SCIENTIFIC SPELLING 359 



g and 7. In common with others writing on phonetics, I adopt 

 in slightly modified form the Greek omega as an equivalent for 

 the diphthongal sound of o in ' bone.' I adopt the italic a as the 

 equivalent of the sound of u in ' but,' or of the short a met with 

 in Arabic and so many Indian tongues, also in parts of West 

 Africa. This vowel (a) is of course extremely common in 

 modern English and represents the perversion of the short u 

 which began in Elizabethan times. This perversion had its 

 analogue on the Continent, where we find, earlier than the 

 period mentioned, the diphthonging of an original Teutonic u 

 into au (' hus ' into ' haus '). At the same time in England, and 

 very slightly in Holland and Flanders, the short 11 was pro- 

 nounced like a, which is really an extremely abbreviated 

 pronunciation of the diphthong au. We see this in the rela- 

 tions of 'out' and 'utter,' 'bout' and 'but' (the surname 

 Butterfield is really derived from one of the many Flemish 

 names in Eastern England, and was originally Bouterfeld, or 

 the ' outer field,' as contrasted with Binnenfeld or Binfield). 

 In transcribing English, as well as various Oriental tongues, 

 it is highly necessary to distinguish between the short a sound 

 and the long ; the short being represented by the unaccented 

 alt/ or fatha in so many Arabic, Indian, or Persian words, as 

 contrasted with the long alt/ This short a is sufficiently near 

 to the English sound of u in ' but ' as to be represented by the 

 same symbol, «, while the long sound is best indicated uniformly 

 by the original type — a. If we make this distinction — that is to 

 say, use our existing italic a (made erect for Roman type and 

 supplied with an enlarged form as a capital), and reserve a in 

 its Roman form with an equivalent italic for the sound of a in 

 ' father,' ' hard,' etc. (the Continental a) — we shall make phonetic 

 transcription much simpler. Similarly, a convenient symbol 

 for the sound of a in ' hat ' — a very prominent sound in English 

 and in North African Arabic — is a. This was probably its 

 equivalent, more or less, in Anglo-Saxon pronunciation. The a 

 in ' hat' is really a very short pronunciation of the diphthong ea 

 or eo. Ea in Anglo-Saxon was probably pronounced exactly as 

 we pronounce it in ' pear ' (or like a in ' stare '). In modern 

 English this, however, is perhaps most logically rendered by eb\ 

 and the fused letters se are best reserved for the short sound in 

 1 hat ' or ' mad.' 



One cannot consider the question of the phonetic writing of 



