Page:On the Non-Aryan Languages of India.djvu/15

Rh it—an immense group—the boundaries of which in the present state of our knowledge are very doubtful. It is impossible to give even an approximate number of the speakers included in this group, as many of the languages are either across the frontier or only project a short distance into our own territory. The languages included in this group have not, with perhaps one or two exceptions, both a cerebral and dental row, like the South-Indian languages; some of them have aspirated forms of the surds, but not of the sonants; others have aspirated forms of both. In the languages on the Burmese side there are also sounds like the Persian khe and ghain, and Burmese has our English th. Both the Tibetan and Burmese have characters of considerable antiquity derived from the Sanskrit. The pronunciation of both these languages has greatly changed since these characters were first introduced. In Tibetan, as spoken in Lhasa and Tibet proper, the first member of a compound of consonants is generally not pronounced at all, while many compounds take altogether different sounds; sonants are for the most part pronounced as surds, final s is not pronounced, and some other final consonants are hardly heard. In Western Tibet, however, most of the consonants are pronounced as written. In Burmese, on the other hand, the surds are frequently pronounced as sonants; an r is pronounced as if it were y; some final consonants are mute, or they are often changed into different sounds; the vowel a is also pronounced as if it were ĕ or í before certain final consonants. In Arakan, however, the original pronunciation is more frequently preserved. The languages of this group, even those which most diverge from each other, have several words in common, and especially numerals and pronouns, and also some resemblances of grammar. In comparing the resembling words, the differences between them consist often less in any modification of the root-syllable, than in the various additions to the root; thus in Burmese we have nā 'ear,' Tibetan rna-ba, Magar na-kep', Newar nai-pong, Dhimal nā-hāthong, Kiranti dialects nā-pro, nā-rek, nā-phāk, Naga languages te-na-ro, te-na-rang, Manipuri na-kong, Kupui ka-nā, Sak aka-nā, Karen na-khu,