312 Languages of the various tribes inhabiting the [April, 



These alphabets are here presented in a tabular form for the sake of 

 comparison. Both in their arrangement and in the power of the par- 

 ticular letters they seem to coincide with the Sanskrit Alphabetic Sys- 

 tem, from which they have evidently been borrowed. To provide for 

 the expression of the varieties of accent and intonation common to the 

 colloquial use of these tongues, double and triple combinations of letters 

 occur (as in Bhotia) varying in extent according to the exigencies of 

 each particular language. In Khamti, each of these letters is varied 

 by sixteen simple accentuations, and by thirty-six complex ones. Hence 

 it may be supposed that this dialect approximates very closely to the 

 delicacy of the Chinese accentuation. 



The Khamti is a purely monosyllabic language, and more powerfully 

 accented than any of the Indo-Chinese languages spoken on the Asam 

 frontier. In some degree, indeed, it seems connected with some of the 

 Chinese dialects, especially the Mandarin or Court language, with 

 which its numerals, as well as a few other terms, coincide, but these are 

 not very numerous. By its finely modulated intonations, sounds orga- 

 nically the same are often made to express totally different ideas. Thus, 

 ma, for instance (with the rising tone) signifies a dog ; ma, (the Italic 

 m denoting the falling tone) signifies to come ; while the same syllable, 

 with an abrupt termination, or a sudden cessation of the voice at the 

 end of it, ma, denotes a horse. 



Of Nouns. 



As inflections are unknown to the language, the accidents of Case, 

 Mood, and Tense are expressed by means of particles, generally follow- 

 ing, but in some cases preceding the nouns or verbs they serve to modify. 



The Nominative and Accusative cases do not need the aid of particles ; 

 they are merely the nouns in their natural state. 



The expression of the Genitive case, depends solely on the juxta- 

 position of the two substantives in which, contrary to the idiom of the 

 Chinese, the latter substantive is understood to be in the genitive case. 

 Thus ; mil, hand, and man, he, when placed in juxta-position, mix man, 

 signify his hand. Hang, a tail, and pa, a fish. Hang pa, a fish's tail. 



The Dative case is sometimes denoted by a prepositive particle to 

 mark the person receiving, or, more frequently by the position of the 

 noun before a donative verb, — a usage by no means foreign to the Eng- 

 lish language, in which such expressions as, I sent George a book, I gave 



