176 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



written, besides others, upon which I lay no stress, from persons who 

 did not speak them vernacularly, as Russian from a Pole, and Turkish 

 from an Armenian. The English in general confound the short A 

 with the vowel in fat^ an error into which Mr. Pickering, and I think 

 Mr. Keating, have fallen. I judge the latter from his Dakota (Sioux) 

 vocabularies, in which the vowel in fat is represented in words which 

 have A short in the cognate Konza, if my analysis is correct. This 

 confusion appears in the London Phonotypic Journal (1847, p. 108), 

 where the vowel -character used in writing am (the key word) is 

 placed in as ^ far, apart, enlarge. 



" Mr. Ellis's criticisms upon the Missionary alphabet owe their force 

 to the fact, that it employs no new characters, his own fault being that 

 he employs too many, and not enough. The additions to this alpha- 

 bet by Mr. Hale, and subsequently by Dr. Comstock, are partly free 

 from these objections. The alphabet of Marsden has a few good 

 features, but this author knew little of phonetics. 



" The objections to Mr. Ellis's alphabet by the Edinhurgh Review 

 are perfectly valid, and this author's attempts to avert their force are 

 very weak. Besides his unfortunate citation of the variation of the 

 Latin U, as supposed to be proved by the orthography optimus, optu- 

 Mus, he refers to his tables on ' the value of Roman letters in nine 

 modern languages,' to show ' how little truth there is in the idea that 

 certain Latin letters are appropriated to certain sounds as European 

 letters.' We here find that U represents the vowel in fool, full, in 

 six out of the nine languages, and that in nut in but two, Dutch and 

 English, in neither of which is it specially applied to this power. In 

 English, the idea of U might have been associated with the words 

 rule, full. The syllable you has a character in Russian, and some- 

 times in English. The conjoined 'au' is uniform in six of the 

 examples, but in none, not even English, has it Mr. Ellis's power, 

 according to which 'maur' spells mayor. The character k as Ger- 

 man ch suits no language ; J and W stand alone with their English 

 power ; and q is incorrectly and confusedly used for the German g 

 when the sonant of c/ii, for the distinct Arabic ghain, the modern 

 Greek gamma, and the Hebrew gimcl. The dineresis-mark, as in 

 some German books, is corrupted, after the Phonotypic Journal (1847, 

 p. 77) had decided against 'strokes and dots' because not adapted for 

 'ornamental type.' 



"The Phonetic JVezcs, (1849, p. 103,) in discussing the ability of a 



