Page:Proposals for a missionary alphabet; submitted to the Alphabetical Conferences held at the residence of Chevalier Bunsen in January 1854 (IA cu31924100210388).pdf/62

 whatever language, had to be transcribed into Roman letters to obtain legal value; if the Government would issue all laws and proclamations transcribed in Roman characters, and Missionaries do the same with their translations of the Bible and other works published in any dialect of India, I think we might live to see one alphabet used from the "snows to Ceylon.

Let us see, then, how our physiological Missionary alphabet could be applied to languages which have not only an alphabet of their own, but also an established system of orthography.

We have here to admit two leading principles:

First, that in transliterating written languages, every letter, however much its pronunciation may vary, should always be represented by the same Roman type, and that every Roman type should always represent the same foreign letter, whatever its phonetic value may be in different combinations.

Secondly, that every double letter, though in pronunciation it may be simple, should be transliterated by a double letter, and that a single letter, although its pronunciation be that of a double letter, should be transliterated by a single letter.

If these two principles be strictly observed, everyone will be able to translate in his mind a Canarese book, written with Roman letters, back into Canarese letters, without losing a tittle of the peculiar orthography of Canaresc. If we attempted to represent the sounds in transcribing literary languages, we should be unable to tell how, in the original, sounds admitting of several graphic representations were represented. In written languages, therefore, we must rest satisfied with transliterating letters, and not attempt to transcribe sounds.

This will cause certain difficulties, particularly in languages where pronunciation and spelling differ considerably. In Arabic we must write al ra'hman, though we pronounce arra'kman; and even in Greek, if we had to transliterate éyyúc, we should, no doubt, have to write 'eggus, though none but a Greek scholar would know how to pronounce this correctly ('engüs). But if, instead of imitating the letters, we attempted to represent their proper pronunciation at a certain period of history, how should it be known, for instance, in transcribing the French of the nineteenth century, whether su" stood for " sou,"