The cerebrals are pronounced very much like the English dentals. At the beginning of a word, or when forming part of a nexus, ड and ढ are sounded d and dh respectively; but in other situations they take the sound of hard ṛ and ṛh. This is not the case, however, in Panjabi, which, having invented a new character for the sounds of ṛ and ṛh, retains the d and dh sounds for ड and ढ in all cases. In Hindi, on the contrary, the r-sound predominates, and is often written र, especially in the early poets, so slight is the difference between the sounds. The r sound also prevails in Bengali and Oṛiya: thus, बड is pronounced bar or boro in all three. गाडी is in all three gârî, but in Panjabi gâḍî. Marathi also adopts the r sound, but pronounces it more harshly than in the above-mentioned languages, so as to approach more closely to the ḍ sound. Sindhi has special eccentricities with regard to these letters. The d and r sounds of ड are both used on the same principles as in Hindi. The d sound and the letter ड itself are very much used in Sindhi, etymologically often replacing द. There is besides a sound expressed by this letter which has a very Dravidian look about it. It is a sort of compound of d and r; चंडु "the moon," is said to be pronounced chandru. The letter ट has also the same sound of r mixed up with it; thus, पुटु "a son," is to be pronounced putru. In these cases the Dravidian aspect vanishes, and we see merely a careless method of writing, which makes ट and ड do duty, by custom, for त्र and द्र respectively. As the European has been at work on the Sindhi character, it is a pity he did not write these words with ट्र and ड्र, instead of falling into the favourite maze of dots which always distinguishes artificial and exotic labours in linguistics.
The dentals and labials call for no remark; with regard to the former a detailed examination of their origin and pronunciation will be found in Chapter III.
§ 23. The semivowels य and व have much in common. In
