and enter into almost all Persian titles, not only the pronunciation but also the meaning is often altered by an alteration in the quantity of a vowel. Thus from the root naṣara, “to help,” we have the verbal noun naṣr, “help”; the active participle naṣír, “helper”; and a passive form naṣír, “helped”; and each of these forms commonly occurs as a component part of such names or titles as Naṣru’d-Dín (“the Help of Religion”), Náṣiru’d-Dín (“the Helper of Religion”), and Naṣiru’d-Dín (“Helped by Religion”). Were there only the one form, it would not so much matter if it were inaccurately spelt, since any scholar who wished to look the word up in the index of an Oriental history or biography would know what the correct spelling was; but in the case under consideration the slovenly transliteration “Nassr-ed-Din” (favoured by the Times) leaves it quite uncertain (apart from particular knowledge of the person alluded to) which of these equally possible names or titles is meant, and so, in consulting an Oriental index, the three possibilities must all be kept in view, a circumstance which causes needless embarrassment to anyone using Oriental as well as European books. It is not, therefore, mere pedantry which demands an adequate discrimination.
Although the Persian alphabet comprises 32 letters (i.e. the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet with four additional letters, p, ch, zh and hard g, required to express sounds occurring in Persian but not in Arabic), the number of consonantal sounds actually distinguishable does not exceed, if it reaches, 24, since the modern Persians (as their own grammarians admit) do not (unless they affect, as some of the learned do, somewhat of the Arabian pronunciation) distinguish between (
Arabic characters) (th), (Arabic characters) (s) and (Arabic characters) (ṣ), all of which they pronounce like English s in “sin” (never like z); or between (Arabic characters) (t) and (Arabic characters) (ṭ); or between (Arabic characters) (dh), (Arabic characters) (z), (Arabic characters) (ẓ) and (Arabic characters) (ẓ or dh); or between (Arabic characters) (ḥ) and (Arabic characters) (h); while the guttural consonant ‘ayn (‘) is pronounced feebly, if at all, save by those who have been influenced by Arabic. Leaving this out of account, the following 23 symbols represent all the consonantal sounds actually employed in Persian: b, p, d, t, j (as in “jam”), ch (as in “church”), h (always aspirated, not only at the beginning but in the middle and at the end of words), kh (like
