INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE 29 



to the international dictionaries of De Beaufront and 

 Couturat how our fundamental principle leads to the following 

 alphabet and the following sound values : a (as in father), 

 b, c (like ts), d, e (like e in net or like a in fate),/, g (always 

 hard, as in go), h, i (like ee in sweet), j (either like E. 1 or like 

 F., 1 as in journal), k, I, m, n, o (as in go or as in not),p, q (qu, 

 as in G. or as in E.), r, s (always unvoiced), t, u (always like 

 oo, as in too), v, x (as in G. or as in E. F. in the words 

 exist, exister), y (as in E. F., and therefore like G.j), z (as 

 in E. F., and therefore like the voiced North German s in 

 rose), further the two double letters ch (as in E., for 

 example church) and sh (as in E., G. sch). 



The strict phonetic canon " One symbol, one sound," is 

 therefore followed in so far as the same sound is never 

 arbitrarily written one way in one word and another way in 

 another word, and the same letter is never pronounced 

 differently in some words compared with the majority. The 

 small exception that sh and ch are not equivalent to 8 -{- h 

 and c + h respectively cannot cause the least difficulty to 

 anyone, and the use of qu and x enables us to retain the 

 international spelling of many words, and, moreover, permits 

 two different pronunciations which cause no difficulty of 

 comprehension and simplify the pronunciation for several 

 nations. Otherwise we should be faced with the difficult 

 problem of choosing between kwala and kvala, eksistar and 

 egzistar. It must not be forgotten, too, that for our purposes 

 the purely theoretical canon " One symbol, one sound," must 

 be subordinated to the fundamental principle of greatest 

 facility, of which phonetic simplicity is itself only a conse- 

 quence. Practical considerations must, in fact, overrule 

 theoretical objections whenever a small deviation from the 

 fundamental principle " One symbol, one sound," produces 

 greater facility. 



1 Here and elsewhere the following abbreviations will be used : 

 G. = German, E. = English, F. = French, I. = Italian, B. = Russian, 

 and S. = Spanish. 



