SCIENTIFIC SPELLING 357 



the tilde (~) in Portuguese and in a good many conventional 

 alphabets as a sign of nasalisation. To employ the ng for this 

 suggests the carrying on of the g sound. This no doubt was 

 the original pronunciation of ng in English as well as in the 

 Teutonic languages of the Continent, but in modern German 

 and Dutch, for example, ng has become identified exclusively 

 with n ; and if one wishes (say, in transcribing words in the 

 Malay Archipelago) to give it the value of the English ng in 

 ' linger,' ' finger,' one has to write it ngg. If it is required to 

 express the value of fik in ' think ' or ' blinker,' it must be written 

 ngk. Ng in English writing is a most puzzling combination to 

 the foreigner. When it terminates a word it is pronounced like 

 n, as also when it occurs in the middle of words like ' singing,' 

 1 clinging.' Where it is derived anciently from the French it is 

 pronounced like nj, as ' ranging,' ' manger,' ' danger.' And it 

 is given its logical pronunciation as fig in ' finger,' ' anger,' 

 1 Rangoon,' etc. 



The value of the modern Greek gamma (7), of the Arabic 

 ghain, and of the velar r in modern German and French pro- 

 nunciation is best represented by the Greek 7 ; though in the case 

 of the velar r, which exists — unacknowledged — in the modern 

 pronunciation of French, German, Danish, and Northumbrian 

 English, this ugly variation, if it is to be encouraged and 

 recognised at all, is most conveniently expressed by r. 



In the scientific alphabet I propose, the four distinct clicks 

 of Hottentot and Zulu (and four out of the numerous Bushman 

 clicks) are represented by clearly differing modifications of the 

 letter c, as these prove to be easy to write and constitute a com- 

 promise between the inconvenient types of Lepsius and the 

 inadmissible rendering of these clicks in the South African 

 alphabet by the letters c, q, x, and qc. The other and more 

 obscure clicks in Bushman can be distinguished by the symbols 

 proposed by Bleek and other writers on the Bushman language. 

 It is impossible to follow official South Africa in the allocation 

 of c, q, x, and qc for the four click sounds in Zulu and Hottentot 

 (one of which is sometimes employed in Sesuto), because c is 

 already required for tsh, q is the natural equivalent of the Arabic 

 j (which also occurs in Hebrew, Phoenician, and most of the 

 Semitic tongues, besides in certain Hamitic, Asiatic, Oceanic, 

 and African languages), and x must be taken from the Greek 

 (as x or x) to represent the guttural of widespread use heard 



