I860.] Is the Pushto a Semitic Language ? 333 



character, but as he knew it from Persian writing, with the addition 

 of all the three pointed letters, and that even then he had to modify 

 half a score of letters besides to express all the Pushto sounds, in 

 which he succeeded only partially. He would have reduced his 

 difficulties very materially, had he used the Devanagari alphabet, in 

 which the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages can be written with 

 greatest ease ; and that Pushto is one of the latter, this matter of 

 the letters alone would be sufficient to establish. 



The validity of Argument No. 3, — " in common with the Hebrew, 

 Arabic and Persian, it has the peculiar separable* and inseparable 

 pionouns, the latter being invariably attached to some preceding 

 word" — is very much impaired by the author's adding Persian to 

 the other two languages. Is Persian also a Semitic language ? 



It is not at all necessary to be acquainted with Pushto to suspect 

 this argument ; for to compare the graceful freedom of the Persian 

 inseparable pronouns f — , o — , (jw — with the rigid compulsoriness 

 of those of the Semitic languages is the same as to say, " There is a 

 river in Macedon ; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth." 

 But the oddity goes much further. Any one acquainted with Pushto 

 would rack his brains to discover what the author could mean ; he 

 would probably conclude that he must refer to combinations like 

 *jjyj cor&a nobis, which might seem to bear some similarity to do, 

 but which occur so excessively rarely that not only could they not 

 be adduced as a characteristic of the language, but any Grammarian 

 would be excused for not noticing them at all in his grammar. Nor 

 does Captain Eaverty. What he means by the inseparable pronouns, 

 are the common terminations of the verb : laudo, — as, — at, — amus, 

 — atis, —ant. These terminations Capt. Eaverty calls " affixed per- 

 sonal pronouns." The comparative philologist will probably say, so 

 they are. True ; only Capt. Eaverty has no inkling of the truth, 

 for he calls them zamdiri mutasila, which are quite different things. 



* What part of speech either in Pu?hto or Hebrew or Arabic or Persian could 

 possibly be called a "separable pronoun," is quite beyond divining skill. It is 

 most probable that the grammarian means " separate" pronouns ; but as there is 

 nothing peculiar in the existence of separate pronouns in any language or number 

 of languages, the examination of the argument confines itself to the insepar- 

 ables. 



