In the last number of the Bulletin Sir George Grierson has written a useful article on the regular, method of forming linguistic names in Indian languages. I agree with most, but not all, of it: thus the sentence “it is he who writes Lahndī for Lahndā, the latter having been undisputed for over forty years”, contains, it seems to me, five mis-statements of fact. They do not however affect the position.

It is always interesting to reflect on what one would expect words to be and to compare that with what they actually are. English, Urdu, Panjabi, and Hindi swarm with words which have rejected the line of regular development and adopted another. People's attitude to such words varies with their temperament. Some describe them as “ atrocious examples of hybridism ” or “ false analogies ’ or more briefly as ‘ impossible ’. Similarly many writers call changed words ‘ corruptions ’. Others on the other hand find that in linguistic atters what is is much more interesting than what was, and still more so than what should be.