Peter Lerch's Zaza-Related Sections

Sound Count

The following passage appears bracketed in Lerch's 1857 printing:

I break down the words of the Kurmanji dialect into 37 sounds: nine vowels (of which five are long and short, while the remaining four are only short) and 28 consonants. The Zaza dialect is richer by two consonants; consequently there are in it 39 sounds: nine vowels and 30 consonants. These 39 sounds I give in the following table according to the linguistic alphabet of Lepsius.¹

Working transcription of Lerch's table:

Postscript of 1857

Postscript of the year 1857. [The passage bracketed above read in the report, as it was printed in the year 1856 in the Bulletin and in the Mélanges Asiatiques, as follows:

"The sounds that I found in both dialects (Kurmanji and Zaza) are given in the following table; they are 15 vowels, partly long, partly short, and 29 consonants. Of the latter, Kurmanji has two fewer than Zaza (n and d'). I have represented them, with a few small changes that seemed suitable to me, according to Sjögren's Ossetic alphabet, as he set it up in the two editions of his Ossetic grammar, namely the Russian Ossetian Grammar, St. Petersburg 1842, two volumes, volume I, p. 36, and Ossetische Sprachlehre, St. Petersburg 1844, p. 30. I have also placed alongside it his transcription for Ossetic based on the Latin alphabet, which he used in his Ossetian studies, as well as the Zend and New Persian alphabet, using Spiegel's Parsi Grammar and Vullers's Institutiones linguae persicae; nevertheless, I reserve for the future a more suitable arrangement of the sounds."

Referring to volume XIV of the Bulletin historico-philologique and volume II of the Mélanges asiatiques, in which my original report is printed, I remark here that the semivowel w found no representative in the table of Kurdish sounds given there. When I used the Ossetic-Russian alphabet for Kurdish, I designated this sound with the letter y (u), but further study of Zend and Parsi and a more exact consideration of the physiological side of speech sounds convinced me of the inaccuracy of such a spelling. Therefore, in the new table of Kurdish sounds there are 30 consonants, while in the old one 29 are listed.²

I consider it my duty to remark here that the texts in the Kurmanji dialect which the Academy received from Erzurum (see above, V) have exceeded my expectations. They were composed by a literate Kurd, but despite the fact that they are translations from Persian and Turkish, their author did not fall into the extremes that I had feared on the part of a Kurd. These translations will serve to expand my investigations of Kurmanji.

The honored consul had the kindness to undertake the labor of a transcription in Latin letters according to French pronunciation. He also promises, in a letter to Academician von Dorn, to induce his Kurdish acquaintance to continue recording Kurdish texts.

Why Lepsius?

When it came to handing my chrestomathy over to the press, after mature consideration I felt myself induced to give up the Ossetic-Russian alphabet, and for the following reasons. I had learned two Kurdish dialects that are spoken chiefly by Kurds who live outside Russia. Since it was to be expected that further research into these dialects would proceed chiefly from French, English, Americans, or Germans who, partly as travelers and partly as missionaries, pass through the dwelling places of the Kurds in Turkey and Persia, I had to be concerned, in the interest of the matter, to propose a transcription of Kurdish on the basis of the Latin alphabet.

In a private meeting of several members of the Historical-Philological Class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences on 19 November 1855, at which I too had the honor to be present, it was unanimously resolved not to increase the orthographic confusion in the science of linguistics by yet another alphabet, but to adopt for Kurdish the so-called linguistic alphabet or standard alphabet, which had been set up by Academician Lepsius with the cooperation of English and German language specialists.

It would be superfluous to list here the advantages by which the mentioned standard alphabet distinguishes itself from similar attempts of the same kind. See Das allgemeine linguistische Alphabet. Grundsätze der Übertragung fremder Schriftsysteme und bisher noch ungeschriebener Sprachen in europäische Buchstaben, by R. Lepsius, Berlin 1855; Standard-Alphabet for reducing unwritten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in European letters, by Dr. R. Lepsius, recommended for adoption by the Church Missionary Society, London 1855; the monthly reports of the Berlin Academy of Sciences; and the Allgemeine Zeitung of Augsburg. Professor Lepsius has already prepared for print a larger work on this subject, in which the physiological part of the question will also be treated in detail.

The application of the linguistic alphabet to individual languages has, moreover, already become a fact. Declarations of adherence by several large missionary societies have already been printed before the Standard-Alphabet: the Church Missionary Society, Wesleyan Missionary Society, Moravian Mission, Rhenish Missionary Society, Calwer Publishing Association, Evangelical Missionary Society at Basel, and American Board of Foreign Missions. With the letters of the standard alphabet, several writings are currently being printed in London and Berlin, partly under the auspices of those missionary societies. Earlier works printed with these letters include a grammar of Bornu or Kanuri by Rev. S. W. Koelle and African Native Literature, or proverbs, tales, fables, and historical fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu language, with a translation and a Kanuri-English vocabulary.

The question of how Kurdish as spoken in Transcaucasia should, if the occasion arose, be written with Russian letters was also discussed in the above-mentioned meeting of 19 November, but no resolution could be reached about it. We do not yet know the peculiarities of the Transcaucasian Kurds at all, and besides this the decision of the question concerning the further use of the Russian alphabet for transcribing non-Slavic languages in Russia depends on various circumstances. If one or another person should find occasion, when writing down language samples of the Transcaucasian Kurdish dialect, to make use of the Russian alphabet, then the Ossetic-Russian alphabet set up by Sjögren will in all probability for the time being render him the best service.]