UNIFORM SYSTEM OF SPELLING. 437 



system which should be adopted by the Commonwealth of Australia, 

 for if it is not a perfect system, it is certainly far in advance of our 

 spell-as-you-please plan, and it has the merit of being a system 

 the rules- of which can readily be understood and which are of 

 universal application. 



The. principal characteristic of the system is that the vowels 

 are used to express the same sounds as they do in the Italian and 

 other allied languages, e.g. : — 



" a " is pronounced ah as in father, and does not have to do 

 duty, as in English, for such an utterly dissimilar sound of the 

 same letter as in the words " gate," " fate," etc. 



" e " has the sound of " a " in the words " gate," " fate," etc. 



" i " has the sound of " ee " as in the word " beet," of " i " 

 as in the words " ravine," " machine," etc., and is certainly 

 excused from having at the same time to express the sound given 

 by us to the letter " i " in such words as " final," " gibe," etc. 



" o " is sounded as in English. 



" u " is sormded as " oo " in the word " boot," or as " u " in 

 " flute," Why this " oo " should be so very dear to us in Aus- 

 tralia is a great mystery. It is very difficult, for instance, to 

 understand why we use the letter " u " in such words as " flute," 

 " truth," and many other words to express a particular sound, 

 and think it to be necessary to use " oo " to express the same 

 sound in so many other words. I often wonder if there is any 

 man living who can write the word " Woolloomooloo " without 

 feeUng a sense of injury at the strain on his time, temper, and 

 memory by such a system of spelling. That word can easily be 

 written " Wulumulu " with the acute accent on the final letter 

 to mark the emphasis ; Goonoo Goonoo can be written Gunu Gunu ; 

 Boonoo Boonoo as Bunu Bunu, and many other mis-spelt words 

 can be similarly altered with great gain to the beauty, simplicity 

 and usefulness of the words. Threlkeld, who wrote an Australian 

 Grammar, which was published in 1834, adopted the Italian sounds 

 for the vowels, and says " u " is pronounced as " oo "in the words 

 " cuckoo," " cool," etc. The Council of the Royal Geographical 

 Society, the Foreign and Colonial Offices, the Admiralty, the War 

 Office, all say that " oo " "should never be employed" for the 

 sound of long u as in flute, the sound of oo as in boot — that we 

 should, therefore, not write Zooloo but Zulu ; not Soomatra, but 

 vSumatra. The United States Board on Geographic Names, all 

 the learned Societies in the world, and all the Missionary Societies 

 in the Pacific have adopted the system here advocated, but we in 

 Australia still adhere to the old absui'd style. One of the most 

 prominent examples of this ridiculous system is that of the wa}' 

 m which the name of a suburb of Brisbane is spelled. I do not 

 know the history of the word, but I venture to think that ''Kua- 

 paru " would express the sound much more clearly to a native 

 than " Coorparoo," and would be more easily pronounced by 

 ourselves and visitors. 



