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to be represented by those already existing, by the somewhat profuse use of compounds and diacritical marks.

"The necessity of a reform is very apparent from an examination of our present alphabet, as used to express the sounds of our language.

"I. Our alphabet is inadequate; there being thirty-eight or forty sounds, and several combinations of sounds, to be expressed, and only twenty-six characters.

"II. It is redundant; three of these twenty-six, namely, k, q, and x, standing for sounds which are represented by other letters; and q being by itself without significance.

"III. It is uncertain, contradictory, and false; each of the vowelsigns representing several sounds,† namely : —

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and each of these sounds being represented by other letters or combinations of letters, the first sound of

a, by 19 different combinations of letters.

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* See his Dissertation on the Orthography of Asiatic Words in Roman Letters, in the first volume of his works, edited by Lord Teignmouth, 1st ed., p. 175.

The sound of a is different in each two of the following words: imaging, mating, many, paring, father, fat, fall, want, dollar; of e, in the following: he, pretty, met, clerk, rendezvous, burden, blame; of i, in admiration, stir, sin, bind, business; of o, in women, nor, hop, work, sow, go, do, woman, compter; of u, in busy, bury, cur, but, unruly, pull, usage, persuade; of y, in pity, physic, myrrh, fly, yard. See Ellis's Plea for Phonotypy, p. 8.

As in the following words: of a, by a in mating, a-e in mate, a-ue in plague, ai in pain, aigh in straight, ao in gaol, au in gauging, au-e in gauge, ay in pray, aye in prayed, ea in great, ei in veil, eig in reign, eigh in weigh, eighe in weighed, ey in they, eye in conveyed, eyo in eyot, ez in rendezvous; of e, by a in Caesar, e in be, e-e in complete, ea in each, ea-e in leave, ee in feet, eg in impregn, ei in conceit, ei-e in conceive, eo in people, ey in key, eye in keyed, i in albino, i-e in magazine, ia in parliament, ie in grief, ie-e in grieve, æ in fœtus, way in

"There are fourteen simple vowel-sounds, and four diphthongs, i, oi, ou, u; in all eighteen, to be represented; and there are only six vowel-signs to represent them. They are distributed without any apparent order, or rather in defiance of all order, method, or principle. "The representatives of the consonant-sounds are not so extravagant; there being only twenty-two or twenty-four consonant-sounds to be represented, and twenty, or rather seventeen, letters to represent them. The representation of these is, however, sufficiently fantastic; two of the perfectly simple consonants, c and t, being represented in ten different modes each.† On the whole, the thirty-six simple, and six or seven compound sounds, for which it is desirable to have characters, are represented in our language by three hundred and sixtyseven equivalents, an average of more than eight and one half to each sound, amongst which the inexperienced writer has to choose ; — and not a single sound of the English tongue has one uniform representative. The case is somewhat better for the reader. There are about two hundred letters or equivalents for letters in use, to represent the thirty-seven sounds of our language. Some of these have each a single value; but many of them have a considerable number. Among those of most common occurrence are the combinations ei, eo, ie, and ough, which have respectively seven, nine, eleven, and nine values.‡

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quay, ui in mosquito, y in carry; of i, by ais-e in aisle, ei in neither, as often pronounced, eigh in height, ey in eying, eye in eye, i in bind, i-e in mine, ic in indict, ie in lie, ig in sign, igh in high, is-e in isle, ui in beguiling, ui-e in beguile, uy in buy, y in fly, ye in dye; of o, by au in hauteur, eau in beau, eo in yeoman, ew in sew, o in go, o-e in cove, oa in coal, oe in doe, oh in oh! ol in yolk, oo in brooch, ou in soul, ough in though, ow in know, owe in owe, wo in sword; of u, by eau in beauty, eo in feod, eu in feud, ew in few, ewe in ewe, hu in humor, ieu in lieu, iew in view, iewe in viewed, u in usage, u-e in use, ue in ague, ug in impugn, ugh in Hugh, ui in suit, yew in yew, you in you; of y, by e in courteous, i in onion, j in hallelujah, y in yard. See Ellis's Plea, pp. 5-8.

* Namely: i (ee), as in feet; i, as in it; ɛ (a), as in mate; e, as in met; æ, as in mare; a, as in Sam; a, as in psalm; e, as in caught; o, as in cot; u, as in cur; u, as in curry; o, as in bone; w, as in fool; and u, as in full.

↑ C in can, chasm, ache, back, lough, kill, walk, quack, quay, exception; tin debt, indict, sucked, sought, phthisical, ptarmigan, toe, Thomas, hatter, mezzotint. - Ellis, p. 7.

The sounds of ei are different in every two of the words conceit, forfeit, veil, heifer, their, Leipsig, reimburse; of eo, in people, leopard, dungeon, yeoman, galleon, feod, Macleod, aureola, theology; of ie, in grief, pitied, friend, soldier, lie, medieval, conscientious, piety, crier, species, courier; of ough, in sought, though, through, plough, cough, hough, trough, hiccough, and tough.

The two hundred effective letters have only about five hundred and fifty values, an average of two and one half each. So that to guess what value to give to each letter when written is easier than to divine what symbols to choose to represent a sound uttered, in the proportion of two and one half to eight and one half, or of twenty-five to eighty-five.

"Of the fifty thousand words of our language which have been examined, not more than fifty, or one in a thousand, are pronounced as they are spelt, that is, if we take the first sound or name-sound of each letter as indicating its power. Hence the spelling of a word is no infallible guide to its pronunciation; and there is absolutely no way of indicating, by the alphabet now in use, what the pronunciation of a word should be.

"From the very anomalous and irregular nature of our written language follows the extreme difficulty of learning to read, it taking children not less than fifteen times as long as if each sound had one sign, and each sign one invariable sound. The difficulty is not simply what it would be if they had two hundred characters to learn. It is far greater. In regard to many of the letters and combinations, a child can never learn the sound. He can only learn that the sound is to be ascertained by authority, whenever the letter occurs. Take, for example, the first letter of the alphabet as occurring in the following

sentence.

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Many, comparing this man with his father, fall into the mistake

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that he wants little of being an image of him.'

"Here are nine different sounds of the a; and a child who had mastered them would be none the better prepared to give the sounds of a in any other word which should occur. He could at best guess that it had one of these nine sounds, and proceed to try them in succession, but each of the nine guesses would be wrong if the word were bread or heaven, or any other in which a is silent. Or take the letter e in the following sentence:

"Let her leave her burden at the rendezvous, and show the clerk her pretty tame mouse.'

"Here the letter has eight different sounds or powers, and the effect of learning it would be only to confuse the mind in reference to the sound of e in every word not contained in this sentence. Take one of the combinations of two letters, ai, for instance, in this sentence: —'Captain Paine said he had a pair of plaids.' After learning the five sounds

here given, if the learner should read in Scott an account of a feast at a Saxon's table, he would have to guess five times at the pronunciation of dais, and each time wrong. The written language is continually misleading thus, and it may be safely said that the sound of a word is learnt, not through the aid of the vowels, but in spite of them. Our language is full of rules, and still more of exceptions. A true alphabet would require no rules, and it would admit of no exceptions. It would always speak for itself. In our present alphabet, every letter oftentimes misleads us, and every letter is sometimes lost. It is really deplorable,' as Sir William Jones, speaking of our alphabet, says, that our first step from total ignorance should be into gross inaccuracy, and that we should begin our education in English with learning to read the five vowels, two of which, as we are taught to pronounce them, are clearly diphthongs.' Works, 1st ed., Vol. I., p. 183.

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"The truth is, that there is such an absence of rule, principle, and analogy in our language, as now written, that it is not to be wondered at that so few learn to read well, and that nobody learns to spell.* 'Such is the state of our language,' says Sheridan, a man certainly not prejudiced against his native tongue,' that the darkest hieroglyphics, or most difficult ciphers that the art of man has hitherto invented, were not better calculated to conceal the sentiments of those that used them from all that had not a key, than the state of our spelling is to conceal the true pronunciation of words from all except a few well educated natives.' Such are the difficulties of our language, that with most foreigners beyond the period of early youth the acquisition of a tolerably correct pronunciation is quite impossible; and, in regard to proper names, no person, whether native or foreigner, who has not heard them, can be sure of their pronunciation.†

"The IMPORTANCE of the reform is not less apparent than its necessity. Our language is one of the simplest, richest, and most comprehensive and expressive of languages, and ought to be one of the easi

* Men who have most to do with the press, and who are therefore most likely to know how to spell, have to confess that they wear out a dictionary in looking for the spelling of words. Can a man be found who never doubts about the spelling of a word ?

f Take the instance of the new name, Cochituate, proposed for Long Pond. No person, on reading it, can be sure whether the o in the first syllable is long or short, whether ch in the second is sounded like k, like sh, or like tch, whether u is u or oo, and whether ate sounds long or short a, or short i, or short e; and there is a doubt about the accent.

est of acquisition. Those who speak it belong to the most energetic of all the races, and are everywhere, by might, or craft, or commercial enterprise, or philanthropic action, rapidly extending the area over which it is to be spoken. It is the language of liberty, of poetry, of inventions. It should be made accessible to all. Rapp, a person qualified to judge and to pronounce in the matter of languages, says:Although the French is become the common language, in a diplomatic and social sense, it has never acquired a firm footing in extensive regions out of Europe. The English, on the contrary, may pass for the universal tongue out of Europe; and by its bold fusion and consequent decomposition of the forms of its Gothic and Roman elements, this idiom has acquired an incomparable fluency, and appears especially destined by nature, more than any one of the living, to undertake that part. Were not the impediment of a bizarre, antiquated orthography in the way, the universality of this language would be still more apparent; and it may, perhaps, be said to be fortunate for us other Europeans, that the Englishman has not made the discovery.'*

"The reform proposed by the author or authors of Phonotypy is simply the laying down and carrying out this most philosophical principle, that each sound of the language should be represented by one and only one sign, and that each sign should constantly represent one sound. This principle is obviously the one on which every alphabet should be formed, and it is therefore, as the basis of the reform, a principle entirely satisfactory to the mind.

"In the analysis of the sounds of the language, aid has been sought and obtained from all accessible sources; from Wilkins, Sir William Jones, Dr. Franklin, Rapp, and especially Ellis; from the alphabets of other languages; from the structure of the organs of articulation, and from the construction of those ingenious philosophical instruments which have been contrived to imitate the sounds of language. Professor Wheatstone, taking advantage of all which has been done by Kratzenstein, Kempelen, and Professor Willis, contrived a simple tube, fitted with a reed and blown by means of bellows, which, of a certain length, gave the vowel I (ee); of another definite length, the vowel E (a); of another, the vowel A (ah); of another, O; and of another, indefinite, U (oo); and being gradually drawn out while blown, gave the series I, E, A, O, U,

• K. M. Rapp, Physiologie der Sprache, as quoted by a writer in the Phonotypic Journal, Vol. III., p.

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