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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.

"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.t

"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?

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. 249.

and on being farther drawn out, repeated these sounds in the reverse order, then, successively, with different lengths, the same series direct, and again reversed. This experiment settles the order of the vowel-sounds, which had also been already determined by the utterance of a continuous stream of vocal sound, with the parts of the mouth gradually changing their position. It does not determine at which end of the series the vocal sounds should be considered as beginning, which has been settled on other grounds. The number of vowel-sounds has been determined by a careful analysis of the spoken language. There seem to be fourteen well settled vowel-sounds in authorized use in the language.* Several others are sometimes heard; as, for example, the sound of o in most, among ourselves. Four diphthongs, i, oi, ou, and u, from their frequent occurrence in the language, have symbols assigned them.

"The natural order of the consonant-sounds is determined by observing the organs of articulation employed in forming or modifying them, and the order settled upon by Mr. Pitman is that of labials, dentals, palatals, gutturals, nasals, beginning with those formed by the lips and going back to those formed by aid of the teeth, the palate, and the nose. The reverse of this order might have been taken; and has been taken by Bishop Wilkins and Dr. Franklin.

"What particular consonant-sounds are found in the language is determined, as in the case of vowels, by an analysis of the language itself. They are settled at twenty-four, including those of an ambiguous nature, represented by w, y, and h, and called coalescents, and the breathing represented by h. After exhausting the letters of the present alphabet, excluding k, q, and x, it became necessary to adopt nineteen new letter-signs for the unrepresented or misrepresented sounds. These

* Eight are long, as 1. ee in keep, 2. a in make, 3. a in mare, 4. a in mark, 5. au in caught, 6. u in burn, 7. o in pole, and 8. oo in fool; and six short, namely, 9. i as in pin, 10. e in met, 11. a in sat, 12. o in top, 13. u in cup, and 14. oo in foot. Of the short, only two correspond precisely to long sounds, namely, 11 to 3, and 12 to 5. The order in the phonic scale would seem to be nearly

1

9

2

10

3-11

4

5-12

6

13

7

14

8.

have been chosen with great care, and after very numerous experiments. The present form of the phonetic alphabet being as high as the seventeenth of those which have been successively proposed. The proposed alphabet is the following:

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"Some objections which are made to the project of reform ought to be considered.

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"1. It is feared by many that if the new mode of printing should prevail, all the libraries now in existence will become useless. This fear is entirely groundless. When a knowledge of the language, or facility in reading, is once acquired through phonotypy, it will be perfectly easy to read books printed in the common type; far more easy than it is for us to read old black-letter English, or the English of the times of Chaucer. It will probably take less time, I have no doubt myself that it will take much less time, to read phonotypically first and heterotypically afterwards, than to learn to read by the common mode alone; inasmuch as, when one has learnt the phonotypic alphabet, he may learn to read of himself without farther assistance, the letters giving necessarily the true sounds of the words, and, the knowledge of the words of the language once acquired, one may, afterwards, soon read them with ease, however disguised by a barbarous heterography. "2. It is objected that it will, if adopted, oblige all of us to learn a

considerable portion of a new alphabet. Let any one who feels this objection make the attempt, for only two hours, to read a well printed phonotypic book, and the objection will disappear. When the art of writing was first introduced among the Anglo-Saxons, the art of deciphering it was well called reading, that is guessing. Reading English is a sort of guessing at the meaning of hieroglyphical symbols; and so admirably are we all trained to the art by learning to read, that any one will find it surprisingly easy to guess at the power of all the newly introduced letters of the phonotypic alphabet, without looking into a First Book for them. This statement, which I believe is literally true of the small letters, may, perhaps, admit of an exception in regard to the capitals, when found in a line by themselves. The new letters are carefully selected, as has been already stated, to represent those sounds which least frequently occur; and in assigning them characters, forms have in most instances been chosen with which we are already familiar or which resemble the letters whose power they most nearly represent.*

"3. A third objection which is urged against the reform is, that by changing the spelling we are in danger of losing sight of the derivation of a word, and thus of losing one clew to its meaning. Let Dr. Franklin answer this objection, as it was made to him originally by a correspondent. Now as to the inconveniences you mention; the first is, "that all our etymologies would be lost, consequently we could not ascertain the meaning of many words." very uncertain, but such as they are, the old books would still preserve them, and etymologists would there find them. Words in the course

Etymologies are at present

of time change their meanings, as well as their spelling and pronunciation; and we do not look to etymologies for their present meanings. If I should call a man a knave and a villain, he would hardly be satisfied with my telling him that one of the words originally signified only

* The sound of ee in feet is represented by a letter which is nearly the italic i; a in date and a in psalm are represented by common forms of our written e and a; au in caught by e; u in cur, by u, u lengthened, the sign proposed by Dr. Franklin; o in grow, by o, and oo and u in fool and full by u, u, two u's combined; ew as heard in yew, the name of a tree, by u; oy in boy, by d, o with a contracted y above it; ch in etch by g, which it most nearly resembles; th in loath, by one form of t, t; th in loathe by đ, d and t combined; sh in mesh, by a long s, f; zhe in measure, by a written z, 3; and ng by a sign suggested by Dr. Franklin, ŋ, n with the last part of g combined with it.

† Miss Stevenson.

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