Page:Proposals for a Uniform Missionary Alphabet.djvu/49

 equally plausible, we must, for practical purposes, adopt one by choice.

This exhausts the stock of the guttural letters of the general physiological alphabet. The Hebrew qof and the Arabic  qaf will find their natural representative in զ.

The Arabic sign of the guttural tenuis aspirata has been split into two by means of a diacritical dot. Here, and in similar cases where we have to deal with highly cultivated dialects, we are obliged to follow their bad example and distinguish graphically between kha and ka. That the pronunciation of these two letters varies, is sufficiently indicated by the dot. How it varies, what is the proper pronunciation of the guttural tenuis aspirata in Arabic and its different provincial dialects, and how it sinks down to a mere flatus in kha, must be learnt from the grammar, and by practice. The general pronunciation of the gim in Arabic is certainly palatal. But as its original sound was guttural, and as it has retained this sound in Egypt, and even at Mekkah, we prefer to transliterate it in Arabic by g, leaving the pronunciation in different provinces to be learnt by the ear. If, however, the type, as representative of the guttural media, is entirely supplanted by a new one, as in Persian, where g is rendered by گ, a modified k, and is always the