530 Professor Rasx’s Remarks on the Zend Language. 
no triphthongs whatever. Of the consonants, Zend has a hard f and v, 
different from w, and even the Arabic é, & <j, and the Persian }, which 
seven letters are wanting in the Ndguri ; of the ten aspirate mutes in Sanscrit, 
the Zend has only one, viz. th ; it has also no J, and no visarga (or Arabic 
» final), so that it wants at least eleven of the Sanscrit consonants. From 
this parallel you will see, that the two systems of sounds are as widely 
different as Greek and Anglo-Saxon, or as any other two languages of the 
whole Japhetic race. It is remarkable that the Armenian, which is known 
to be a very old and radical language, on the boundaries of ancient Media, 
has also the f or —3; the ¢ G or strong q, different from i ; the ¢, ;, and }. 
Farsi, also, the other immediate neighbouring tongue to the old Median, 
downwards to the left. The other figure under No. 28, is the common e, with the same sound 
as in Sanscrit, Italian, and other Indian and European languages. _No. 29 is a nasal a, which I 
would express with the Polish a (a) not with an, from which syllableit is very different. No. 30 
is a nasal consonant, different from the clear n (No.17). As it never occurs in the beginning 
of a word, it might without confusion be expressed with the capital n in a small size, corres- 
ponding to the bulk of the other letters. No, 31 contains two other different nasal consonants, 
of which the latter may be compared to the Sanscrit <g: and expressed with g, the other to 
the Sanscrit 2[ and expressed with 7. No. 32 is the vowel % long, the English oo in moon, 
corresponding to the short « already mentioned (No. 26 first place). No. 33 is @long. No. 34 
is a kind of strong or aspirated ¢, which I compare with the Arab |, and express with the 
Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic p, it agrees with po, the ninth letter in the Armenian alphabet, but is 
quite different from the above-mentioned th (No. 6 last place), which is formed from ¢ by joining 
to it the sign of aspiration. No. 35 is w in the middle of words as explained already. Next to 
this is a diphthong apparently composed of long 4 and a short @, but commonly pronounced as 
4o; at all events, it is no single letter of the alphabet. The following is the syllable ah (not ch), 
and the last represents the two letters st (not sht). But as it may be more pleasing to get a view 
of the alphabet as it is, than to go through the numberless mistakes and misrepresentations of 
Awnquetit, I shall subjoin a Zend alphabet, reformed according to the above observations. The 
letters seem naturally divided into three different classes, as follows : 
nb wm mw ge be bw pons wo 
ay ia ane 4 , ~ ee 
w y ae) he 6 ie eh) aa AE a” co 
e 
ésereudceos 
p d@ th t ghqh q g k 
eM us 3 |} GE ew 6 wosype 
&jnm fe 2h sla teh Oe Gin ils 
(a) This character represents the nasal sound of the vowel in Polish; as, for instance, be de “ T shall be,” 
would be pronounced like bindin in French. 
