Vol. VII, No. 2.] Mundari Phonology. 39 
[N.S.] 
Mr. Mehl explains the neutral a of Mundari as the sound of 
ain Hindi rakhna or of e in German aber or of a in English 
oral. Now thea of rakhna is mid back; the e of aber is mid 
mixed, and the a of oral is mid mixed or low mixed. Ido 
not doubt that Mr. Mehl himself knows the sound in question 
well enough. But it is impossible to form a clear idea of its 
precise character from his description, such as we could obtain 
from the experiments of a scholar trained in the methods and 
technicalities of modern phonetics. The example will, I hope, 
show that my words in the Munda volume about phonetical 
training ought not to give offence to anybody, and I am ver 
sorry to learn that they have done so. 
The sound which I have marked e in the Linguistic 
Survey is mid front as the e in men and the first stage of the 
vowels in say and take; d is low front as the a in back, man or 
the beginning of a in care. Similarly o is mid back (with 
rounded lips) as the beginning of the vowel in so, sow, or the o 
in German Sohn, Sonne. <A is low back as the o in not or the 
initial vowel sound in saw, naught 
Now it is not easy to state in all cases whether a word is 
pronounced with an d or an e, an 4 or an 9, respectively, with- 
out a careful training of the ear. Mr. Mehl denies the existence 
of the two sets in Mundari. Similarly most of the missionaries 
among the Santals long maintained that there was only one 
e-sound and one o-sound, is Santali, where we now know that 
each of these vowelshas two sounds. I have already remarked 
that 1 have not distinguished between the two sets in the 
Mundari specimens printed in the Linguistic Survey, and I do 
not think that any practical inconvenience can arise from my 
mention of the two sets in the introduction. I should feel mach 
obliged to my critic if he would let us have not a categorical 
statement but an exact description of the formation of the 
Mundari vowels, with indications of the position of the tongue 
in each individual case. The value of such a description would 
be greater still, if it gave information whether the individual 
vowels are narrow or wide, and so on. It would then be pos- 
sible to judge about the actualsounds. Mr. Mehl’s criticism 
does not, in this respect, add anything to our knowledge of 
Mundari phonology. Wemustremember that Mundari orthogra- 
phy has not been settled, and the fact mentioned by Mr. Mehl 
that an educated Munda failed to recognize Father Hoffmann’s 
Mundari specimen as Mundari, does not prove anything but 
that he was accustomed to another orthography. I have my- 
self tried to show a phonetic English text to an excellent 
English scholar, who did not at all think that it was English 
before it was read aloud. 
now turn to the second question raised by Mr. Mehl, 
about the character of the Mundari semi-consonants, which he 
maintains are soft, while I have marked them as hard — Above 
