Oct. 1858.— Mar. 1859.] In Roman Characters. 199 



its re-duplicated use it becomes tt* and as there are already 

 and u- which are written tt and ft, I would recommend, as 

 proposed above, that this character should be expressed by 

 r and pp hy ft\ 



This is contrary to the 3rd proposed fundamental rule 

 but the genius of the Tamil language and its poverty in 

 phonetic signs require a relaxation of the axiom, to provide for 

 differences of sound of the same letter, under different circum- 

 stances, as in the cases of <s, &, p % u and p 9 which maybe 

 read respectively as 7c and g — s and ch — t and d — t and d — p 

 and b — r and t. But as several of these depend on the position 

 of the particular letter in relation to others, which every Tamil 

 scholar soon learns by practice, I would confine the substitu- 

 tion of other Roman characters for the normal one, to the 

 double tees and to such words as have been adopted from 

 Sanscrit. 



The Tamil m it has already been proposed to designate 



The last letter represents a sound peculiar to the Dravi- 

 dian dialects and now retained only in Tamil and Malayalam. 

 It is a mixture of j, I and r, and is only pronounced in its 

 purity by the pure Tamil races the Vellazhars and Mudali- 

 yars. The Todas also enunciate it with peculiar fullness. 



The difficulty of finding a suitable Roman equivalent is 

 best exemplified by enumerating the attempts hitherto made 

 to represent it in a Roman dress. 



Ziegenbalg 1714 employs k rl and rhl 



by n\ 



Beschi, 1728 



— ,pref. of Sen Tamil grammar (Babington's 



translation) 

 EUis, 1816...... 



zh 



* According to Rhenius the true sound of the double p is tr 11 though the r is 

 sounded rather softly and quickly ; hut the common people pronounce it like tt" 

 Oram. p. 17. 



