A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c5.96

v1.c5.96

It will not have escaped notice, that many of the remarks in this section refer rather to a change from *â* to *e*, than from *ă* to *e*. The reason of this is that the treatment of the two sounds is so exactly the same that it was found impossible to keep them apart. Another remark is, that though the short *ĕ* of the Dravidians seems to have had its influence on the modern Aryan languages, yet the *e* of the latter is always long, and the short *ĕ*-sound, wherever it exists, is represented in writing, not by ए, but by ऍ, as in Sindhi. In languages which are so careless and capricious as these, in their methods of expressing sounds in writing, some confusion is inevitable. It may, however, tend to simplify the matter, if we lay down the rule that ए always in all the languages expresses a long sound, even though it represents a corruption from Sanskrit *a* or *â*, brought about by the influence of the non-Aryan short *ĕ*, which originated in all probability the short *ĕ* of Prakrit.