Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 37.djvu/49

Rh Pahlavi letters. With these alterations the passage may be translated as follows:—

In conclusion, it is desirable to make some remarks upon the transliteration of Pahlavi, because it is necessary to express not only the various sounds of the letters of a very deficient alphabet, but also the mode of writing several abbreviated compounds which are quite as essential to the correct orthography of Pahlavi as the forms of the separate letters themselves. For this purpose italics are used to indicate not only a few differences of sound from the usual English pronunciation of consonants, but also different letters having the same sound, and letters abbreviated in the writing of compounds. When the abbreviated letter is already italicised, the preceding short vowel (which is not expressed in Pahlavi writing) is also italicised to indicate the abbreviation, or an apostrophe is introduced between the two consonants when no short vowel sound intervenes. Hyphens are used both to connect the components of compound words, which are often written