Page:Proposals for a missionary alphabet; submitted to the Alphabetical Conferences held at the residence of Chevalier Bunsen in January 1854 (IA cu31924100210388).pdf/48

 The delicate sound of the guttural semi-vowel occurs very rarely in Arian languages. In Semitic dialects, however, the y has usually been considered as the guttural semi-vowel. In Hebrew it is sometimes not pronounced at all, or, as we should say, it is changed into the flatus lenis; whence, in the Arabic alphabet, to remove this ambiguity and to show in every word the full or weak pronunciation of the guttural semi-vowel, the y was split in two: the one, the little more than the flatus lenis; the other, the the hollow guttural semi-vowel which only a Semitic throat is able to utter, and which comes very near to the guttural flatus asper as heard in " loch," رغ

The palatal semi-vowel is usually transcribed in Germany by j, which, as far as archæological arguments go, would certainly be the most appropriate sign to represent the semi-vowel corresponding to the palatal vowel i. As, however, the j is one of the most variously pronounced letters in Europe, and as in England it has been usual to employ it as a palatal media, it is better to discard it altogether from our alphabet, and to write y.

The lingual semi-vowel is r; if in some dialects the r is pronounced very near to the throat, this might be marked by an italic 7, or rh.

The dental semi-vowel is written l. The mouillé sound of 1 may be expressed by an italic

Where the labial semi-vowel is formed by the lips, let it be written B. More usually it is formed by the upper lip and the edge of the lower teeth. It then becomes what the Hindus call a labio-dental semi-vowel, but is hardly to be distinguished from the labial flatus lenis.

As the unmodified flatus, or, as it should more properly be called, the spiritus asper and lenis, can only occur before a vowel, the printer will find no difficulty in representing these two sounds by the usual signs 'and' placed before or over the vowel which follows. At the beginning of words there could be no reasonable objection to this mode of representing the very slight and hardly consonantal sound of the spiritus asper and lenis. But it will take some time before our eyes are accustomed to it in the middle of words. In such cases the Greeks did not mark it. They wrote o̟µ¤, chariot,