Page:Dictionary of aviation.djvu/12

 This amplified form of the roman alfabet used in the respellings of the title-words thruout this dictionary has been undergoing a most remarkable advancement during the last quarter of a century. It is by far the most diversely used and highly perfected means as yet devised for indicating simply and accurately, the pronunciation of all languages in any popular world-wide system. It will doutless undergo further modification of detail as time goes on, but the principles which have guided the selection of its letters from the alfabets of the world, its flexibility, and the extent and manner of its present use, bespeak its capacity for development and foretell its universality. It has alredy been applied to several hundred languages and dialects and is now in activ competition with local and old-fashiond systems of fonetic spelling, not only in dictionaries and grammars, and textbooks on fonetics, but also in general literature.

This system of fonetic notation is in general accord with the systems used in Murray's New English Dictionary (Oxford), Wright's English Dialect Dictionary (Oxford), Funk's Standard Dictionary (New York), and a large number of bilingual dictionaries. It is similar to the alfabets advocated by the American Filological Association, the International Fonetic Association, by committees of the Modern Language Association and the National Educational Association, and used by filologists the world over. It is based upon the ordinary spelling of all the languages of the world which are written in roman letters: as, for example, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin. More different new books are using this system than all other systems of fonetic notation combined. This feature tends to render the pronunciations in the present volume equally servisable to aviators and other persons of all nationalities in all parts of the world.

Below are two tables. The first table shows the more important letters of the universal gammakap, arranged so as to give some idea of the place and manner of articulation of the sound or group of sounds which each symbol represents.