Page:A grammar of the Teloogoo language.djvu/68

2 2. Notwithstanding the Teloogoo alphabet may be thought to contain some superfluous characters, it will readily be admitted that, in consistency, it is superior to our own. The sound attached to each letter remains constantly inherent in it: the coalition of words may cause one character to be changed for another, or may require the elision or the insertion of letters; but no association whatever can render any letter mute, nor can any change, or combination, give to one or more characters the sound belonging to another. The student, therefore, after once acquiring the correct sound of the Teloogoo letters, immediately pronounces every word with accuracy, and very little practice enables him to read with fluency and precision:—while a foreigner, who attempts to acquire a correct English pronunciation, scarcely ever arrives at the full attainment of his object. The proper pronunciation of our words, indeed, depends more upon the combination of our letters, than upon any fixed sound inherent in each separate character: and, in this respect, a person commencing the study of our language, for a long time, labors under the difficulties experienced by those, who are left to discover the meaning of the principal words in a sentence, without any other aid than what the context affords.

3. All Native Grammarians concur in reducing the number of letters in the Teloogoo alphabet to thirty-seven; by excluding from it forty-four characters which they acknowledge to belong to the language, but will not admit into the alphabet. They reject nineteen letters as peculiar to words of Sanscrit origin; fifteen small connected vowels, as only abbreviated forms of the large initial unconnected vowels; eight characters, as merely marks for certain consonants when doubled; and two, as contracted signs for certain letters which they have retained. But, in giving a general view of the Teloogoo alphabet, I shall insert all the letters which they have rejected; for they belong to the language, as much as those which they have admitted; and the whole are equally unknown to an English reader. Inclusive of these, the Teloogoo alphabet will be found to consist of no less than eighty-one different symbols.