Page:Journal Of The Indian Archipelago And Eastern Asia Series.i, Vol.2 (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.107695).pdf/629

 Teutonic languages, the German ch., the x. of the old, and the j. of the modern Spanish orthography. The k̇. with a single dot is a deep hard guttural which has no equivalent in any European language, and still less is there any approach to its sound in the Malayan tongues. Both these letters have the native pronunciation of an ordinary k.

The two letters l, represented respectively, by a single and by a double diacritical mark are the 15th and the 17th of the Arabian alphabet, called by the Persians zad and za. The Arabs, however, give to both a sound which approaches nearest to the double l in Welsh or Spanish. The Malayan nations pronounce them as a com- mon l.—Of the three s. noted by different orthographic marks, the first is the swad of the Arabs, or 14th of the Arabian series, and the second the 4th Arabian letter, which the Arabs pronounce like our th aspirated, as in the word "thing"; but the Persians like an s. The Malays give to both letters the simple hissing sound of an or- dinary s.

The third s. is the 12th letter of the Arabian series, the English sh, the French ch, the Dutch sj, and the German sch. With the Malayan nations it is, like the two letters which precede it, only a simple s.

The ẗ. thus marked to distinguish it from the native palatal ṫ, is the toe of the Arabs, but, in utterance the natives of the Archipela- go make no distinction between it, and an ordinary dental t. The z. without a diacritical mark corresponds with a sound which exists in some of the ruder languages of the Archipelago, but is un- known to the written ones now in use. It is the 11th letter of the Arabian series immediately following r, and distinguished from it only by a dot above it. The ż with a diacritical mark is the 9th of the Arabian series immediately following the letter d. and distin- guished from it only by the point. Both these letters are pronounc- ed in the same manner, and as an ordinary z. They may indeed be said to be the only peculiar letters of the Arabs that can be pronoun- ced without much effort by the Malayan nations, but even these they not unfrequently convert into a j.

The difficulty of rendering the Arabic vowels by Roman letters is still greater than of the consonants. Of the three vowels which form substantive, alif, wa and ya, the first alone invariably expresses one sound, which is that of the inherent a in the Hindu and insular al- phabets, but, as in these, it is for the most part expressed in the con sonant, at the end of words, always.