Page:Proposals for a missionary alphabet; submitted to the Alphabetical Conferences held at the residence of Chevalier Bunsen in January 1854 (IA cu31924100210388).pdf/41

 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. Must 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, for 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 decidedly to belong to this class.

In questions of this kind, no harm is done if principles are sacrificed to expediency; and I therefore propose to write the aspirate letters, as all English and most French and German scholars have written them hitherto, by

kh, th, ph, gh, dh, bh.

What do we lose by this? The spiritus asper (*) is after all but a faintly disguised H, changed into and 1, for asper and lenis, and then abbreviated into and. Besides, the languages where these simple aspirates occur are not many; and in India, 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 tennis 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 to distinguish between kh and k-h. The missionary, except in India, will hardly ever suffer from this ambiguity; and if the scholar should insist on its being removed, we shall see immediately how even the most delicate scruples on this point could be satisfied.

There is still, if we examine the alphabets hitherto proposed or adopted, a whole array of dots and hooks, which must be eliminated, or at least be reduced, as far as possible; and though we might, after gaining our point with regard to the h, get through gutturals, dentals, and labials, we still have new and more formidable enemies to encounter in the palatals and linguals.