154 VOICE, LANGUAGE, PHONETIC SPELLING. 



tell us it must be accepted ! Again, a few years ago it was 

 insisted that similarity of language was sure evidence of 

 racial affinity; and because a very large number of our 

 words happen to be allied to the German forms, it was 

 assumed that we came of the same stock as the Germans. 

 It is now, however, acknowledged by all competent author- 

 ities that language is not a sure and certain test of race, but 

 only of social contact. There are 7?o knoicn facts which 

 prove that we Britons belong to the so-called Aryan family. 



The sound of voice is produced by the vibration of the 

 edges of two elastic bands — the vocal cords — which are 

 situated in the larynx, or upper part of the windpipe ; and 

 the sound, conveyed by the air, is modified in various ways 

 by alterations in the shape of the mouth and throat, and in 

 the relations borne by the tongue, palate, teeth, and lips to 

 each other. The simple vowel-sounds of our language are 12, 

 and the consonant sounds 24 in number, making together 36 

 simple sounds ; for each of which there ought to be a letter, 

 which should itself be used for no other sound. With such 

 an alphabet of 36 letters, all the sounds of the language 

 could be truthfully and consistently represented, and there 

 would be no difficulty whatever in spelling. 



The lecturer then briefly discussed the chief types of 

 writing in existence, commencing with the simple pictures 

 (iconographs) of natural objects made by prehistoric man, 

 of which diagrams were shown, and as a contrast to them, 

 a copy of a North American Indian letter, in which, though 

 the hieroglyphs were similar in character, they served to 

 convey a series of ideas from the mind of the writer to 

 other minds. Such symbols are called ideographs. Phono- 

 graphs, or sound-signs, are a further improvement ; and 

 these are either syllabic (representing whole syllables) or 

 alphabetic (representing elementary sounds). 



