Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/41

 In missionary publications, however, which are intended in the first place for the natives, and not for the philologists of Europe, it will be sufficient to mark this sound by one type only, and as it is a vowel fluctuating between o and e, I propose to express it by œ.

Among the languages which have an alphabet of their own, some, as, for instance, Sanskrit, do not express these sounds by any peculiar sign, but use the short a instead. Other languages express both sounds by one sign; for instance, the Hebrew shewa, the pronunciation of which would naturally be influenced, or, so to say, coloured either by the preceding or the following letter. Other idioms again, like Latin, try to express this indistinct sound by e, i, o, or u. Besides the long e in res and the short e in celer, we have the indistinct in words like adversum and advorsum, septimus and septumus, where the Hindus write uniformly saptama, but pronounce it probably with vowels varying as in Latin and Greek. Besides the long o in odi, and the short o as in moneo, we have the indistinct o or u in orbs or urbs, in bonom or bonum. In most dialects one sign, either or, will be found sufficient, and in some cases it may be dispensed with altogether, as a slight shewa sound is necessarily pronounced, whether written or not, in words such as milk, marsh, elm, &c. The marks of quantity, ˘ and ¯, are superfluous in our alphabet; not that it is not always desirable to mark the quantity of vowels, but because here again, the same as with the accented consonant, a long syllable can be marked by the vowel in italics, while every other vowel is to be taken as short. Thus we should write in English bath, bar, but ass, bank; ravine, and pin; but (i.e. boot), and butcher. We should know at once that a in bath is long, while in ass it is short.

All compound vowel sounds should be written according to the process of their formation. Two only, which are of most frequent occurrence, the guttural short a, absorbed by either i or u, might perhaps be allowed to retain their usual signs, and be written e and o, instead of ai and au. The only reason, however, which can be given for writing e and o, instead of ai and au, is that we save a letter in writing; and this, considering how many millions of people may in the course of time have to use this alphabet, may be a saving of millions and millions of precious seconds. The more consistent way would be to express the gutturo-palatal sound of the Italian e by ai, the a being short. The French do the same in "aimer," while in