1876.] 



K. B. Shaw— On the Ghalchah Languages. 



149 



The Sounds 

 And their Representations. 



The dialects o£ Sarikol and Wakhan are not found in a written form. 

 They exist only as spoken by the people. For all literary purposes Persian 

 is used by those who have sufficient education to know how to read and 

 write. 



Many of the sounds in the spoken dialects of Sarikol and Wakhan are 

 different from any that can be expressed by the ordinary Arabic letters. 

 To employ these in representing Sarikoli and Wakhi words, it would be 

 necessary to adopt a considerable number of conventional signs. As this 

 may be just as accurately done with Eoman characters, I shall confine my- 

 self to the latter in the following pages, instead of forming an adapted 

 oriental alphabet for this purpose. 



The accented & will be used for the Central Asian broad sound resem- 

 bling that of aw in the word pawn. 



The a (with a grave accent) will represent the Italian sound as in f ara. 



The unaccented a, for the short oriental sound as in ' America', ' woman/ 

 * oriental,' ' ordinary,' &c. 



The vowel e, for its sound in the English word then. 



The same accented, e, will rhyme with the English word may. 



Unaccented i as in him. 



Accented * or * as in machine. 



Unaccented o, as in the German word Gott. 



Accented 6 or o, as in English go. 



Dotted o, as in German schon. 



Unaccented u, as in German hund. 



Accented u or u, as in English rumour. 



Dotted ii, as in German, miihe. 



Diphthong ai as in mitraille ; ei as reveille ; cm and ao pretty nearly 

 as in German frau and English now. 



The ordinary consonants need not be separately mentioned. The fol- 

 lowing forms however require description : 



The compound th represents the hard sound of the English th in the 

 word thing. 



The compound dh represents its soft sound in the word the. 



The accented z represents the French sound of the consonant in 

 je, or the z in the English word azure. 



Sh is to be pronounced as in English (same as French eh in chose, or 

 German sch in schon). 



Ch as in English (represented in French by tch, and in German by 

 tsch). 



