CEYLON BRANCH — ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



47 



OF DIPHTHONGS. 



It has been stated that certain of the lower animals, when 

 they bring the vocal tube into action, emit the whole vowel 

 series at once. With us, however, vowel sounds form rather 

 the vocal channel into which to throw in sounds of a more 

 abrupt or articulate character; and a single vowel suffices, in 

 almost every case, for a single utterance. Opening on its mid- 

 dle term however, a, the most elementary of all sounds, the 

 voice sometimes proceeds to embrace, either the one half, or 

 the other, of the whole series, that is, to utter the vowel 

 combination aei and aou. These are generally expressed by 

 their terminal letters ai and au, and in the wretched ortho- 

 graphy of English, sometimes by i and ou. Hence two not 

 unimportant elements, in language especially, as holding a 

 permanent place in the oriental alphabets, and known by 

 grammarians as diphthongs. 



OF W. AND Y. 



Another interesting phenomenon connected with the 

 vowel series, is to be observed, when the voice, instead of 

 beginning with the sound of a, which may be said to be 

 the central member of all languages, as it is of our vowel 

 series, (and thus developing the diphthong ai or au, as has 

 been shewn) begins to form a diphthong with some letter of 

 the interior. In this case, the voice in its haste to arrive at 

 a, which is the sound of repose, or at any more open sound 

 than the initial one, seldom parts the time equally between 

 the compound vowels of the utterance. It usually (especially 

 when highly animated) passes rapidly towards the more open 

 sound, so that the closest sounds, (the first and last vowels in 

 our series) viz. i and u, become, when followed by another 

 vowel, transition sounds only. 



Nor has this peculiarity of the human voice been neglected 

 in our alphabet, though the addition it has occasioned be 

 comparatively modern. The letter y has been introduced 



I 



