Professor Buhler on the Sanskrit Unguals. 133 



I fear, will strongly protest against the truth of my observa- 

 tion. But some English writers have recognised the exist- 

 ence of Unguals in their own language. Thus Professor 

 H. H. Wilson says in his Sanskrit grammar p. 3 : 



" The (Sanskrit) consonants are in general prononuced 

 as in English, and we have, it may be suspected, several of 

 the sounds for which the Sanskrit alphabet has provided 

 distinct signs, but of which signs are wanting with us. 

 This seems to be the case with the nasals and the cerebrals. 

 We write but one ' n,' but we vary its articulation accord- 

 ing, according to the consonants it precedes, as a guttural, 

 palatal, cerebral, and dental, in such words as ( conquer,' 

 ' singe,' ' none' and ' content.' So we write but one ' t' 

 and one ' d,' but their sounds differ in such words as ' trum- 

 pet,' and ' tongue,' ' drain' and 1 den :' in the first of which 

 they are cerebrals, in the second, dentals." 



I do not think that any man is a good judge to decide 

 the question whether his pronunciation of the sounds of his 

 native language agrees perfectly with the spelling. One 

 constantly hears the most curious assertions on this subject. 

 I have met well-educated people in Germany who firmly 

 believed that they pronounced the impossible group 'dt,' e.g. 

 in ' Stadt,' and nobody but a phone tologist can be brought 

 to understand that the High-German possesses two 'g,' one 

 guttural and one palatal sounding like gy e. g. in 'gab/ and 

 'geben,' or that 'k' in German is slightly aspirated and pro- 

 nounced nearly like ' kh.' Though it is therefore interesting 

 to learn that Englishmen have observed the existence of 

 Unguals in their language, I cannot adopt their opinion so 

 confidently as that of a foreigner whose mother-tongue has 

 dentals as well as linguals distinctly marked. The proper 

 persons then to decide the question are the natives of 

 India. Now every Englishman who has learned either 

 Mahrathi, Guzerathi, Hindi or Bengali from a native teacher 



