Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/30

 cast on as many sizes and bodies as necessary. Punches or founts might be sent to the principal Missionary stations. But how long would this last? If a few psalms or catechisms had to be printed at Bangkok, and if there were no hooked letters to represent the aspirated palatal sound by a single type, is it likely that they would send to Calcutta or London for this type, which, after it arrived, might perhaps be found not to range with the rest? It is much more likely that, in the absence of the type prescribed by the Missionary Societies at home, each missionary would find himself thrown on his own resources, and different alphabets would again spring up in different places. Besides, our alphabet is not only to be an alphabet of missionaries. In time it is to become the alphabet of those tribes and nations whose first acquaintance with writing will be through the Bible translated into their language and transcribed in a rational alphabet. Fifty or a hundred years hence, it may be the alphabet of all the civilised nations of Africa, Australia, and the greater part of Asia. Shall all the printers of Australian advertisements, the editors of African newspapers, the publishers of Malay novels or Papua primers, write to Mr. Watts, Crown Court, Temple Bar, to send new sorts of dotted and hooked letters? I do not say it is impossible; but many things are possible, and still not practical; and these new hooked and dotted types seem to me to belong to this very class of things.

In questions of this kind, no harm is done if principles are sacrificed to expediency; and I therefore propose to write the aspirate letters by

What do we lose by this? The spiritus asper is after all but a faintly disguised H, changed into Ⱶ and Ꟶ, for asper and lenis, and then abbreviated into  and. Besides, the languages where these simple aspirates occur are not many; and in Indian languages, where they are of most frequent use, the phonetic system is so carefully arranged that there no ambiguity can arise whether kh be meant for an aspirated guttural tenuis or for k followed by the semi-vowel h. If the semi-vowel h comes in immediate contact with k, k+h is changed into g+gh, or a stop (virama) has to be put after the k. This might be done where, as in discussing grammatical niceties, it is desirable