Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 1.djvu/60

l the first class are expressed by Roman types, modified letters of the second class are expressed by italics, modified letters of the third class by small capitals. Only in extreme cases, where another class of modified types is wanted, are we compelled to have recourse either to diacritical marks, or to a different fount of types.

9. Which letters in each language are to be considered as primary, secondary, or tertiary may, to a certain extent, be left to the discretion of individual scholars.

10. As it has been found quite impossible to devise any practical alphabet that should accurately represent the pronunciation of words, the Missionary Alphabet, by not attempting to indicate minute shades of pronunciation, has at all events the advantage of not misleading readers in their pronunciation of foreign words. An italic t, for instance, or a small capital, serves simply as a warning that this is not the ordinary t, though it has some affinity with it. How it is to be pronounced must be learnt for each language, as it now is, from a grammar or otherwise. Thus t in Sanskrit is the lingual t. How that is to be pronounced, we must learn from the Prâtisâkhyas, or from the mouth of a highly educated Srotriya. We shall then learn that its pronunciation is really that of what we call the ordinary dental t, as in, while the ordinary dental t in Sanskrit has a pronunciation of its own, extremely difficult to acquire for Europeans.

11. Words or sentences which used to be printed in italics are spaced.