42 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Feb. 



softened down through the agency of that and like causes, and often 

 without any apparent cause whatever. Indeed this tendency in 

 languages to soften and wear out and arrange themselves in new 

 forms, is the chief agency in the formation of new dialects, and with 

 its aid we can easily account for the absence of particular letters in 

 particular languages. But there is no proof, on the other hand, to show 

 that nations can borrow sounds. Professor Buhler of Poonah, in a 

 learned paper on the " Sanskrit Linguals," published in the Journal of 

 the Madras Asiatic Society, justly observes : 



" ' Regarding the borrowing of sounds, it may suffice for the present 

 to remark that it never has been shown to occur in the languages which 

 were influenced by others in historical times, such as English, Spanish, 

 and the other Romance languages, Persian, &c. Let us consider 

 the case of the English. Though half of its words have been 

 imported by the Norman race, though most of the old Saxon inflec- 

 tions have perished in the struggle between the languages of the 

 conqueror and the conquered, though in some instances even Norman 

 affixes have entered the organism of the original language, the quietism 

 of the Saxon organs of speech has opposed a passive and successful 

 resistance to the introduction of foreign sounds. The English has 

 received neither the clear French ' a,' nor its ' u,' nor its peculiar nasals. 

 On the contrary it has well preserved its broad, impure vowels and 

 diphthongs, and it is now as difficult for the Englishman to pronounce 

 the French 'a,' or ' u,' as it was for his Saxon ancestors eight hundred 

 years ago. But we find still stronger evidence against the loan-theory 

 in the well-known fact, that nations which, like the Jews, the Parsees, 

 the Slavonic tribes of Germany, the Irish, etc., have lost their 

 mother-tongues, are, as nations, unable to adopt, with the words and 

 grammatical laws, also the pronunciation of the foreign language. 

 They adapt its sounds to their own phonetic system, and their pecu- 

 liarities are recognisable even after the lapse of centuries.' 



" In this country the Afghans, the Persians and the Moghals have 

 failed, in seven hundred years, to acquire the peculiarities of the Indian 

 vernacular sounds, and the Hindus, in a like period, have equally failed to 

 utter the Persian a and (j. Other instances may be adduced ad libitum, 

 but they are, I believe, not necessary. The point at issue is to show 

 that sounds have been borrowed, and not to prove the negative. I shall 





