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Full text of "Linguistic Survey Of India Vol V Part I Indo Aryan Family Eastern Group"

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g22                                                               BENGALI.

The most important point to notice in this alphabet is that the vowel inherent in

each consonant is, not a as in other .Indian languages, but a. Kote also that QQ the
initial form (there is, of course, no non-initial form) of a is treated as a consonants
much as the letter altfh treated as a consonant in Arabic.

For purposes of comparison, I here give the usual Burmese forms of the conso-
nants:—

fi    n

a »a,

OD

CO *<*>>
O   pa,

#<*>

03 *«,    a

O   cho,   3C

Q   to,     3   Ua,      q <
00  f*»»      8 i

(9         J>»ff»          (J      !

oo jr«i    c^ r««      co
oo ««,     oo *«•

As regards vowels, except QQ a, Done of them have any proper initial forms. The
following are their non-initial forms. la a parallel column I give the usual Burmese
forms for the sake of comparison:—

q)

»

O dha,

00

O

Cbakum forms.
	Burmese forms.
	


	None.
 0«1 O
 0
 L 1L c
 s
 CO
 <?5
	a
 a
 *
 {
 «
 u
 I
 (at pr. ot) 5 at*


		

		

		

		

		
Vx
		

		

		
vL
 ^•N             Ditto                             .......
		
£3
		
"When a consonant has no vowel the sign - is put over the consonant, equivalent

to the Burmese * and the Bengali N.   Thus, Chakma CO, Burmese 05 , and Bengali ^,
all represent the letter k, without any vowel.

We thus get the following examples of the way ia which non-initial vowels are
attached to the letter O") k& :—

ft*,

**,