Page:Book of record of the time capsule of cupaloy (New York World's fair, 1939).djvu/28

 to the deciphering of ancient Egyptian was found in a brief chance inscription, the trilingual Rosetta stone, made for another purpose and never thought of at the time as being useful as a key. If the Etruscans, Egyptians, or other ancient peoples had planned to make a key for us, what would have been their procedure? If all connecting links had been removed, how could such a people have conveyed to us the pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary of their language?

This question was propounded to the Smithsonian Institution with the result that it was decided that a mouth map would be necessary for the transmittal of pronunciation, diagrams for the conveying of grammatical categories, and the coinage of a list of "high-frequency English" words for the preservation of essential vocabulary.

The Rosetta stone was a key in that it gave a brief sample of translation. The deliberate scientific depicting of English of today for the people five thousand years from now will give adequate clues entirely independent of any furnishing of translation. It shows by a picture of the human mouth where each of the various sounds of speech comes from and with such clarity that the articulation can be re-enacted. It shows by cartoon-like diagrams the putting together of words. It shows by the development of a "high-frequency" vocabulary the vital constituents of the English of the present time.

THE present English has thirty-three sounds. It is plain that the pronunciation cannot be transmitted to the people of the far future by traditional inherited spelling with [ 20 ]