Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/768

 740 WRITING be inscribed ; when horizontal, they are some- times to be read from right to left and some- times from left to right, the figures of men and animals always being turned toward the be- ginning of the line. The hieratic and demotic characters are always written from right to left. The Ethiopic system of writing was originally from right to left, but it was early changed to the opposite direction. The Him- yaritio inscriptions read from right to left, but sometimes in the manner called boustrophedon, first from left to right and then from right to left (Gr. /tovcrrpo^rfrfv, turning like oxen in ploughing). The cuneiform inscriptions are always from left to right. The Chinese and Japanese write in columns, beginning at the top and passing from right to left. The Mexi- can picture writing was also in columns, but read from the bottom upward. The Greeks at first imitated the Phoenicians and wrote from right to left; from this they passed to the boustrophedon style, and finally, about the mid- dle of the 5th century B. 0., to the modern European method. (For the distinctions be- tween capitals, uncials, and cursives, see MANU- SCRIPT ; and for methods of pointing, see PUNC- TUATION.) The various materials used in wri- ting are treated under BOOK, INK, PAPER, PAPYRUS, PARCHMENT, PEN, AND PENCIL. The necessity of some rule for the reduction of un- written languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniform orthography in Roman characters early led to attempts at the construction of a standard alphabet. The first who gave es- pecial attention to the subject was Sir William Jones, who published in the "Transactions" of the Asiatic society (Calcutta, 1788) his es- say " On the Orthography of Asiatic words in Roman Letters." He discarded the English vowel system and adopted the German or Ital- ian method, but failed to apply the same method to the consonant system. He was followed by Sir Charles Trevelyan, Volney, Monier Wil- liams, M. Miiller, and other English, French, and German scholars ; but no generally satis- factory system was devised till 1853, when Prof. Lepsius of the university of Berlin pub- lished his " Standard Alphabet." This was adopted as a standard in 1854 by the church missionary society of England, and experience in the transcription of several African languages having proved its general availability, it has since been accepted by other missionary socie- ties, by the American board of foreign mis- sions, and by many linguists. In this alphabet are recognized only three primary vowels, a, , and, pronounced as in the German and Ital- ian languages. Between these are ranged the various other vowel sounds of different lan- guages, expanding them to 30 in all, including diphthongs. The consonants are divided into explosives, subdivided into fortes, lenes, and nasalet, fricatives, subdivided into fortes, lenes, and aemir-ocalcs, and liquids, 48 different sounds in all being recognized. To represent these 78 vocalic and consonantal sounds, Roman letters distinguished from each other by va- rious diacritical marks are used in all but nine cases, in two of which the Arabic and Greek rough breathings are represented by their ap- propriate signs, and in the remaining seven Greek characters are employed. The alpha- betic characters and their respective sounds are as follows, according to the edition of the " Standard Alphabet" of 1863 : VOWELS. b. Lenes. a Eng. father. Heb. N, Gr. spiritus & Ger. Mann. lenis. e Fr. mere. q Arab. I (qaf). 8 Eng. head. ^ e Eng. cane. g Eng. gold. i Eng. see. g Old Sans. of. 1 Eng. sin. 3 Eng.j. 6 Eng. all. d Sans. JJ". tt Eng. hot. o Eng. no. d (t) Arab. ^. ft Eng. rule. d Eng. dear. ii Eng. foot. b Eng. by. o Fr. beurre. Eng. but. c. Nasal es. 6 Ger. Konig. n Eng. singing. u Fr. fumes. nQfin Q r^r tt Fr.bot. kjiiiio. ^n ai Eng. mine. n Sans. Tjf . au Eng. house. n Eng. no. au Ger. heutc. in Eng. me. ei Sp. reina. oi Eng. join. B. FRICATIVES. a Fr. an, en. a. fortes. e Fr. examen. h' Arab. 7^ (h'a). o Fr. on. ^ h Eng. hand. o Fr. un. Eng. nation. X Ger. Buch. S Eng. show. r Sans. ^R ^ Ger. ich. 1 Sans. flj". s Old Sans. H z Chin, mandarin tsz. o o S Pol. 6wit. CONSONANTS. s Arab. (jP (sad). A. EXPLOSIVES. s Eng. sense. a. fortes. 6 Eng. thin. I Arab, r* (Jain). f Eng. fine. k Eng. cool. Ic Old Sans. f. b. Lenes. c Eng. ch. y Arab. (yam). t Sans. ". 2 Fr. jeune. t Eng. town. y Mod. Gr. yeQvpa. p Eng. pine. 2 Pol. p6zno.