VOL. XVr.] rHILOSOPHICAL TRAWSACTIONS. 'IQl 



wards the left hand, and descend as in the former ; proceeding in this order 

 with all the rest. 



Secondly, as to the pronunciation of this character, by the court language, 

 or by any other now used, I conceive it to be wholly different from that of a 

 literal character, that is, from being pronounced or spoken according to its 

 marks or figures, whether simple or compounded. The reason of which differ- 

 ent pronunciation may have proceeded partly from the loss of the primitive 

 language, for which it was designed, partly from an affectation of monosyllabi- 

 cal words in this court language ; to help the poverty of which, they are obliged 

 to make one syllable to signify many different notions, to do which, they have 

 introduced a kind of musical toning or accenting of each of them, and that 

 not single, but compound of two or three tones to each signification of every 

 one of these monosyllables ; arising partly from this way of writing by divers 

 nations of different languages ; who minding only the figure and signification, 

 read it into their own mother tongues, as we in Europe arithmetical figures ; 

 and partly also from the omission of most grammatical distinctions, the same 

 character serving for substantive and adjective, singular and plural in all cases, 

 for the verb in all tenses and numbers, &c. for the abstract and the concrete 

 signification : partly also from their syntax, it being necessary to consider the 

 whole sentence, to discover which part of speech each character is of in 

 that sentence ; wherein the order and positions of the characters to each other,; 

 for which they have rules, have their signification : and lastly, from the loss of 

 the very notion of a literal character ; whence for the expressing of proper 

 names, they are obliged to make use of several characters, whose sounds or 

 words come nearest to the sounds of the syllables of that name, as tarn, jo, van, 

 for Adam Jovan. 



Now, though I conceive this character is not effable, properly as a literal 

 character, by any of their present languages ; and though possibly it might be 

 at first a real character, that is, each of them compounded of such strokes or 

 marks, as by their figures, positions, and numbers in the square, denoted the 

 several philosophical ingredients, that made up the notion of the whole cha- 

 racter, as the book Ye Kim seems to show, by giving rules for the order and 

 significancy of places in the square, &c. Yet I think it not difficult to make it 

 a literal, or at least a syllabical character, and legible into a language, some- 

 what after the manner of the universal character invented by Bishop Wilkins ; 

 in which the single characters, might be monosyllables, and the compounded 

 dissyllables, trissyllables, &c. according to the number and order of simple cha- 

 racters in the square of the compounded. 



r p 2 



