Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/20

 deserves to be noticed here. In most of the spoken idioms of Europe, although a distinction is made in writing, there is hardly any difference in the pronunciation of t and th, or d and dh. German "thun," to do, French "théologie," are pronounced as if they were written "tun," "téologie." In the Low German and Scandinavian dialects, however, the aspiration of the t and d (according to Grimm's law, an organic aspiration) has been preserved to a certain extent, only that the consonantal contact by which they are produced takes place no longer between the tongue and the inside of the teeth, but is pushed forward so as to lie really between the tongue and the edge of the teeth. This position of the organs produces the two well-known English sounds of th, in "think" and "though." There is a distinct Runic letter to express them, Þ; and in later MSS. a graphical distinction is introduced between ꝥ and đ, tenuis and media. The difference between the tenuis and media is brought out most distinctly by the same experiment which was tried for f and v. We have the tenuis in "breath," but it is changed into media in "to breathe."

We may consider these two sounds as dialectical varieties of the real th and dh, which existed in Sanskrit, but which, like most aspirated sonant and surd consonants, have since become extinct. To many people the pronunciation of the English th is an impossibility; and in no dialect, as far as we know, does the English pronunciation of the th co-exist with the pure and simple pronunciation of th and dh. Still, as their sound is very characteristic, it might be desirable to mark it in writing also, so that even people who do not know the peculiar accent and pronunciation of a language, should be able to distinguish by the eye the English sound of the th from the usual th and dh.

The principal consonantal sounds, without any regard as yet to their graphic representation, may now be classified and defined as follows: the approximate sound is indicated by English words.