ON THE COMPARISON OF ASIATIC LANGUAGES. 209 
also considerable difference in the pronunciation of the 
gutturals, and in some the Koph is not distinguished from 
the Kaf, while the Jim has a different sound in the Arabic 
of Syria and of Egypt. 
This interchange is yet more remarkable in the more 
numerous dental sounds. T and D are interchanged in 
various dialects, and in others T becomes 8. The Z sounds 
also merge into 8 on one side, and into Dh or D on the 
other. Thus the Hebrew Z becomes the Aramean D. The 
Palestine peasants pronounce the Th as 8, and the Dh as Z, 
and they do not always distinguish the three forms of the 
sibilant, which are distinct in literary language. So also on the 
Moabite Stone, and on the Siloam inscription, we do not find 
the hard T (Zeth), which occurs in later Phoenician texts, and 
in Hebrew we have cognate roots in the hard and soft T 
and in D, and alsoin D and Z. Another very weak letter 
is N, which is euphoniously changed into M, and also into L. 
In Semitic and in Aryan languages alike the N is often 
introduced into the middle of a root, which in other dialects 
exists without it. In the Cypriote Greek the N is often 
absent from words of which we are accustomed to regard it 
as a radical letter, as, for mstance, Anthropos. 
The L and R are of all Jetters those which appear to have 
been the latest to be specialised. In Egyptian there is no 
distinction between them. In Chinese there is no R, and no 
L in japanese. In Mongolic languages they are both at 
times interchanged with T or D, and in Turkic the native 
roots never begin with L or with R. The L of the Finnic 
dialects becomes T in Turkic; thus the word lil “ ghost” 
becomes ¢i¢ in some dialects. The same is remarkable in the 
Bechuana language, which makes no distinction between L, 
R, and D. 
The labials are equally lable to merge into one another. 
The Galileans and Samaritans appear to have been re- 
proached with the confusion of these and of other letters. 
The Arabs have lost, or never possessed, the P sound, which 
they cannot distinguish from B. The Mongolic languages 
show us the interchange of P, B, and V, and the B becomes 
Vin modern Greek. Aryan roots in B have also cognate 
roots in V or W, and in all languages to be considered this 
softening occurs, while M and V are also little distinguished, 
as we see, for instance, in the Cypriote syllabary. 
These changes are due to euphonic laws, which arise from 
the attempt to render pronunciation easier, and which we 
