A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c5.9

v1.c5.9

(2.) Although, however, the vocalism of the Aryan group is singularly pure and simple, yet the area occupied by it in the present day is surrounded by peoples whose languages are remarkable for the excessive intricacy and difficulty of their vowel sounds. In the Chinese and its cognate dialects not only are the vowels in themselves complicated, but there exists a system of tones like those of music, by virtue of which a single vowel may have several distinct methods of utterance, and unless the word be pronounced correctly, not only as to sound, but also as to tone, the meaning is entirely changed.¹ As the languages of this group or groups touch the Aryan region along a great portion of its northern and eastern frontier, it may be suspected that their influence has been felt more or less; the more so as many of the races now located in the northern and eastern mountain-ranges have been driven out of the plains of India by the immigrants. Moreover, the low, tangled mass of hills which occupies so large a portion of Central India still harbours races of whose origin we know little more than that it is not Aryan, and whose vowel-system is essentially opposed to that of Sanskrit. Succeeding to these, on the south, are the Dravidians, even yet a puzzle to philologists, amongst whom broken, half-uttered, and impure vowels are frequent.