zt 
ON THE ALPHABET. 11 
semivowels w and y (as instanced above by whez and hue). In some other 
languages it may be found also before r and / and the nasal mutes » and m. 
Again, it may be found following instead of preceding the vowel which 
gives it its character. There are languages, too, in which strengthened or 
modified breathings appear which yet are not precisely spirants, and it may 
be necessary, in order to represent them, to double the h, or use other 
methods of distinction. 
Uses have thus been assigned to all our letters. 
In some languages the mutes, especially the surd ones, are sometimes 
uttered in such a way that there is a perceptible puff of breath—a kind of 
h-sound, between them and the following sounds. Sometimes there is an 
initial breathing of the same character; in such cases they are said to be 
aspirated; these aspirates or rough breathings should be represented by 
an inverted comma, thus, b‘, d‘. 
Much like these are the— 
INTERRUPTED SOUNDS. 
A peculiar modification of a consonant sound is sometimes found in a 
short explosion as its pronunciation is terminated. Perhaps it would be 
better described as a hiatus or interruption between two sounds with a 
slight explosion of the first, though other students describe it as‘an initial 
explosion to the following sound. The following illustration, taken from 
C. Hermann Berendt’s “Analytical Alphabet for the Mexican and Central 
American Languages,” page 3, will assist in the appreciation of this pecul- 
larity. ‘Omitting from the sentence ‘break in’ the letters brea and pro- 
nouncing the remainder kin, gives exactly the sound of xin. The same 
experiment made with the sentences ‘leap on,’ ‘cut off, ‘reach in,’ and 
‘kratzen’ (German) gives the sound of pon, tof, txin, tsan. The distinction 
between the simple and the cut consonant is important. For instance, ‘kan’ 
means snake, and ‘kan’ yellow in Maya.” 
These exploded sounds are very frequent; perhaps they occur in all 
the Indian languages. The student should mark the letters representing 
such sounds by placing immediately after them an apostrophe, thus, 0’, d’. 
