Preface. 
• • 
Xll 
erratic way in which the Kafirs inflect words for the sake of 
euphony, “ which they must have at all hazards, eliding 
words, adding suffixes and affixes, and cutting off syllables 
whenever there is a difficulty of pronunciation. They try 
to make the smallest possible number of words express their 
meaning. They express their meaning to a great extent 
by gesture, intonation of the voice, and laying particular 
stress on some syllable, or word in a sentence/’ 
The same word will not always be found spelt in an 
uniform way in my collection. Many letters are inter¬ 
changeable, thus z = ds or ts, as zim, dslm , tslm , snow ; 
j = zh or ch, as maajl i manchly man; jarlm , zhdrlm 9 I 
will kill. Letters are often transposed, as bagram , bar- 
gam ; katrawor , kartawor; brdbur , barabar , borbur. In 
words such as pshtarak the p is often dispensed with. 
For the sake of euphony or scansion, words undergo a 
great variety of changes, thus, “ a man ” may be manjl 9 
manchl , nwsh , mochi and even munshl; “very much ’’may 
be bluk , biluky biliuk , biluah : 46 good, ” or cc well,” is le , 
less , lesst 9 lessta . Short vowels are sometimes lengthened, 
and long ones shortened; sometimes a syllable is dropped, 
and at other times one is inserted, thus, “female” 
may be stri, shtrl , Marl , Marl , iMrl ; “to-day” may 
be pshtarak, shtarcik, shtak> stak , stag ; “for the sake of,” 
duga , ga 9 tka , ke 9 de; for “he,” or “it is,” there are at 
least ten words, and for “ he, ” or “ it becomes,” at least six 
words. 
In very many words I found it impossible to decide 
whether the vowels should be long or short, whether cer¬ 
tain vowels should be nasalised or not, and whether, in 
certain words, the r and t should be hard or not. Great 
varieties of pronunciation were met with. 
