On the Consonants.
The first 25 consonants, as shewn in the alphabet, stand in five lines, each of which contains four letters besides a nasal.
The four letters which thus form one line are often looked upon as equivalent. This particularly happens as regards initials changed by grammatical rule; which will be explained elsewhere. The "Primary" letters §" US e$ "o& ka, cha, ta, ta, pa, are changed into "Secondaries" and respectively become X £ & £5 30 ga, ja, da, da, ba, or X ^ £S J5 S5 ga, sa, da, da, va.
The sounds of many consonants require no explanation. Thus: g* ka X ga ■& cha 83 ja ^na ^ pa. ai ba 5& ma c«3 ya tf ra O la s5 va ^i sa £j-*> ha are usually pronounced like the corresponding English letters as sounded in Kate, Gate, chase, jackal,' no, put, be, me, you, row, low, vale, sale, hale. The letter G is always hard, thus *~?jtginneh 'a cup' and ~5?tut£> gelucu 'to conquer;' but it is never pronounced soft as in George.
The aspirates are the following.
2p kha as in 'park-house;' 'buck-horn;' ^j) gha as in 'loghouse,' ' stag-horn ;' xf> chha as in ' coach-horse;' JJbp as in 'hedgehog;' 8" tha as in 'cart-horse;' t$ Db, as in 'bid-him;' c$ tha as in 'but-him;' 'not-here;' tf tha as in ' ad-here;' ^3 pha as in 'up-here ;' jf? bha as in ' club house.'
The learned affirm that aspirates are peculiar to Sanscrit, and never should be used in native Telugu words. Thus they wish us to write those words without the aspirates: <S^tf dora 'a master'
marks found in Latin and Greek. In reading verse, the natives use particular chanting tones which to our ear are far from agreeable. It is such as the Romans used, according to Ovid, Arte 3,345 Yel tibi composite cantctur epistolavoce. This passage should have been noticed iu Monk's Life of Bentley, Vol. II., p. 324. See Smollet's remarks (Humphrey Clinker, letter of 13th July,) " Every language has it's peculiar recitative" &c. Natives are accustomed to read in a very loud voice: whenever we find this disagreeable, we merely need remark o&sCSbSo fcS0^3&? "&ej ~7T» T5ks605. The student will find it useful to read the first two sections of the chapter on Prosody.
