578 Some Remarks on the Origin of the Afghan 'people. [No. 6. 



therefore the language really contains but twenty-nine letters, 

 including five peculiar ones, to which, after a careful comparison of 

 six hundred alphabets, I find that there is no similarity as to form 

 or sound, either in Arabic, Zend, or Sanscrit, but characters similar 

 in sound are contained in most of. the Semitic, and some Tartarian 

 dialects. The Pushto letters with the corresponding ones in the 

 languages referred to are as follow. 



£ ts or tz, pronounced tse or tze, has an equivalent in the Chal- 



daic $ ts, Hebrew^ tsode, Samaritan r (Ii* tsdde, Syriac f tsode, 

 Ethiopic and Amharic x\ tza, Armenian Q, £ tsa, Palmyren -o ts, 

 Phoenician \ or \ ts, Punic *p ts, Kufic J^3 ts, Georgian Q ts, 

 Mongolish ^J ts, Mandchu 3T tsa, Thibetan j^ ts, Albanian 



% - \ ts, Corean "X -"7V ts, and the Japanic ^)- A~ 5^ ~ tsa, 



£ dz or ds, pronounced dze or dse, similar to the Hebrew •) dsain, 



Aramaic [ ds, Palmyren I ds, Phoenician "Z. ds, Kufic ^ ds, 



Syriac H - T* dzain, the Assyrian cuniform £J - |pf dz or ds, 



Armenian £y» d- dza, Greek £ zeta, Georgian q ds, Mongolish 



3 -£. ds, and Corean X "TV ds, Mandchu ^J -"J ds, Japanic 



9* dz. 



V"" urray, for which with perhaps the harsh rh of the Arme- 

 nian », there is no equivalent in any of the known dialects of the 

 old world. Some persons and among them Major Leach, have consi* 

 dered the Sanskrit lingual ^ as similar in sound, but it is merely 

 necessary to hear it pronounced by an Afghan mountaineer to con- 

 vince any one of the total difference, indeed, it is almost impossible 

 to give a proper idea of its sound in writing. Kufic 2 r, is like it 

 in form. \j*> khin bears some similarity to the jf - ^ k'ch of the 

 Chaldaic, and with this exception, no sound like it is to be found 

 amongst the letters of the six hundred alphabets before referred to.* 



V^ or ^ 'urrtin, is a combination of the sound of s'urray and O 

 www, the latter nasal. It is quite impossible to acquire the real pro- 

 nunciation except from an Afghan mouth when using the word ^. 



* See Die Schriftzeichen des gesammten Erdkrieses. Vienna. 1851, also, 

 Alphabete orientalischer und occidentalischer Sprachen zum Gebrauche fur Schrift- 

 setzer und Correctoren. Leipzig. 18;'j0. 



