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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 6

How to express Aspirates?

How to express Aspirates?

The aspirated tenues and mediæ in the guttural, dental, and palatal series, which, according to the description given above, are not compound, but simple though modified sounds, should be written by simple consonants with a diacritical mark of aspiration. This would give us:

k', t', p, g', d', b'.

These types have been cut many times since Count Volney founded his prize at the French Academy for transcribing Oriental alphabets, and even before his time. They exist at Berlin, Paris, Leipzig, Darmstadt, Petersburg, and several other places. They have been cut in different sizes and on different bodies. Still the difficulty of having them at hand when required, making them range properly, and keeping always a sufficient stock, has been so great even in places like London, Paris, and Berlin, that their adoption would defeat the very object of our alphabet, which is to be used in Greenland as well as in Borneo, and is to be handled by unexperienced printers even in the most distant stations, where nothing but an ordinary English font can be expected to exist. In our Missionary alphabet we must therefore have no dots, no hooks, no accents, no Greek letters, no new types, no diacritical appendages whatsoever. No doubt, Missionary Societies might have all these letters cut and cast on as many sizes and bodies as necessary. Punches or fonts might be sent to the principal Missionary stations. But how long would this last? If a few psalms or catechisms had to be printed at Bangkok, and if there were no hooked letters to represent the aspirated palatal sound by a single type (k″), is it likely that they would send to Calcutta or London for this type, which, after it arrived, might perhaps be found not to range with the rest? It is much more likely that, in the absence of the type prescribed by the Missionary Societies at home, each missionary would find himself thrown on his own resources, and different alphabets would again spring page 29 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 transcribe 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 sty 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 II, changed into I- and -I, 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 tenuis 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.