National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

LETTERS AND SIGNS USED FOR THE PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION.   149

Consonants. ' in detailed Tibetan transcription is used for the letter c., and its nature differs but little from the Greek spiritus lenis;1 is a mark of separation, as used for distinguishing s` h to be an aspirated "s," not an English "sh."

Italics are used in the Tibetan words, when written in full, to represent consonants not pronounced.

Syllables in general. - shows that the two respective parts it connects form one word. It is particularly used to make apparent as such the component parts in quotations of " analogous formations," and in Tibetan terms ; in these latter, however, also words only combined by juxtaposition are often met with. These have not the mark - between them.

The Accent : The sign ' marks the syllable on which the phonetic accent falls, whether the syllable be long or short.

In using these letters and signs many minor distinctions of the native Hindostâni alphabet are not reproduced, as will be easily seen by a comparison with the words written in the native characters, simplicity being one of the most important conditions for our practical application.2

For Tibetan, however, our alphabet happens to contain the elements for representing all the modifications of vowels and consonants existing therein, the distinctions being altogether much less numerous ; when, in the 7th century A.D., the Tibetan alphabet was formed from the ancient Devanâgari characters, numerous vocal and consonantal distinctions were omitted, as not existing in Tibetan.3

' See Csoma's Tibetan Grammar, p. 5.

2 As a method of particularly correct detailed spelling the distinctions systematically combined at the head of Wilson's Glossary may be quoted. At the same time attention may be drawn to modern philology's having discovered in every language, our own European languages not excepted, a great and surprising variety of details phonetically existing without any representation in spelling. Compare e. g. Corssen's most interesting work (in German) on the Pronounciation, the Vocalism and the Intonation of Latin. Berlin, 2 vols., 1859.

Even the full detail of the native alphabets is not quite a sufficient guide, and discordance between strictly defined phonetic, detail and the native spelling is more frequently met with than might at first be thought; but it is nearly equally difficult to hear a modification we do not expect, as it is to pronounce a novel sound. Such distinctions we considered to be beyond the limits of the present part of our work; to some of them we shall have occasion to make allusion in our ethnographical volume. As a particularly complete representation of the various groups of consonantal systems in use in the most different languages of our globe, we refer the reader to Lepsius's "Standard Alphabet" (German edition, p. 41).

.   3 As a native historical record of great value I quote "The Introduction to the Tibetan-Mongolian Dictionary,"
by Togharlova, translated by Schmid and added to Schmid's "Geschichte der Ostmongolen" (History of the Eastern Mongolians) von Ssanang Ssetsen, 1829, p. 326. Recently a very important work has been published by Lepsius, "Ueber die chinesischen and tibetanischen Lautverhältnisse and über die Umschrift jener Sprachen." Berlin, 1861.