Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/35

 and pronounced this name uniformly; but at the present day there are hardly two languages where the name is pronounced exactly the same, and in several the writing has followed the pronunciation. It will be the same in Africa whatever we do at present. But if an exception is to be made, let it be a single exception, and let us still retain the regular way of writing for all other words in which the pure palatal media occurs.

The linguals, as modifications of the dentals, have been written by common consent as dentals with dots or lines. In writing, the same will have to be retained, though no doubt a more current form will soon grow up if the alphabet becomes used by natives. They will probably draw the last stroke of the t and d below the line, and connect the body of the letter with the perpendicular line below. The linguals, therefore, would be,, h, , h, only that here also the printer would step in and convert the dotted or underlined letters into italics, t, th, d, dh.

I am at a loss how to mark that peculiar pronunciation of the dental aspirate, whether tenuis or media, which we write in English simply by th. It is not of frequent occurrence; still it occurs not only in European, but in Oriental languages also,—for instance, in Burmese. If it occurs in a language where no trace of the pure dental aspirate remains, where even foreign words and proper names, as Thomas (Tom), have to submit to it, we might safely write th (and dh) or th (and dh), as we do in English. The Anglo-Saxon letters ꝥ and ð would be very convenient; but how few founts, even in England, have got them! Again, h and zh, and even and, have been proposed; but they also are liable to objections. I think th and dh will, after all, be found to answer all practical purposes, if we only look to people who have to write and read their own language. Philologists cannot expect to learn all the peculiarities of pronunciation by the eye. They must learn from grammars or from personal intercourse how each tribe pronounces its dental aspirate; and comparative philology will find all its ends answered if it knows that th represents the organic dental aspirate, until its pronunciation deteriorates so far as to make it a double consonant. In this case the missionary also will