Читать книгу Studies in Moro History, Law, and Religion - Najeeb M. Saleeby - Страница 6

These tarsila are written in the Magindanao dialect with Arabic characters, and a great part of their text is Magindanao names which have never yet been expressed by means of Romanic characters. In translating these tarsila such a large number of words have to be transliterated that it is deemed necessary to adopt a system of transliteration which can be easily understood by every English reader and which is more adequate to express Magindanao sounds than either Spanish or English. Such a system is herein adopted and is briefly described as follows:

With the exception of ng and sh, the characters used in this system are simple and represent simple sounds only. Every radical modification of a certain simple sound is regarded as a different simple sound and is represented by a separate and distinct character. Every compound sound is represented by those characters that express its simple constituent sounds. It is an unvarying rule in this system that every character represents an invariable sound and every sound has only one invariable character. The Magindanao dialect has only twenty-seven simple sounds and can be expressed by twenty-seven simple characters. These characters are the following:

a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ŭ, b, d, g, ng, h, j, k l, m, n, ñ, p, q, r, s, sh, t, w, y, z

The sounds which these characters represent conform very closely to the original Roman sounds of the letters.

a	is the short sound of ā; it is pronounced midway between the a in bad and the e in bed
ā	is pronounced as the a in far, father
i	is pronounced as the i in fin, ill
ī	is pronounced as the i in machine, police
u	is pronounced as the u in put, push
ū	is pronounced as the u in rude, flute
ŭ	is a midvowel, pronounced with the tongue slightly moved from its normal position; it is intermediate between u and e, and is somewhat related to the u in hurt
b, d, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t	are pronounced as in English
g	is always hard, as the g in gold, get
ng	has a guttural-nasal sound like the ng in ring
h	has an aspirate sound and should be always pronounced like the h in hill, behind
j	is rarely used; when used it is pronounced like the s in adhesion, vision
ñ	has a distinct palato-nasal sound and is related to the Spanish ñ in señor; it is generally followed by ya
q	is a clicking, guttural sound related to k
sh	is equivalent to sh in ship
w	is always consonantal and sounds like the w in we, twin, water
y	is always consonantal and sounds like the y in you, yes, beyond
z	is pronounced midway between z and s

The triphthongs herein expressed by tsha and n̄ya are used in words of Malay origin, and are represented by single characters in Malay and Magindanao.

In many cases when u precedes w and i precedes y the natives omit the u and the i, and the same word may be written either with or without the u or the i. When written they are pronounced very short; ŭ at the beginning of a word, as in ŭndu, ŭnggū, is often omitted both in pronunciation and in writing. Such words may be written ndu and nggū.

To write Magindanao words by means of Arabic characters correctly a certain knowledge of Arabic grammar and orthography is necessary. The Moros lack that knowledge and write very inaccurately and inconsistently. They neither punctuate nor use the accent sign.

In transliterating these tarsila that pronunciation which seemed consistent and characteristic of each tarsila was adopted in the transliteration of the same. The text is punctuated. The accent sign is used very frequently. It is generally omitted when the accent is upon the first syllable in words of two syllables and when it is upon the syllable containing the long vowel. Some stress should be put on the last syllable as a rule.

The Magindanao tongue is energetic and strong. Its pronunciation is generally forcible, the last syllable being spoken abruptly and with a certain amount of stress.

The word Mohammed is written with o in spite of the fact that it is pronounced with u sound in both Arabic and Magindanao.

The combinations ay, āy, aw, āw are not diphthongs, but simple syllables. The y and w in these cases and in all cases where they precede a vowel have pure and distinct consonantal sounds.