The sounds which I have expressed by kh and gh are fairly common, though I do not feel quite confident that the two sounds are definitely distinguished from one another. I heard them very frequently in the words mokh and kûgh, and it certainly seemed to me that the final sound of the latter was always softer than that of the word mokh. When one or other of these sounds occurs at the end of a word, it is probable that I have in some cases omitted to notice it. A man named Perpakh was called by me Perpa till nearly the end of my visit, and it is probable that I made similar errors which were not detected. Similarly kh in the middle of a word may easily escape attention, and this has probably happened in some cases.
I also had much trouble about a sound occurring at the end of a word for which I have used the sign h. Its chief [[612]]occurrence is in the word pôh, and the same or a closely similar sound sometimes occurs in the middle of the word pali. The word pôh has usually been written boath, following Marshall, or boa (Breeks). The word certainly often sounded like a dissyllable, but I was doubtful whether this was anything more than the prolongation of vowels to which I have already referred in the case of ei and i. There is some kind of consonantal sound at the end of the word, but it is certainly not the ordinary th nor is it kh, and I have adopted h as the nearest equivalent though I recognise that it is not the right sign.
R, l. I have already considered the letter r in connexion with ḍ, but it also occurs frequently by itself. At the end of a word it is sometimes distinctly rolled. When used after a short vowel, as in such a word as persin, it was sometimes not easy for me to detect its presence, and occasionally it is possible that I have omitted it from words in which it should occur.
The letter l is of fairly frequent occurrence, but has certainly often been lost in Toda in words which contain it in other Dravidian languages; thus the word kîl, lower, inferior, becomes kî in Toda, though the l has been retained in meil or mel, meaning upper or superior.
There are almost certainly two different l sounds in Toda which I failed to distinguish definitely. I have written the word for dairy pali but the second consonant of the word is certainly a different sound from that of the l in meil, and is probably the representative of the l of Tamil. It is in connexion with this letter that the euphonic th is so often inserted, and I believe that the proper name for a Toda dairy is paḷthḷi. When this l occurs at the end of a word, it is sometimes hardly audible, and to my ear bears a very close resemblance to the French l. The end of the word Kudreiil seemed to me to be pronounced almost exactly like the end of Auteuil.
It appears that r and l may sometimes pass into one another; thus, the name of the bow and arrow ceremony is pursütpimi, but the buffalo given on this occasion is called pulkwadr.
M and n. The letters m and n, indistinguishable to my [[613]]ear from the corresponding English letters, are of frequent occurrence. They are, however, often omitted in the Toda forms of Tamil or Canarese words; thus, as we have already seen, the word mand, village, becomes the Toda mad; the Tamil ambu, arrow, becomes ab; and the Toda form of Kurumba is Kûrub.
The n may also disappear from the Toda names of villages when it exists in their Badaga names; thus Tarnard becomes Taradr and Korangu, Kwirg. The omission of the letter n and other changes which words undergo in Toda are very well shown in the word padjpateva, which is the Toda form of the Panchpandavas. Although my ear failed to separate the n of the Todas from the English n, it is probably different and represents the ṇ of Tamil.
In addition to the ordinary n the Todas have another consonant which is extremely like the final French n for which I have used the sign ñ. The sound only occurs in certain exclamations or greetings; the Oñ which occurs so frequently in the dairy ritual is pronounced in this way, and so is bañ, which is uttered by the palol as a greeting to the Tartharol. The sound also occurs in the various kinship greetings. The commonest of these, tioñ, offered to an elder brother, is a corruption of itian, but I never heard the nasal pronunciation when the word an or anna was uttered in the ordinary way. In this case the sound I have expressed by n is undoubtedly the letter ṇ of Tamil, this word being aṇṇa in that language.
S, sh, z, zh, dz, j. The sound for which I have used the letter s is a somewhat harsh sound, harsher, I think, than is heard in English, but much like the sound which I have heard in English words pronounced by Scottish Highlanders. Breeks wrote zh for this sound, but I have used this sign for a different sound which was exactly like the si in the English word ‘occasion.’ It occurs not uncommonly in Toda in such words as puzh, earth, and in the verbal form kaizhvat.