166 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



200. This shows the necessity of using points extensively, to prevent 

 a superabundance of primary characters, as the missing sounds occur. 

 Mr. Ellis has devoted a number of years, in various parts of Eu- 

 rope, to the study of the phonetic peculiarities of language, the results 

 of which are given in his Essentials of Phonetics, and his views are 

 worthy of attention. Unfortunately, his alphabet was primarily adapt- 

 ed to English alone, and being intended to replace the ordinary one, 

 the most unjustifiable concessions were made to its corrupt orthog- 

 raphy, apparently that the people might be as little shocked as pos- 

 sible, and spared a few hours' study. But whilst phonotypy is framed 

 for the heterotypic readers of a fleeting present, it is admitted {Pho- 

 netic News, p. 1, §§ 5, 7) that ' most poor children leave school un- 

 able to read with ease,' 'and that one third of the population of Eng- 

 land are unable to read.' They, at least, have no prejudices to con- 

 ciliate. The common sense of Europe, Polynesia, Africa, and a great 

 portion of America, as well as of those to whom these literary husks 

 are specially offered, (if made acquainted with the merits of the ques- 

 tion,) would reject them as barbarisms. Moreover, the unlettered pub- 

 lic should not be deprived of the power to pronounce foreign words and 

 sentences, nor the foreigner of that to pronounce English ones.* The 

 excuse, that the powers of the iatira f alphabet are 'uncertain,' (p. 

 222,) is neutralized by his own opinion that the Latin vowel-characters 

 had their Italian or German power, | and we find an English author 

 making an adjective Hiberiana out of the English name Heber. 



* Phonetic writing obviously depends upon speech ; Mr. Ellis, however, makes 

 both virtually depend upon etymology (pp. 103, 104), as if to preserve the aristo- 

 cratic distinction between the lettered and the unlettered public. As a conse- 

 quence, his English depends upon Old English, Latin, or French orthography, so 

 that, to write (and speak) it, one must be acquainted with these languages. Thus 

 he takes minor from the French, and makes it different from miner. So or stands 

 in memory (which he pronounces Twcm-or-T/), and /orm in reformation; and the 

 words owr, poiver, follow the old spelling, the latter having e in the second syl- 

 lable. 



t Leaving Latin out of view, there must be uniformity somewhere, because the 

 Sandwich-Islander spells the name of one of these islands Maui, and an English 

 or American missionary, a Spaniard, Portuguese, Italian, German, Choctaw, or 

 West African Mandingo, would do the same. 



t The " many [English] vowels and consonants which the Latin language is to- 

 tally unable to represent or to suggest," should have been particularized. Among 

 them are the vowels in net, not, nut, fat. The vowel in fin was perhaps heard 

 in opTiMcs, as u replaced i in a few words j a fact cited by Mr. Ellis to prove that 



