A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c7.3.2

v1.c7.3.2

On the other hand, the Dravidian family of languages prefers softening away difficulties to grappling with them; it aims at ease and softness of enunciation rather than impressiveness: multiplying vowels, separating consonants, assimilating differences of sound, and lengthening out its words by successive agglutinations; it illustrates the characteristics of the races by which it is spoken by the soft, sweet, garrulous effeminacy of its utterances."¹ Within the domain of the Indo-European family, however, there are many degrees of power in this respect. In the highest grade are to be placed the old Aryan, Latin, and old German. In the next Zend, which is a degree weaker than Sanskrit; Greek, which can bear less consonant-clashing than Latin; and Sclavonic, which interpolates vowels with greater frequency than its Teutonic neighbour. Weakest of all are the modern Romance languages, and the Indian Prakrits. And, considering the subject chronologically, each stage of every language is, as a rule, less capable of elaborate articulation than that which preceded it. And this brings us back to our immediate subject: just as the Prakrits effeminately soften or omit single consonants from Sanskrit words, so, in the case of compound consonants, they have recourse to several devices for avoiding the effort of uttering them.