a. To unwritten Languages.

After the explanations contained in the first and second parts there is little more to be said on this point.

The missionary who attempts to write down for the first time a spoken language, should have a thorough knowledge of the physiological alphabet, and have practised it beforehand on his own language or on other dialects the pronunciation of which he knows.

He should put from recollection, as much as possible, the historical orthography of German, English, French, or whatever his language may be, and accustom himself to write down every spoken sound under the nearest physiological category to which it seems to belong. He should first of all endeavour to recognise the principal sounds, guttural, dental, and labial, in the language he desires to dissect and to delineate; and where doubtful whether he hears a simple or a modified secondary sound, such as have been described in our alphabet, he should always incline to the simple as the more original and general.

He should never be guided by etymological impressions. This is a great temptation, but it should be resisted. If we had to write the French word for knee, we should feel inclined, knowing that it sounds ginokyo in Italian and genu in Latin, to write it gĕnu. But in French the initial palatal sound is no longer produced by contact, but by a sibilant flatus, and we should therefore have to write zĕnu. If we had to write down the English sound of knee, we should probably, for the same reason, be willing to persuade ourselves that we still perceived, in the pronunciation of the n the former presence of the initial k. Still no one but an etymologist could detect it, and its sound should be represented in the Missionary alphabet by "ni."

Those who know the difficulty of determining the spelling of words according to their etymology, even in French or English, although we can follow the history of these languages for centuries, and although the most eminent grammarians have been engaged in analysing their structure, will feel how essential it is, in a first attempt to fix a spoken language, that the writer should not be swayed by any hasty etymo- page 44 logical theories. The Missionary should give a true transcript of a spoken language, and leave it to others to decipher it. He who, instead of doing this, attempts, according to his own theories, to improve upon the irregular utterance of savages, would deprive us of authentic documents the loss of which is irreparable. He would act like a traveller who, after copying an inscription according to what he thought, ought to have been its meaning, destroyed the original; nay, he may falsify unawares the ethnic history of the human race.

Several sentences having been once written clown, the Missionary should put them by for a time, and then read them aloud to the natives. If they understand what he reads, and if they understand it even if read by somebody else, his work has been successful, and a translation of the Bible carried out on these principles among Papuas or Khyengs will assuredly one day become the basis for the literature of the future.

Although the basis of our Standard Alphabet is purely physiological, still no letter has been admitted into it, which does not actually occur in one of the well known languages of Asia or Europe. The number of letters might easily have been increased, if we had attempted to represent all the slight shades of pronunciation, which affect certain letters in different languages, dialects, patois, or in the mouth of individuals. But to increase the number of letters is tantamount to diminishing the usefulness of an alphabet.

We are too prone perhaps to imagine, particularly where we have to deal with languages gathered from the mouth of a single interpreter, or in the intercourse with a few travellers, that we hear sounds of an entirely new character, and apparently requiring a new sign. page 45 But if we heard the same language spoken for a number of years and by a thousand speakers, the natural variety of pronunciation would make our ears less sensitive, and more capable of appreciating the general rule, in spite of individual exceptions. We are not accustomed to pay attention to each consonant and vowel, as they are pronounced in our own language; and if we try for the first time to analyse each word as we hear it, and to write down every vowel and consonant in a language we do not understand, say Russian or Welsh, we shall be able to appreciate the difficulties which a Missionary has to overcome, if he tries to fix a language alphabetically, before he himself can converse in it freely. It has happened, that travellers collecting the dialects of tribes in the Caucasus or on the frontiers of India, have brought home and published lists of words gathered on the same spot and from the same people, and yet so different in their alphabetical appearances, that the same dialect has figured in ethnological works, under two different names. Much must be left to the discretion of Missionaries; for in most cases it is impossible to control the observations which they have made in countries hitherto unexplored, and in dialects known to themselves alone. But it will be found that Missionaries who know their language best, and have used it for the greatest number of years, familiar thus with all its sounds and accents, are least clamorous for new types, and most willing to indicate, in a general manner, what they know can never be represented with perfect accuracy. Too much distinction leads to confusion, and it shows a spirit of wise economy in the Phenician, the Greek, the Roman; and Teutonic nations, that they have contrived to express the endless variety of their pronunciation by so small a number of letters, rather than invent new signs and establish new distinctions. Attempts have been made occasionally, at Rome and elsewhere, to introduce new letters; but they have failed; and though we may feel no scruple to introduce new signs, and marks and accents into the African alphabets; though we, with our resources, may succeed for a time in framing an alphabet of our own where each letter, besides its simple value, has two or three additional values expressed by one, two, or three accents piled one upon the other,—common sense, without appealing to history, should teach us, that Africa will never bear what Europe has found insupportable.

The following alphabet, taken out of the general system of sounds, defined physiologically and represented graphically in the preceding pages, will be found to supply all that is necessary for the ordinary purposes of the Missionary, in his relation to tribes whom he has to teach the writing and reading of their own spoken language, pronounced inevitably by them with shades of sound that no alphabet can render. In philological works intended for a European public, the case will be different. Here it will be necessary to represent the accents of words, the quantities of vowels, and other features essential for grammatical purposes. Here the larger alphabet will come in; and it will always prove a reserve-fund to the scholar and Missionary, from which they can draw, after their usual supply of letters has been exhausted.

It should be borne in mind, that although in this smaller alphabet it would be easy to suggest improvements, no partial alteration can be made with any single letter, without disturbing at once the whole system of which it is but a segment.