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§ 84 —In the aspirated tenues the breath was allowed to escape after the explosion; thus th was probably sounded somewhat like the t in W. tad, or like t before an accented vowel in Eng. or N. German, in all of which breath is heard as an off-glide. Aryan t on the other hand was sounded like French or South German t with no escape of breath between the explosion and the vowel.

The exact pronunciation of the aspirated mediae bh, etc., is not known. The conventional European pronunciation is b + h, etc., as in Eng. abhor, adhere. In India the element represented by h is a voiced throat spirant. But the sounds were undoubtedly simple like the aspirated tenues, and were probably voiced forms of the latter.

—It is generally held that there were as above three series of gutturals. The palatals were sounded on the hard palate like W. c in ci or E. k in king. The labiovelars were sounded between the root of the tongue and the soft palate, so far back that the lips were naturally rounded, as in the formation of the vowel u, W. w, E. u in full. These two series are established by such equations as Skr. s̑ = Lat. c < Ar. k̑, and Skr. k, c = Lat. qu < Ar. q$u̯$. But another equation often occurs: Skr. k, c = Lat. c, which points to Ar. q intermediate between the two others, too far back to give Skr. s̑ and too far forward to give the labialized Lat. qu. In the Western languages Kelt., Ital., Germanic, Greek, there is no difference between Ar. k̑ and q; both give k which is generally accommodated to the following vowel; thus Ar. k̑m̥tom gives W. cant pronounced qant, not *k̑ant. Where a guttural occurs in a form only found in Western languages, we can only write it k, g, etc., with no diacritic mark. In the Eastern languages (except Tocharish) the palatals became sibilants, thus k̑ > Skr. s̑ (an sh sound); but the velars remain, or became tch sounds (as in fetch) before front vowels, thus q > Skr. k, or c (a tch sound), the latter before an Ar. front vowel.—Meillet, Intr.² 63 ff., admits only two series, k̑ and q$u̯$, and regards Skr. k = Lat. c as a special treatment of Ar. k̑ in Skr. and the Eastern group. He points out that the supposed q occurs chiefly before r, before a, and after s.

The frequent alternation of k̑ and q § 101 iv (1) makes it probable that originally, at any rate, the two are the same. A recent advance from q to k̑ has taken place in Eng. before ă, now sounded æ̆; thus old borrowings in W. have q, as in the Anglesey dial. qap ‘cap’, qaban ‘cabin’, qari̯o ‘to carry’, but later borrowings have k̑ as k̑ab ‘cab’, k̑ábinet ‘cabinet’, k̑arej ‘carriage’, the a being the same, but the k̑ with a perceptible i̯ glide. The example shows how q may become k̑ before a forward vowel, and how the k̑, once introduced, may remain before a back vowel. The same processes might have taken place in Ar., and it is quite possible that k̑ and q represent an original neutral k.

—The “sonants” play a special part in Ar. phonology; they occupy an intermediate position between consonants and vowels, and in R-grades become vocalic; see § 63.