Page:A plea for phonotypy and phonography - or, speech-printing and speech-writing (IA pleaforphonotypy00elliiala).pdf/24

20 representative of one of those sounds expressed by a single character in the phonotypic alphabet. Viewed in this light we find that the present English alphabet effectively consists of the enormous number of 200 letters!! Surely we might have expected that, with such very numerous means at our disposal, we should have had but one meaning attached to each effective letter. But no; nothing can serve to show in a more striking manner the hap-hazard mode in which our spelling is come about, than that only about one in three of these effective letters, and those of the rarest occurrence, have each a single meaning, while some have as many as 9, and one has 11 meanings, as the following analysis shows:

Thus our 200 effective letters have 553 meanings between them, giving an average of $$2\tfrac{3}{4}$$ meanings to each letter. And in this case, as well as in the preceding table, we are convinced that the truth is rather understated, for we cannot hope to have gathered together all the anomalies of our most anomalously written language, although we have been at some pains to hunt them down. Indeed the Tables upon which these calculations were founded, lay by us for many months, that they might be made tolerably perfect; and we have to acknowledge the assistance of some members of the "Phonetic Council," to whom they were submitted in their original form, and who have supplied us with several words which had escaped our own observation. Yet, the following words have been suggested, or have occurred to us, while these pages were passing through the press, but we did not esteem it necessary to alter our calculations in consequence, and we therefore merely subjoin them:

The rich mine of proper names, whether of places or of persons, is scarcely opened in the Tables, although a few very glaring instances will be found there. We subjoin the following, whose irregularities are so great as scarcely to admit of classification: