360 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



English without dealing with that of French. I would propose 

 for the peculiar French sounds represented by the diphthong 

 eu and the nasalised e and i in many words, the symbol f t which 

 when nasalised has only to be surmounted by a ^ ; thus 'peu' 

 would be spelt pf, and 'pin' would be written pt, 'bien,' bis, and 

 1 rien,' rit. For the French unaccented e as heard in ' le,' ' de,' 

 ' menu,' I would supply a new symbol, a reversed e (9). For the 

 Welsh accented y as heard in words like ty — ' house,' and 

 similarly for the Slavic y and bj, I would propose a new symbol 

 (y) which by its form suggests something like a union of u and 

 i. For this peculiar, almost guttural, vowel, which is derived 

 from the Central Asian languages and extends in its modern 

 range almost from China to Poland (its reappearance in modern 

 Welsh is probably an accidental coincidence), is like a mingling 

 of ii and i (as in ' hit ') ; pronounced, however, in a very guttural 

 fashion. The vocalised r and z met with in so many Slavic 

 tongues, and in some of the Indian languages descended from 

 Sanskrit (similar sounds occur occasionally in dialectal English), 

 are best represented by r and z. The little mark on the top of 

 this r and z is my equivalent for the simple vocalisation of a 

 consonant and is nothing but a miniature form of the reversed e 

 which I propose for the French unaccented c. Very often in 

 writing Bantu languages or in writing English, it is not necessary 

 to insert this little symbol above the consonant which is to be 

 vocalised, for common sense in reading the words suggests this 

 vocalisation. But it will be necessary to use this symbol above 

 the line in transcribing many French words exactly as they are 

 pronounced in ordinary speech. For instance, while we must 

 write ' le ' and ' sera,' h and sara, we must often transcribe 

 'lettre,' Ufa*. 



In my proposed alphabet I discriminate between the e in 

 'met' and the e in 'fete' by the placing of a stress mark over 

 the strongly pronounced e, and similarly between i in ' hit ' and i 

 in ' ravine.' Likewise between the u in ' put ' and the u in 

 'rule,' between o in 'store' or 'gone,' and the o in 'not' and 

 ' gong.' Some have suggested that instead of writing a stress 

 mark, which, when carelessly made, may be confused with the 

 nasal sign, or perhaps with an accent, it is better to double the 

 vowel which is to be broadly pronounced. But as the result of 

 much practice, I consider that both in printing and in writing it 

 is more convenient to indicate the strongly pronounced vowel 



