Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/28

 ceptions, all may be said to agree, who, whether in India or Europe, attempted to analyse scientifically the elements of human speech. There are, no doubt, some refinements, and some more accurate subdivisions, as will be seen in the extracts given from the Pratisakhyas, which it will be necessary to attend to in exceptional cases, and particularly in philological researches. But, as far as the general physiological outlines of our phonetic system are concerned, we hardly expect any serious difference of opinion.

Widely different opinions, however, start up as soon as we approach the second question, as to how all these sounds are to be expressed in writing. Omitting the different propositions to adopt an Oriental alphabet, such as Sanskrit or Arabic, or the Greek alphabet, or newly invented letters, whether short-hand or otherwise, we shall take it for granted that the Latin alphabet, which, though of Semitic origin, has so long been the armour of thought in the struggles and conquests of civilisation, has really the greatest and most natural claims on our consideration.

There are two principles regulating the application of the Latin alphabet to our physiological sounds on which there is still a general agreement, and which have been sanctioned by the authority of the Church Missionary Society:

1. ''That each sound shall have but one representative letter, and that therefore each letter shall always express the same sound. ''

2. ''That each simple sound shall be expressed by a single letter, and compound sounds by compound letters. ''

If with these two principles we try to write the thirty-five consonants of our physiological alphabet by means of the twenty-four consonants of the Latin, it follows that we must add to the latter diacritical signs, in order to make them answer our purpose.

Now, in the adoption of diacritical signs, another principle should be laid down:

"That the same modification should always be expressed by the same diacritical mark."