THE THURRAWAL LANGUAGE. 129 



Mr. E. M. Curr 1 gives abridgements of the vocabularies of 

 Hunter, Collins and Ridley. 



Orthography. 



Nineteen letters of the English alphabet are sounded, comprising 

 fourteen consonants and five vowels, namely, a, b, d, e, g, h, i, j, 

 k, I, m, n, o, p, r, t, u, w, and y. The system of orthoepy adopted 

 is that of the circular issued by the Royal Geographical Society, 

 London. 



It is frequently difficult to distinguish between the short sound 

 of a and that of u. A thick sound of i is occasionally met with, 

 which closely approaches the short sound of wora. G is hard in 

 all cases. R has a rough trilled sound, as in hurrah ! 



Ng at the beginning of a word, as ngu in ngu'ra, a camp, has a 

 peculiar sound, which can be got very closely by putting u before 

 it, as ungu and articulating it quickly like one syllable. At the 

 end of a syllable it has substantially the sound of ng in the word 

 sing. W always commences a syllable or word, and has its 

 ordinary consonant sound in all cases. 



The sound of the Spanish n is frequent, both at the beginning 

 or end of a syllable. Y, followed by a vowel, is attached to 

 several consonants, as dya, lyi, tyu, &c, and is pronounced in one 

 syllable, the initial sound of the d, I, t, or as the case may require, 

 being retained. Y at the beginning of a word or syllable has its 

 ordinary consonant value. 



Dh is pronounced nearly as th in "that," with a slight sound 

 of d preceding it. Nh has nearly the sound of th in "that," with 

 an initial sound of the n. The final h is gutteral, resembling ch 

 in the German word joch. 



T is interchangeable with d; p with b; and g with h in most 

 words where these letters are employed. An approach to the 

 sound of j is frequently given by the natives, which may be 

 rendered by dy or ty — thus, dya or tya has very nearly the same 



1 The Australian Race, (Melbourne 1886) Vol. in. pp. 410-419. 

 I— Nov. 6, 1901. 



