Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/13



If, in the three organs, a full contact takes place and the vocal breathing is stopped, not abruptly, but in the same manner as with the sonant letters, and if afterwards the vocal breathing is emitted, not through the mouth, but through the nose, we get the three full nasal consonants n., n, and m, for the guttural, dental, and labial series.

In most cases the peculiar character of the nasal is determined by the consonant immediately following. In "ink," the n is necessarily guttural; and if we try to pronounce it as a dental or labial, we have to stop after the n, and the transition to the guttural k becomes so awkward that, even in words like to "in-cur," most people pronounce the n like a guttural. No language, as far as I know, is fond of such incongruities as a guttural n. followed by any but guttural consonants, and they generally sacrifice etymology to euphony. In English we cannot pronounce em-ty, and therefore we pronounce and write emp-ty. In the Uraon-Kol language, which is a Tamulian dialect, "enan" is I, and the possessive prefix is "in," my. But in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal we find "im-bas," my father; but "ing-kos," my child. Cicero alludes to the same where he speaks of the n adulterinum. He says, that "cum nobis" was pronounced like "cun nobis."

At the end of words and syllables, however, the three nasal sounds, guttural, dental, or labial, may occur independently; and as it is necessary to distinguish a final m from a final n (, bonum), it will be advisable also to do the same for a final guttural nasal, as the French "bon," "Lundi," or the English "to sing." It is true that in most languages the final guttural nasal becomes really a double consonant, i.e. n+g, as in "sing," or n+k, as in "sink;" still, as the pronunciation on this point varies even in different parts of England, it will be necessary to provide a distinct category, and afterwards a distinct sign, for the guttural final nasal.

In some languages we meet even with an initial guttural nasal, as in Tibetan "nga-rang," I myself. Whether here the initial sound is really so evanescent as to require a different sign from that which we have as the final letter in "rang," is a question which a native alone could answer. Certain it is that in the Tibetan alphabet itself both are