Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/106

84 unlike their neighbours on all sides, the people of Sambalpur reduce পানি, বালি, মালি, etc., to পাইন, বাইল, মাইল, etc.; a line of a song composed in the vulgar speech of the Rangpur district, will disclose the above peculiarity in that far off locality in Northern Bengal: আমার মইন্&zwnj;সা (মিন্&zwnj;সে—husband) ছিল ঘরতে (ঘরে) কি সতে (কি কারণে) আগ্ (রাগ) কইরা (করিয়া) গইছেন (গিয়াছেন) বাহে (মহাশয়) এক্&zwnj;না (একটা) কথাতে (কথায়).

We utter the ই sound in some cases to prepare the ground as it were, for pronouncing a compound letter, of which sibilant is a component part. The English word school is pronounced sa-kul in the Punjab, e-skool in the U. P., us-kul in some parts of Orissa and is-kul in Bengal, in the sea-board districts of Orissa, and in the Madras Presidency. I may remark in passing, that the disinclination to pronounce a compound letter as an initial, is India-wide; as the speakers of Aryan speeches in Europe pronounce the initial compound letters aright, and as it is a rule in the Dravidian speeches, that the initial letter can never be a compound letter, I am inclined to formulate a widespread Dravidian influence since a remote past, to explain this peculiarity in our pronuncia­tion. It will be noticed later on, that this inclination to drop the letter 's' as a first part of a compound initial letter, is noticeable in the Vedic speech as well. In the U. P., the introductory vowel sound becomes আ, when the initial compound letter terminates with আ sound, and so স্নান is uttered as আস্নান; in the case of other terminal vowel sounds, এ becomes the introductory sound. In the Punjab, the compound letter is split up, and one letter is pronounced after the other; in the  Tamil pronunciation however, ই must be pronounced not only before the compound letters of the class spoken of above, but even before other initial compound letters; if even the second letter of a word is