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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 6

Formation of Aspirates

Formation of Aspirates.

According to Sanskrit grammarians, if we begin to pronounce the tenuis, but, in place of stopping it abruptly, allow it to come out with what they call the corresponding "wind" (flatus, wrongly called sibilans), we produce the aspirata, as a modified tenuis, not as a double consonant. This is admissible for the tenuis aspirata, but not for the media aspirata. Other grammarians, therefore, maintain that all media; aspiratæ are formed by pronouncing the mediæ with a final 'h, the flatus lenis being considered identical with the spiritus; and they insist on this principally because the aspirated sonants could not be said to merge into, or terminate by, a surd sibilant. Accepting this view of the formation of these aspirates, to which we have no corresponding sounds in English, we may now represent the page 10 complete table of the chief consonantal sounds possible in any dialect, as follows:—
Tenuis. Tenuis aspir. Media. Media aspir. Semi-vocales. Flatus sibilantes. Nasales.
Guttural: k kh g gh 'h 'h 'h n.
Dental: t th d dh l s z n
Labial: P ph b bh w f v m

It should be remarked that in the course of time the fine distinctions between kh, gh, and 'h, between ph, bh, and f, become generally merged into one common sound. In Sanskrit only, and in some of the southern languages of India, through the influence of Sanskrit, the distinction has been maintained. Instead of Sanskrit th we find in Latin the simple t; instead of dh, the simple d, or, as a nearer approach, the f (dhuma—fumus, &c.). The etymological distinction maintained in Sanskrit between "dha," to put, to create, and " da," to give, is lost in Persian, because there the two initial sounds d and dh have become one, and the root "da" has taken to itself the meaning both of creating and giving. Whatever objections, therefore, might be raised against the anticipated representation of the tenuis and media aspirata by means of an additional h or h, they would practically apply only to a very limited sphere of languages. In Sanskrit no scholar could ever take kh for k+h, because the latter combination of sounds is grammatically impossible. In the Tamulian languages the fine distinctions introduced into their orthography have hardly found their way into the spoken dialects of the people at large.