358 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



in the Scottish ch and inadequately represented hitherto 

 by kh. 



When we add the Polish / (/) and the strong Arabic h (//), 

 s and z for the palatalised 5 and z (English sh and zh), d for the 

 th in ' this,' and ^ for the th in ' think ' to the already familiar 

 m, b, w, v, p, f, s, z, d, t, n, /, r t y, n, k, g, q, and h, we have all the 

 consonantal symbols which can — in reason — be possibly required 

 for writing and printing all the known languages of the world. 



As regards vowel sounds, we have first of all to recognise 

 the curious fact that some which would appear to be primordial 

 and simple vowel sounds (amongst those first uttered in human 

 speech) have, in the alphabets of the Mediterranean which laid 

 the foundation of our own Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, German, and 

 Irish letters, received no single, individual equivalent in a sign 

 without a special accent or a diacritic mark. Such primordial 

 vowels of world-wide use are as in ' store,' or as represented 

 by the diphthong aw or au in English ; 6 like the English u in 

 1 hurt,' ea in ' heard,' or ir in ' bird ' (the German 0, the French 

 ceu, the Scandinavian <j>) ; n as in ' hut ' ; a as in ' hat ' ; the 

 Welsh y and the Slavic y or hi. The Greek u (upsilon), heard 

 in modern French and in Dutch and met with in many modern 

 forms of civilised and savage speech, secured for itself the 

 ordinary u symbol in Greek, leaving its original sound to be 

 represented by two letters — on ; but in Latin the Greek u (i'l) 

 came to be represented by y, and this value of y is still con- 

 tinued under some conditions in Germany, and much more so in 

 Scandinavia. In Western Europe the Latin symbol y faded 

 into a light i sound as a vowel, or became the equivalent of the 

 consonantal i which in other directions was taking the form of/ 

 It has been frequently suggested by German phonologists that 

 we should represent the French u or the German u by the Latin 

 y and recur to / for the consonantal i. But on the whole, for 

 reasons which I have given at length in my book on Phonetic 

 Spelling, I think it is wiser to continue the use of/ for the 

 palatal combination dz, and retain y for expressing the con- 

 sonantal i t a sound between vowel and consonant which links 

 guttural and palatal consonants together, yis as necessary as 

 a separate symbol (instead of using the short /) as w is to repre- 

 sent a consonantal it, for w, though nearly equivalent to the 

 short u, is also a semi-consonant and is closely connected in 

 speech development with b, v, and p ; and, strange to say, with 



