Professor BuHLER on the Sanskrit Linguals. 135 



lish alone which has lost the true dentals : the same remark 

 applies to many of the so-called Low-German, or more cor- 

 rectly Saxon, dialects of the north of Germany, its nearest 

 relations. It might therefore be conjectured, that the change 

 of the dentals had already begun before the Saxon emigra- 

 tion to England took place. However this may have been, 

 it is certain that the English language at present possesses 

 linguals, and has developed them either by itself or con- 

 jointly with its continental kindred. 



The purely High-German dialect as spoken in the middle 

 and south of Germany likewise possess a limited number of 

 lingual sounds. These appear instead of the corresponding 

 dentals after ' sell/ as in ' schtehen,' the true High-German 

 form for the ' stehen' of the written language and the so- 

 called classical pronunciation of the North. The sound of 

 this ' t' is however not quite so hollow as that of the Indian 

 ' t,' no doubt because the German ' sch' is not pronounced 

 so far back in the mouth as the Indian lingual ' sh.' I 

 should rather say that it stands in the middle between the 

 two. Iam little acquainted with the pronunciation of the 

 other Teutonic dialects and therefore unable to say if they 

 show signs of the same lingualising tendency. According 

 to a statement of Mr. Norris, repeated by Dr. Caldwell in 

 in his Comp. Grammar p. 113, the Icelanders possess a lingual 

 ' d' in words as fullr, falla which are pronounced like ' fudlr 

 'fadla.' Dr. Kuhn in the Zeitschrift fur vergleichende 

 sprachforschung, vol. XIII, p. 80 shows that these and simi- 

 lar words are pronounced in a like manner also in Norwe- 

 gian dialects. But I am not sure whether the statement that 

 this ' d' is lingual can be accepted without further investiga- 

 tion. Mr. Norris, if I understand his words rightly, thinks 

 that the group ' dl/ must be lingual, which is not a priori 

 necessary. If he be right, the fact should be explained not 

 as he thinks, by the influence of the Lappish language, but 

 be quoted as another instance of spontaneous development 



