrians went much farther in this process, for they prescribed e. g.  even for  "to break";  for ; and they gave to  immediately before , , , the sound of the French j, ge (Pers. ), e. g. in "an account". This subject might be treated at great length. Notice that such assimilations take place even when the consonants affected were originally separated by a sheva (e̊).—The written language exhibits only a few traces of these changes.

Rem. A very ancient reversed assimilation consists in always becoming  in Aramaic roots at the beginning of the word, as the emphatic  corresponds more accurately to  than does. Similar equalisations in all roots might farther be pointed out.

§ 23. A. The rules for Rukkākhā, i.e. the soft (assibilated, hissing, or aspirated) pronunciation and for Quššāyā, i.e. the hard (or unaspirated) pronunciation, originally affect all the letters [Beghadhkephath] in equal measure. But the East-Syrians for a very long time have nearly always given a hard sound; only in the end of a syllable have they sometimes given it a soft pronunciation. The